My Sweetest Mistake?

Today I did something very strange in the name of haste stacking. I decided to finally break my 4pc Tier 8 set and split it into a 2pc t8 and 2pc t9. I've also picked up the 245 non-tier chest piece that has boat loads of haste on it as well. So I merrily take my 2 tokens over to the Tier 9.25 vendor and start perusing my choices and decide to upgrade the pieces that will give me the largest haste/spellpower/spirit upgrades. Next thing I know I've picked up the leggings and the hands. I'm ever so excited to finally have upgraded gear that I rush off to Dalaran and have everything immediately gemmed and enchanted to my liking. The next step in this sweet mistake is equipping my two new pieces and realizing that I'm not receiving my 2pc Tier 9 bonus! Lo and behold my gloves are actually of the moonkin variety! With everything being gemmed and enchanted I'm no longer able to refund the gloves and my initial reation was to open a ticket and ask for an exchange. But before I decide to make any more hasty decisions (awesome pun I do declare) I revisited the tier 9 vendor just to see what I'd be exchanging for if I were allowed to swap the resto for the moonkin sets. Much to my dismay I find that the only difference between the moonkin and resto sets are the resto set has 9 more spirit and gives crit instead of haste!! So...I'm now pleased to announce that I'm the proud owner of moonkin gear that I'm using in the pursuit of healing!

Week of W00T!

Rabble may be slow but we do get the job done. We cleared all of Ulduar and spent ~1hr on Yogg+3 which was new for us but alas could not slay the old god on Tuesday. Fortunately, we 1 shot him with fresh faces on Wednesday and I was able to get this nifty mace finished up. The beastslaying enchant was more than appropriate I felt since we were slaying the Northrend Beasts after Ulduar.

Then to top the night off a group of 10 of us stayed after the 25man raid and did some ToGC10 and finished with 48 attempts left which I was very pleased with especially since we had no bloodlust for Anub, let's just say the final phase was hectic.

I've been Reading up on the potential haste changes to us restos and I'm going to refrain from making too many judgements until the proposed changes look more likely to happen. I will agree that a nerf to rejuv is appropriate but I just hope blizzard doesn't go overboard with it.

What's new with Sunkist?!?

Hello 5 people who have this blog show up from time to time on their blogroll, it's me Sunkist! I've been neglecting the blog here pretty substantially but I thought I'd just step in here and give a quick update.

Raiding:
25's are going well. We clear ToC25 normal with one to two wipes per run. We haven't downed Northrend Beasts Heroic yet but we've also only given it ~5 attempts. I'm up to 25/30 legendary fragments so we've been doing full Ulduar clears in about a night. We're also slowly adding in hardmodes to the Ulduar mix. Just last week we did XT-002 and activated Thorim but didn't kill him that way.
I've been setting up the guild's 10man ToC runs which is a much larger hassle than I first anticipated but I think a routine is developing which is good. Soon I'll add ToGC10 groups in about a week or two but right now we've got a few groups doing that without the schedule. On the whole, raiding is good.

Achievements:
I hit 8k nerd points about a month back and even still the achievements trickle in. I'm at ~8500 atm which is nice. I finished Loremaster and here are a few tips I'd give for that.

1) Do in in Phases. I did all of Northrend way back in December or January. Then I did Outland about a month after that. Then it was in the past 2-3 weeks or so that I did most of Azeroth.
2) Do Eastern Kingdoms before Kalimdor. There are TONS of quests that send you running between continents and I've found that more often than not the quest originated in Eastern Kingdoms
3) Questhelper doesn't do it all. I had to go back to old skool research for quite a few quests and especially in Azeroth thottbot.com pulled out some useful tips that wowhead just couldn't.
4) Have checkpoint goals in mind. This was much easier for Outlands and Northrend where you could have the goal of 1 zone every day or two. In Azeroth it turned into "finish these 2 quest chains, get to 2500 total quests, etc." But simply having the goal of "Loremaster" is far too daunting to try and focus on.

Since finishing Loremaster and being completely done with Quest Achievements I've decided to try and fish up that pesky turtle and finish off another block of Achievements. With that turtle I'll be completely done with Professions which will be nice. So far I'm 2100 fish caught with no sign of him. My strategy for the turtle is to collect 100 of each of the Fish Feast fish at a time so that I can craft them for the guild and easily keep track of my total fish progress. After the turtle shows his ugly face I think I'll try and focus on some PvP achievements.

Generally:
WoW has it's ups and downs. I've managed to keep myself pretty upbeat with projects and such and with a 2 day 25man raiding schedule I don't forsee burnout in the near future. In addition to my achievement goals I've also started dabbling in the AH within the past week or so. I found it rather ironic that the week I decide to start trying to make money off the AH that MMO-champ ran his extensive AH gold making guide. One thing I did pull out of his posts though was the Quick Auction 2 mod which has been EXTREMELY useful.

Thoughts on the State of Resto Druids:
I've been pretty happy with our healing capabilities for quite a while and with the Patch 3.3 notes out I don't forsee any major shifts away or to the resto druids. With the incoming Rejuv "bug fix" I couldn't help but laugh and think of the movie "Office Space" where the managers decide to "fix the glitch" regarding Milton's paycheck and they figured things would just work themselves out naturally. Nice try Blizzard. Even still, a nerf to Rejuvenation was bound to happen and luckily this one shouldn't be too devestating.

Kind of a long post but here it is.

Tier 8 to Tier 9 leap

Recently I've been debating when exactly to start going after the Tier 9 set pieces. I've been extremely hesitant solely because the 4 piece restoration bonus is soooooooo good. Since getting 4pc I've had a noticeable jump in my healing and when looking at meters for fights I see that the bonus heal itself constitutes ~10-15% of my total healing. For a single set bonus that is absolutely godly. But just the other day I saw a blue post concerning a nerf to the set bonus coming with the next patch that reads as follows:

Druid Tier-8 Healer 4-Piece Set Bonus: The amount of healing this set bonus grants on the initial cast of Rejuvenation has been reduced by 50%. In addition, this set bonus no longer has strange interactions with Harold’s Rejuvenating Broach.

So now I've been looking into when I should make the leap from Tier 8 to Tier 9 items so here's a stat comparison of the sets as well.

Full Conqueror Tier 8 Stats:
Stam - 381
Int - 386
Spirit - 318
Crit - 174
Haste - 107
Spellpower - 525
Sockets - 1meta, 4red, 1yellow, 2blue

Full Top Tier 9 Stats:
Stam - 520
Int - 520
Spirit - 418
Crit - 256
Haste - 170
Spellpower - 719
Sockets - 1meta, 3red, 1yellow, 3blue

Difference:
Stam - 139
Int - 134
Spirit - 100
Crit - 82
Haste - 63
Spellpower - 194

While the differences are noticable I wouldn't say they are overly compelling by themselves to go breaking the T8 4pc bonus as your first opportunity. Personally I'm going to focus on getting other gear upgrades (ring, back, feet, belt, etc.) before collecting my Tier 9 set pieces. I don't know if I'll wear the Tier 9 set before the 3.2.2 patch but with the nerf to Tier 8 4pc my goal will be to have the Tier 9 set ready and waiting in my bank and I'll make an abrupt switch in my gear come patch day.

Pointers on Lord Jaraxxus

Did the fight first on 10man during the afternoon and surprisingly 1shot him. Came back with 15 more peeps later that night and took 4 attempts. Not too shabby.

Here's a list of the basic abilities performed by the boss:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=876

Now for some healing and general pointers about the fight:

1. Grid Users will want to add the following debuffs to their center icons in order to track them

Incinerate Flesh
Legion Flame
Fel Fireball

2. When you see someone with Incinerate Flesh, that person needs to receive as much healing as possible over 15 seconds. I'm not sure the amount needs to be 60k as sometimes we were able to remove the debuff within 3-4 seconds it seemed. But that person needs to have the debuff taken away or else some major raid damage will ensue.

3. Legion Flame is good to have on your grid especially if you're leading the raid. I'd usually call out on vent if someone needed to start running around to avoid the fire

4. Fel Fireball was only cast on our tank and only cast during our 25man attempts. This needs to be dispelled away immediately by a priest/pally. We had a ret pally with some quick fingers do it for us

5. The Chain of Fire spell wasn't overly devastating unless the boss also had his "Nether Power" buff up. So while it's a good idea to spread out for multiple reasons, fire on the ground, chain fire, etc. Not spreading out perfectly won't generally be a cause for a wipe

6. Purging of "Nether Power" is absolutely vital. Whenever a new mistress spawns out from her portal the boss will receive 10 stacks of a buff called "Nether Power." Each stack provides a 20% bonus to his spellpower and pretty quickly destroys both tanks and raiders alike. This buff needs to be offensively removed with a combination of spellsteal, purge, tranq shot, remove magic, and shield slam. 2 of our 4 attempts ended very quickly because we weren't aware of just how important Nether Power was.

7. Curses. I actually did a lot more removing of curses in the 10man and removed 0 curses during the 25man. Not quite sure why.

8. Spawns. If the range dps is high enough just have them handle taking down the mistress and infernals. If you want your healers to work a bit harder go ahead and let the melee go in and kill adds as well. The infernals also channel their hellfire and that can be interrupted.


That's really about all the nuianced things I can think of about the fight right now. I really should try and start making actual guides but for now I don't mind just putting in my own initial thoughts about fights after we complete them as they come out

P.S. I'm trying to get my hands on some Fraps to see if we can get some movie action jackson up in here!

Pointers on Beasts of Northrend

Tonight the guild brought these pesky creatures down on 25man normal mode. I'd say the first phase was pretty easy, 2nd phase was the hardest, and the final phase was around the same difficulty as the first.

For those of you who are grid users like myself here is a list of the debuffs I added to show up as center icons for the fight.

Phase 1:
Impale - tracks the DoT debuff on the tanks
Snobolled! - tracks who in the raid has a snobold vassal on their back

Phase 2:
Burning Bile - tracks the fire debuff that does around 3-4k damage every 2 seconds and is the only way to remove the Paralytic Toxin from players
Paralytic Toxin - tracks the poison debuff that slows the person then completely freezes them down and stops the person in their tracks. Also does damage.

Phase 3:
No debuffs to track

Phase 1 Tactics:
Have the range spread out if not simply to avoid the fires that are periodically shot onto random players. The melee takes a pretty big hit every once in a while but that's easily healed up before the next AoE attack on the melee. Most of the healing should be focused on the Tanks. At first on 25man we tried with 2 tanks but then found it easier to do with 3 tanks. Once a tank took 2 stacks of the impale debuff another tank would taunt it away. Make sure that all of the Range dps and even some quick melee dps have the following macroed and put onto their hotbar.

/tar snobold vassal

The boss also received a stacking buff that increased his damage by 20% per application. At first I thought this was due to too many snobolds being alive but now I think it has to do with either how long the fight has gone on or else how much HP the boss has left. Either way, we always got to 4 stacks or 80% increased damage and it wouldn't go any higher.

Phase 2:
Definitely the most difficult part of the encounter. There are 2 giant worms that come out and one will be mobile while the other will be stationary. Every minute or so the worms switch so the mobile and stationary ones switch. Acidmaw is the worm that deals primarily nature/poison damage and most importantly casts a debuff called "Paralytic Toxin" which can only be removed by having someone with the complementary debuff "Burning Bile" to burn it off. Besides that the range needs to remember to spread out to avoid everybody receiving the debuff and the tanks need to remember to kite the mobile worm around since since it will periodically poop out a green cloud that looks similar to Grobbulus' poison clouds.

Phase 3:
Pretty easy phase overall. The boss has 2 knockbacks. One is for people within 15 yards and it also interrupts the school of spells that was being cast during the time for 8 seconds (stay 15 yards away, duh). Then a big knockback that hits the entire raid, after which the boss will "charge" into one of the raid members and smash his head into the wall. After smashing his head the boss will do 1 of 2 things: enrage which must be tranq shotted by a hunter asap, or else knock himself out for ~15 seconds where he will take 100% more damage at the time. Another important ability of this boss is that he casts a frontal cone that is exactly like the freezing breath from the giants that are a part of Hodir trash. Just make sure your healers are spread out enough to cover this and it should be fine. One tip for the tank: have them move towards the center about 3-4 seconds before his "knockout" period because generally right after he comes to he'll whirlwind followed by a melee hit which K.O.ed quite a few of our tanks. But luckily the boss is tauntable so the tank can simply wait in position in the middle of the room and draw the boss to him that way.


All in all a pretty fun and not too challenging fight. I'm sure the heroic version will prove otherwise but I found it to be a rather enjoyable first encounter for the new 3.2 Colosseum.

My 3.2 Spec

Here is the spec I'll be using for raids from here on out since 3.2 came out today.

3.2 Raid Spec

Prior to today I've had the exact same spec except I've put one of the points from Empowering Touch into Gift of the Earthmother. Recently I've come to the decision that my haste is probably good enough that I can take a point out of GotE in order to boost my nourish by another 10% of my spellpower. My rationale is that if the amount of time reduced to cast rejuv and wild growth given by 1 point of GotE is less than my latency inherent in the game, I can probably live with shifting a point away from the cast time reduction and put it somewhere I can see visible effects.

Although the math gets a bit hairy, EJ forums has led me to believe that I'll need somewhere in the neighborhood of 541 haste in order to reach my 1 second GCD for rejuv with 4/5 GotE. I'm at 363 currently and if I find that there is a huge difference in my rejuv casting speed due to the loss of 1 point in GotE I may reconsider switching some other talents around in order to make sure I have my 1 sec GCD for rejuv and WG. If I do have to do some switching around my initial reaction would be to next try out healing with 4/5 Nature's Bounty in order to keep 2/2 Empowered Touch. Time will tell if I need to test that out as well but I'm fairly confident that I'll be happy with the spec I've first chosen.

Speed run through Uld10

The guild just can't seem to get that pesky Yogg down in 25man! We do 25mans on Tuesday and Wednesday nights and we also have two groups set up for 10mans that happen throughout the week. While only doing 25mans two nights per week definitely puts my raiding out of "hardcore" in my view we still seem to get quite a bit done in the time we do spend raiding. We've gotten to the point where we can beeline through the keepers and either get to or down Vezax in the first night and then spend the 2nd night either finishing up Vezax or just putting attempts in on Yogg. This has been happening for the past 3-4 weeks and it's just rather disheartening that we are having such trouble just getting past Phase 1 on yogg :(. Us officers are pretty sure the problem is that we just don't have enough people with experience on the Yogg fight.

So this week most of the people who generally run the afternoon Uld10 group waited until Thursday night so we could have a friendly little race against the second Uld10 group that goes at that time. We put 1000g at stake from the guildbank to be awarded to the first team to kill Yogg on that night. I wasn't sure if it could all be done in one night but thought it would be fun to give it a shot.

Amazingly enough my group was able to cruise through with only a few blips on Kologarn (lol) and Vezax before going and 1 shotting Yogg. We finished the instance so fast that after we downed Yogg we went back and swept up the optional bosses just for some S&G's. The combatlog says that our total time logged for the full clear was just over 5 hours but that doesn't take into account the full hour break we took so a few members could grab dinner, lower some gf aggro, etc.

So a 4 hour full clear for all of Ulduar 10, not too shabby in my mind and I think it definately reflects how Blizzard is trying to make new content accessible to more players while attempting to keep the "hardcore" raiders interested as well. While clearing the instance isn't difficult and can be done quite quickly if desired, there are plenty of hardmodes and bonus loot to be had for groups that want to slow it down and challenge themselves. During our race my group did 0 hardmodes, but generally, my 10man group is currently on 3 elder Freya so hopefully we'll be flying around on some rusted protos soon.

Ghostcrawler Q&A

I was perusing around MMO-champion.com and I saw that there was a community spotlight on Druids which is basically a question and answer between some dude and Ghostcrawler from the Blizzard staff. Some of the things that were said I found rather interesting.

We are at a little bit of a crossroads with the Tree of Life however. We are currently wondering if druids sacrifice too much just to be as good as a healer as everyone else.

followed by

I’m not saying we would just cut Tree of Life from the game. It’s been around awhile and for better or worse, it’s part of World of Warcraft now. However, we could see taking the druid in a direction where shifting was much more common and easy to do. Maybe you only go into tree form for certain spells but leave for other spells -- this didn’t work previously because of the high cost of shifting, but in the absence of power shifting, we’d love to get rid of the costs completely. Another way to go would be to make Tree of Life form a cooldown, more like Metamorphosis.

I had no idea Blizzard hated ToL so much. The only downside to the form is that it isn't aesthetically pleasing and I can't cast starfire while in Tree form. Besides that I personally don't see any problem with having a specific form to heal in. The ToL hating also seems weird to me since at the very beginning of the Q&A Ghostcrawler mentioned that the most unique thing about druids is our forms. While things aren't going to magically change overnight with Tree of Life it looks like Blizzard is cooking something up in the long haul. Estimated big ass change: 12-15 months.

Here is the most disappointing thing I saw from the Q&A

Tranquility is a fine spell. You can use it in situations where high amounts of damage are coming in on one group. Ultimately, we’d like to get away from the concept of groups within raids, but that’s not super high priority.

False. Just false. Tranquility is NOT a fine spell and it is NOT used in situations where high amounts of damage are coming in on one group. First, the high amounts of damage needs to be the group the druid is in. Second, Rejuv and Wild Growth and Swiftmend allow the druid to gauge who in their group to focus their heals on. Third, Tranquility can ONLY be used in conjunction with Barkskin, otherwise the channel will be reduced and spell will be wasted. Tranquility has so much potential to be good but in its current state it just sucks soooooooooo bad it makes my little tree branches quiver just thinking about it. The changes don't have to be mind blowing either, reduce the cooldown and make it party selectable. End of rant.

What didn't they talk about in their Q&A?
1. Blizzard's inability to make Lifebloom a balanced spell.
2. Nourish is the up and coming star of the Resto tree and with enough buffs (which appear to be 1-2 per major content patch) Druids will become the 4th and final direct healing healer.
3. Regrowth is back to the position of HoT placer on tanks to buff Nourish
4. No mention of Critting HoT's
5. No acknowledgment that we're extremely effective raid healers, perhaps too effective?

I'm sure there are other questions for Ghostcrawler that I'd like answered but morning brain isn't working right now. So a little surprise about ToL and yet another affirmation of disappointment for Tranquility is what i got out of this Q&A with Ghostcrawler about druids.

Here's the link if you want to take a look for yourself:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/18600870072-class-qa-series-druid.html

What's my job?

So most places I look there is the general consensus that Resto Druids are Raid healers, end of story. We have the arsenal of spells, the mobility to heal hard to reach players, and the springy branch arms to get the job done. Since we have the ability to mash rejuv and wild growth until our entire grid screen is a bright Christmas tree of HoTs we must absolutely suck at tank healing. I believe that statement is false. Although we don't have the same amount of life-saving cooldowns (Guardian Spirit, Pain Suppression, Bubble/Sacrifice, Aura Mastery, I probably left some out but I thought of those off the top of my head) as other classes I'd like to think that our HoTs are providing a reasonable buffer as well as multiplier for Nourish to allow us to effectively heal tanks. We do have Nature's Swiftness/Healing Touch but when a tank is being 1 shotted by a boss even the fastest fingers in the west can't NS/HT the tank to life.

I think in terms of versatility Druids are a close 2nd behind Priests. Those silly clothies have 2 specs to pick to heal from and a broader array of healing spells that just makes them a better jack-of-all-healers in my opinion. And while more and more I see that druids are being assigned to the raid healing position I'd like to believe it is because we're the best class for that job, not because we're the worst class for tank healing.

So here's my mission. Over the next few weeks/months I plan on doing some number crunching and theorycrafting on all things Resto in order to verify or challenge some of the assumptions about our healing. I think it will be a fun project and hopefully one I can archive to help all the little trees out there. Now where did my calculator go?

Too much druid love?

This'll be a short post on something I've found interesting lately. Over the past week or so I've reinstalled Warcraft 3 and gotten into playing a few games of DotA per day. I've generally avoided All Random games and whenever I have the chance I'll pick Furion or Enchantress as my heros of choice. While playing one game the realization dawned upon me that both of these characters are very close reslembances to WoW druids. Enchantress for example has a healing spell that summons little wisps and the tooltip button even looks like the Rejuvenation icon. Then my buddy Furion not only shoots green balls of Wrath as his default attack, he summons trees! The only other hero would be that bear dude to bring out the feral in me but such is life. Can there ever be too much druid love?

On Cheating.

While the main focus of this blog is dedicated to all things Resto druid, I'd like to chime in on the recent 72 hour ban of the members of Exodus who used an exploit to defeat Yogg Saron +0 keepers. Quite frankly I'm rather upset that blizzard decided to institute a ban on the members of Exodus and removed their achievement of world and server first for the kill. Exodus had all the same tools and skills as every other WoW player and they used those tools and skills in a creative way to defeat a boss that has been calculated to be otherwise mathematically impossible to defeat.

My main points of contention with blizzard are: The exploit used by Exodus was put into the game by Blizzard, Exodus did not have any tools or enhancements that weren't available to all World of Warcraft players, the result of a 72 hour ban is essentially saying that creativity will be punished.

What bothers me the most is that Blizzard decided to punish Exodus for blizzard's own mistake. If they didn't want the guardians aggro into the brain room and evade bug, then they should have programmed them not to go into the brain room and evade. Had this been caught on the PTR or some other testing area, the person who found the bug would not be punished but rather praised for finding such an ingenious exploit. Unfortunately, Blizzard send out the patch as it was with bugs and all and when the bug is used to defeat an encounter, the bug catchers are punished as a result.

Exodus didn't go into Yogg +0 with some godmode stick. Exodus spent hours upon hours wiping and learning and trying and mashing their heads against this wall of an encounter. And they were faced with a problem: how to handle the guardians that spawn in phase 3 and are unable to be killed since there is no Thorim to finish them off at 1%. I'm not a mind reader but the idea of leaving a shadow priest in the Brain room to cause healing threat from Vampiric Embrace and aggro the Guardians into the Brain room to evade bug probably was not the first strategy they attempted. And prior to the hotfix any guild could have done this, not just Exodus. So since they had no extra help or enhancements, the only reason behind the ban is entirely based on the creativity of the members of Exodus.

What is this 72hour ban supposed to mean? Is it supposed to be a warning or deterrent to other guilds to not think creatively and try different boss strategies? Is there supposed to be only one way to defeat an encounter and straying from the path will result in punishment from blizzard? Or is Spock just really upset that Krik was actually able to beat his unwinnable encounter? (Kirk actually cheated to win his scenario though because he did things not available to other Starfleet cadets by changing the scenario's programming). I'm not happy with the message Blizzard is apparently sending to top end progression guilds and their approach to new content. Trying strategies not sanctioned by Blizzard will be punished, and as an extra kicker Blizzard will throw in encounters that are completely unwinnable until they decide to nerf the encounter. No me gusta.

So in the end, don't quit your day job to play WoW for 50-60 hours per week and become one of the top raiders in the world, you might just be punished by the game you so desperately want to beat.

P.S. here's a link to the statement made by Exodus and the video of the shadow priest doing the exploit, my first thought on watching the video was "damn, that's a ton of guardians"
http://www.exo-guild.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1829
The statement turned into a little bit of a QQ fest and strangely morphed into a "pro-America, Europe sux" statement but whatev.

Healing Glyphs!

With the introduction of the latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, came a new system of spell enhancement, glyphs! Glyphs are made by scribes (or inscriptionists if you're in trade chat) and while they are relatively cheap to make, many times the scribe will markup the price quite a bit per glyph. Glyphs work to boost up certain aspects of individual spells. At level 80 each player has 3 major glyph slots and 3 minor glyph slots. Below is a list of glyphs pertaining to Resto druids and how useful I feel each glyph is.

Minor Glyphs:
None of the minor glyphs really boost any in combat resto spells so you can really pick and choose pretty much any three glyphs you want. Currently, I'm using Unburdened Rebirth, Thorns, and Dash.

Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth
Removing the need for a reagent means no more trips to the reagent vendor for your battle rez. Very nice minor glyph to pick up.

Glyph of the Wild
Reduced mana means less for you to regen. May come in handy after a battle rez and you want to buff someone up.

Glyph of Thorns
1 hour thorns is much nicer than 10min thorns, especially while doing dailies/quests and such.

Glyph of Dash
I personally love dash and use either kitty dash or cheetah form to travel around Dalaran.

Glyph of Aquatic form
For those of you who love splashing around in seal form this minor glyph would be pretty useful.

Major Glyphs:
I feel that the glyph selection for Resto druids is varied enough that a tree could choose any variety of major glyphs to fit his/her playstyle. Currently, I'm using Swiftmend, Nourish, and Wild Growth.

Glyph of Swiftmend
Keeping the HoT on my target after using Swiftmend has shown to be invaluable in numerous situations. Plus it opens up the ability to cast rejuvenation then swiftmend immediately and leave the HoT on the target to finish healing any amount of health not topped off in the following seconds. Basically, leaving HoT's on our targets is a good thing and this glyphs allows us to do that and cast swiftmend at the same time.

Glyph of Nourish
This glyph is essentially the same as the 4 piece Tier 7 Restoration set bonus. The set bonus and the glyph also stack with each other and with 4 HoT's rolling on a target (Regrowth, Rejuv, Lifebloom, Wild Growth) the amount of added healing is substantial. Even without the set bonus, an extra 6% healed per HoT is enough for me to use the glyph and see a noticeable difference while using nourish.

Glyph of Wild Growth
This is almost exclusively a raiding glyph since Heroics only have 5 people so your 6th wild growth will be wasted. That being said, the glyph is an AWESOME raiding glyph since druids are most times placed into the position of raid healing and there's always a pack of melee dps that needs a wild growth somewhere.

Glyph of Rejuvenation
I personally despise this glyph and think it's absolute garbage. But my feelings set aside there has been a heated community debate on the Elitist Jerks forums as to the effectiveness of this glyph, especially compared to the glyph of Nourish. Since we Druids are primarily designated as raid healers and Rejuvenation is generally our #1 top healing spell on healing meters it would make sense for the glyph of that spell to be quite effective. But from personal experience even when raid healing, only casting Wild growth and Rejuv on as many targets as possible with lots of raid damage (Iron council hard mode, mimron, etc.) the amount of bonus healing from the glyph of rejuv simply does not make up enough effective healing to be as viable as Nourish. It looks like I've got a subject for a future post here but I'll have to do some more number crunching. Moral of the story, I HATE this glyph.

Glyph of Regrowth
I used to use this glyph prior to 3.1 in place of my Nourish glyph. Unfortunately for Regrowth, this is no longer my primary direct healing spell of choice and has thus taken a backseat to Nourish. A good glyph but the spell itself needs to be buffed before I'd consider using this glyph again.

Glyph of Innervate
For beginning tree druids I'd highly recommend this glyph. The added mana gained by innervate and the ability to innervate someone else and receive mana return yourself is vital until your gear is able to keep you casting without going OOM for long periods of time. This glyph should be ditched once you have a sufficient amount of natural regen but that in no way makes this a bad glyph.

Glyph of Healing Touch
This is a niche glyph for a niche spec. I've tried the Healing Touch spec for both PvP and PvE and personally don't care for it. I think there are other ways to make the druid much more effective as a healer though there are those who think otherwise. Unless you're prepared to go balls out for Healing Touch, this isn't the glyph for you.

Glyph of Lifebloom
With the added cost of Lifebloom and the mana return given by it's bloom druids now are actually wanting the spell to end sooner which is the exact opposite of what this glyph does. The slight added HPS (heal per second) provided by this glyph is severely outweighed by the effectiveness of the bloom and mana returned by the bloom.

Glyph of Rebirth
I've heard horror stories of guilds forcing their druids to get this glyph so that the battle rezzes can be all the more effective. I really don't see the need to waste a major glyph slot for a glyph that is just as easily negated by a rejuv/swiftmend.

Healing Spells!

Over the course of this blog I plan on making writeups on different aspects of a Resto Druid. Today I'll delve into the world of the Resto Druid's abilities and give some of my insight as to their usefulness for keeping people alive. So here we go!

Healing Touch -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Moonglow (Balance)
Nature's Majesty (Balance)
Nature's Focus (Restoration)
Naturalist (Restoration)
Tranquil Spirit (Restoration)
Empowered Touch (Restoration)
Living Seed (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Healing Touch

This is our slow cast big heal. In days of old downranking this spell and selecting which one to use was the primary way to heal as a druid, but those days are no more. Due to being an extremely long cast and having relatively few talents which enhance the spell Healing Touch has taken a backseat to most other Restoration spells we have. Currently, I do not even have Healing Touch on my hotbar except as macroed with Nature's swiftness.
Note: there are those who have a hard time giving up this once staple spell for resto druids and go out of their way to spec specifically for Healing Touch and equip the glyph in order to make a viable healing spec. But spamming 1-1.5sec Healing Touches until your eyes bleed looks an awful lot like paladin healing and I don't think it utilizes a druid's greater healing potential.


Rejuvenation -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Genesis (Balance)
Moonglow (Balance)
Nature's Splendor (Balance)
Improved Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Empowered Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Swiftmend (Restoration)
Revitalize (Restoration)
Tree of Life (Restoration)
Gift of the Earthmother (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Rejuvenation

This is our primary Heal over Time (HoT) spell and in many raids can be the Resto Druid's #1 effective healing spell. The low cost and no cast time of this spell make it a wonderful heal to throw on as many raid members as possible when incoming raid damage is expected. Although the glyph is a bit lack luster, the spell truly shines on its own and should be extremely liberally.


Regrowth -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Genesis (Balance)
Moonglow (Balance)
Nature's Splendor (Balance)
Nature's Focus (Restoration)
Nature's Bounty (Restoration)
Swiftmend (Restoration)
Living Seed (Restoration)
Empowered Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Regrowth

This is a decent direct heal spell with an extremely long HoT attached after the direct heal. the HoT is nice to have on raid members in case an emergency Swiftmend is necessary to heal them up quickly. The HoT is also something you can toss onto a Tank to provide some extra healing buffer for the other healers if your assignment is something else like raid healing. Since 3.1 this spell has taken a backseat to nourish as my direct healing spell of choice mostly due to the slower cast time and the change Blizzard did in 3.1 that gave Nourish the same critical chance from Nature's Bounty as Regrowth. I generally keep this HoT up on tanks and use it on certain encounters like Mimron phase 2/4 and XT-002 in preparation of tantrum.

Swiftmend -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Swiftmend (Restoration, duh)
Glyph: Glyph of Swiftmend

This is a handy little heal that will consume a rejuvenation or regrowth HoT (but not if glyphed) and heal for a healthy chunk of life. I don't use the spell as much as I probably should but even still I use it very liberally in order to get a quick heal off.


Lifebloom -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Genesis (Balance)
Nature's Splendor (Balance)
Empowered Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Tree of Life (Restoration)
Gift of the Earthmother (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Lifebloom

An interesting spell that has been called the "reverse regrowth" with it's HoT component at the beginning followed by a large direct heal at the end. Blizzard has had a heck of a time trying to tweak this spell to how they want players to use it. In Burning Crusade resto druids used one spell and one spell only, Lifebloom, and they had it 3 stacked on as many tanks as they possibly could. With Wrath and especially the 3.1 patch, allowing the spell to "bloom" at the end has become a necessity due to the mana return and the high initial cost of the spell. While there are a multitude of ways to use lifebloom in its current state I use it on the tanks whenever I have a free Global Cooldown and my decision to let it bloom or not depends on my current mana situation and whether I think the bloom can be timed to occur when the tank takes a large amount of damage.


Nourish -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Moonglow (Balance)
Nature's Majesty (Balance)
Nature's Focus (Restoration)
Tranquil Spirit (Restoration)
Empowered Touch (Restoration, tentative change proposed on the 3.2 patch notes)
Nature's Bounty (Restoration)
Living Seed (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Nourish

Nourish and Wild Growth are the two latest additions to a Resto Druid's arsenal of healing spells. While Nourish was a bit lack luster with the release of Wrath, periodic buffs to the spell through talent changes and things like set bonuses and the glyph has turned it into quite a powerful direct heal. While some druids out there cry foul that a Druid is a HoT healer and that using nourish will make us into 1 button paladin healers, I think that those qq'ing druids should take a look at the mechanics of nourish and then they will hopefully realize that in order to make this spell as effective as it possibly can that lots of spells will have to be cast beforehand. I like this spell and am liking it more and more with each patch.


Wild Growth -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Wild Growth (Restoration, duh)
Genesis (Balance)
Empowered Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Tree of Life (Restoration)
Revitalize (Restoration)
Gift of the Earthmother (Restoration)
Glyph: Glyph of Wild Growth

Awesome spell, end of story.


Tranquility -
Talents directly related to the spell:
Nature's Focus (Restoration)
Tranquil Spirit (Restoration)
Improved Tranquility (Restoration)
Empowered Rejuvenation (Restoration)
Tree of Life (Restoration)
Glyph: None

Unfortunately this is just a bad spell in its current state. Long cooldown, only affects party (not raid) members, has a 30 instead of 40 yard range, and needs to be channeled are the reasons why this spell is rarely if ever used. In the world of speculation I would make the spell targetable on other raid parties, increase the range, and significantly lower the cooldown. The fact that it is channeled is unique but at least the other suggested changes would make me at least put the spell back on my hotbar.


P.S. This is my first attempt at using wowhead mouseover links so any input/advice as to whether they work and how to make using them easier (took about 45mins to link everything in) would be greatly appreciated.

The Amazing Race!

So the guild has run into a bit of a roadblock. Our 25mans have been extremely sketchy due to absences, lack of focus, and general badness. We raid two nights per week and for the past three to four weeks we'll have a really spectacular night one day then an absolutely awful night the next or vice versa. An example from last week should help illustrate: on our first night we spent four hours just to get to and down Auriaya. But then the next night we one shotted all the keepers and actually 2 shot General for a guild first kill on him! Yogg will take a while simply because I think not enough of our melee have experienced the fight in phase 2.

We also have two pretty solid 10man groups that go in either during the afternoons or on non-25man nights. The 10's also appear to be causing some drama because of who goes in which group even though the main person setting them up has pretty strictly followed each member's posted availibility times from our forums. My genreal feeling about the 10mans is that they should be giving more of our players experience with the bosses in Ulduar so they can be better prepared for the 25man. Because honestly, how many guild members are really going to wowwiki, boskillers, tankspot, etc. to read up on boss strats and abilities? Hell, some of them don't even show up with flasks and potions, or they mysteriously hearth back to dal saying that they need to repair (repair at entrance Ogre plz?).

Right now a lot of the drama from the 10's is that we have an "A" team that is leaving everybody else in the dust and nobody else gets to do 10's. What I think is making the "A" team so super is that the players in that group actually show up to their assigned raid times. Some weeks I'll be sitting in guild chat while the leader of the 2nd and sometimes 3rd raid are short a healer or tank which essentially stops them from taking off/continuing.

Ok end of ranting, here's my potential solution:
One week instead of a 25man on our two raid nights we do a Draft style competition! Invite everybody who is online at the raid time, divide the total number by 10, pick officers to be team captain/raid leaders, then one by one draft the players into 10mans to race to yogg. Oh and the prize for the team that finishes first could be a stack of flasks for each member.

Hopefully a draft like this would aleviate some of the drama and stress caused by our 10's for at least a week, and hopefully more of our melee can get some reps in the yogg phase 2 encounter. People picked towards the end may grumble about others being favorites but that's just going to have to be dealt with.

Good idea/Bad idea?

My Day in Azeroth

I spend a lot of time playing WoW. By a lot I mean A LOT. It seems to be one of the perks of being a lazy bum during summers and not going out and finding a job and whatnot. I have found that most of my mornings have now turned into a nice little routine that I'll share with you now.

1. I wake up and say goodbye to the soon to be Mrs. Sunkist as she scurries off to work, she's a much better go-getter than myself in the job department.
2. I read (and hopefully work post into the rotation) blogs for between one to two hours while I wake up a bit.
2.5. I also scan the AH during this time on an alt, multitasking ftw.
3. I do Argent Tournament dailies and Frenzyheart dailies on Sunkist
4. I spend the next few hours milling around doing either random things in game to help guildies or else logging off for a while to be a good house husband and get some errands done.
5. There's usually some sort of 10man raid in the afternoon whether it be Ulduar or a fun naxx clear.
6. Soon to be Mrs. Sunkist comes home and I log off to fix dinner and such.
7. If it's a Tuesday or Wednesday I'll get back on at 8pm to do 25man raids otherwise my WoW day generally ends at around 5:30-6.

I think I shall write a followup post to this one talking about time management and compromises between real life time and WoW time, especially concerning spending time with loved ones when there is so much WoWing to be done. But that will have to be tomorrow's post!

4 Haelz Scenario questions

Bellwether from 4 Haelz posted some hypothetical situations so I figured I'd post my response:

1. You've just started a guild. You're guild leader, and you have a decent sized pool of regular players. It's time to create officer positions. You can have six officers. What jobs would you give them, and what character traits would you find most desirable for those officers? Keep in mind, you can have less than six officers, that is just the problem's max range.

Answer: First I wish I had 10 positions available because I do enjoy a good "Class Leader" position to go with officers. As for actual jobs officers should take on, here's a list I've compiled:
- Raid Leadership
- Loot distribution (whether through Loot Council or DKP, with DKP the officer should be able to track each raid member's points via addon)
- Strong class leadership through the sharing of knowledge of their specific class and WoW general knowledge
- Website/Vent management if not done by the Guild leader
-Player recruitment
-Bank manager for the guild bank
- Sometimes raid morale can be boosted by an officer over vent or chat but this can really be done by anybody in the raid with a good sense of humor and timing.

As for an officer's characteristics, I think consistency, honesty, and a level head are three traits that make a good officer.
- You want an officer who is online when many of the guild members are online. That way the officer can answer questions and interact with the rest of the guild. What good is a person with a guild leadership position when they are never online?
- Honesty is an important quality to look for in a guild officer. All too often guild drama sparks from small miscommunications and turns into heated words that could all be stopped with an honest answer from the guild management. The biggest situations where this happens in my mind are loot distribution and roster setup for a raid. For loot, making sure everybody knows and understands the loot system before stepping foot inside the instance is key. Being up front with the guild by saying, "Hey, in order to progress as a guild we are going to gear out our tanks before anybody else, that means they will be the first to be receiving the tier tokens," this clears the air of any misconceptions dps or healers may have on being the first to get loot or whatnot and informs the raiders as well that the guild does have a plan on how to progress through the current content.
- Level Headedness is something I think is invaluable to a guild officer. People always have problems, and these problems will inevitably come to the attention of the guild management, how the officers deal with the problem will determine what quality of players stay with the guild and those that hop fence to greener pastures. Returning petty insults with petty comebacks is no way to act in a position of authority and it is on the guild leadership to be mature and think before they speak. Remember, it won't just be the complainer that sees and hears about the conversation if an officer decides to turn on the caps lock and make a complete fool of him/herself.

2. You're in a raiding guild. You're not a "new" member (you've been around a few months) but you're definitely not one of the senior ranking members. However, you notice that there is a job that could be filled. None of the officers are taking it on, but the GM has stated that he does not want to promote any more. Would you offer to do the job without the officer title? If yes, how would you discuss it with your GM? Would you be hoping for eventual promotion or would you be fine without the title and promotion? If the GM decided to simply pass off the job to an officer and not you, would you be okay with this?

Offering to do something for the guild and not asking for a reward is an excellent way to show your dedication to the guild and shows good character. As for approaching the GM, bring up the job as a suggestion and see if the GM/officers have discussed the situation in the past, if this job is something that the guild has previously tried and chosen not to continue then that should probably be the end of it, but if it's a novel idea then the GM will hopefully sign off and approve the idea. Hoping for a promotion is really all under the control of the player, some people aspire to fill leadership positions within a guild while others enjoy simply being able to raid and not have to worry about 24 other people's concerns. Personally, I enjoy the added responsibilities of guild leadership and though hoping for an eventual promotion is all well and good, throwing a fit without the title just isn't good etiquette. If the GM decides to pass off the job to an officer I'd be more than fine with this, this means that my idea is being implemented in the guild and this will hopefully make some part of the guild run better/smoother/etc. The only time I'd be irked is if I put a lot of work into the job with the guild leader's knowledge and then handing off my work to an officer, not cool.

3. You are the GM of a relatively successful progression raiding guild. Within your guild, you have a large amount of couples. One of your tanks and one of your dps are a couple. They will not raid without each other; however one of them is exceptional at their job, and the other learns slowly and does poorly. This situation is slowing your guild down and a lot of adjustment needs to be made for the one who does not do as well. Though you have other people who can fill the job of the person falling behind and their partner, they are inconsistent in showing and for the moment, you need them. What do you do?

This is a difficult situation and one my guild is currently facing but not quite as dire as this hypothetical appears. Here's a list of possible outcomes and what I think of them
1. Continue taking both the exceptional and the mediocre and hope to simply push through the content. By the looks of this hypothetical this has been tried and is not working for progression anymore so it is not a good option
2. Take neither the exceptional nor the mediocre. Many people have many reasons for playing WoW and it appears this couple chooses to always play together even if it is at the expense of the raid. This is a choice they've made and the guild can also make the choice of honoring that by filling their spots with other players.
3. Coach the mediocre. Having an officer, preferably of the same class, coach the poor player both during and outside of raids could potentially help the poor player perhaps improve and finally be able to carry their own weight. This strategy should be taken with caution however as not all players are open to criticism and can be sensitive. So starting with simple things like spec, gem selection and slowly tutoring the mediocre player could warm them up to the idea of having a "mentor" or something of the sort. This is where I think class leaders as officers works very well because the officer can immediately start coaching with the justification that it's his job to do so.
4. Compromise with the couple. If one partner is hindering progression but is able to do well once the strategy is figured out then it sounds like they would do just fine on farm nights. Ask and see if the couple is alright with only taking the exceptional player during progression nights and bringing the mediocre player on farming nights. Here we're forcing the couple to choose how they want to play the game and who they wish to play with. It sounds like the mediocre player knows they are holding back progression so they they should hopefully know that in order for the guild to progress that they either need to step it up or move out of the way.
5. Recruit more consistent players. There's a whole World of warcrafters out there, while finding exceptional players can sometimes feel rare they are out there. This selection goes along with the taking neither the exceptional nor the mediocre and should probably be done only if no compromise can be met and the couple is adamant in their goals to stick together at the expense of the guild's progression.

Thoughts on 3.2 Patch Notes 1.0

By the looks of it us Resto druids are being only slightly tweaked with no overwhelming changes.

Here are the highlights I found relevant to us Trees:

Mana Regeneration: All items that provide "X mana per five seconds" have had the amount of mana they regenerate increased by approximately 25%.

- This appears to be directed more at shaman and paladin healers since a majority of our Tree regeneration should be through Spirit regeneration. My guess is that this was added primarily to make up for the loss of mana regeneration Paladins are getting with their illumination nerf.


Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target's maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

- So instead of 1.25% mana over 5 seconds we get 1%. Not a huge deal but still a slight lowering of our replenish regen. Also notice that our Revitalize talent is not mentioned.


Innervate: Duration reduced to 10 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 3 minutes. This means each use of Innervate will give half as much mana as before, but it will be available twice as often.

-Eh take it or leave it. I'm handing out my innervate to mages on non-hardmode fights anyhoo. When I first saw this my initial reaction was remembering back in BT when I had to decide when to drink my first mana potion so my next one would be off cooldown at the appropriate time in the fight.


Lifebloom: The final heal that occurs when this spell blooms has been reduced by 20% on the base and on the spell power coefficient.

- Pretty significant nerf to the bloom though this appears to be a PvP nerf more than anything else. The only fight where I could reliably time my bloom to go off at a good time was Maexna and maybe Iron Council: Steelbreaker if I was lucky, the rest is generally overheal. Gone will be the days of seeing 18k lifebloom crits :(


Empowered Touch: Now also increases the amount of bonus healing effects for Nourish by 10/20%.

- This change caught my eye right away. Nourish has already taken Regrowth's spot as my primary direct heal and with another 20% bonus from spellpower I'm very excited to see how high these Nourish crits can go. Currently I'm wearing the glyph but not 4pc Tier 7 and fully HoTted peeps can receive crits between 10-11k.


Although this is all preliminary it appears that us Tree druids are simply being tweaked a little, nothing major. I think that is appropriate as I'm personally happy with the state of druid healing at the moment and I know there are other classes that have had issues for quite some time *cough shammy cough*.
Source: MMO-Champion

Mah Ulduar Progression

So I suppose I could indicate just how much and how far I've raided with the current content. I'm in a guild called Rabble, we raid 25man content 2 (perhaps soon 3) nights a week for ~4 hours per night. We also have 2 10man groups. Just this past week my 10man group cleared Yogg and last night the 25man group took down General Vezax and got in a few attempts at Yogg.

One thing I've come to realize is that in order to make this blog a little more interesting I will have to start taking a log more screen shots. I made the mistake of not even taking one after our General Kill but such is life.

Dual Spec

So with the release of patch 3.1 players at level 40 have been given the option to pay a 1 time fee of 1000 gold in order to have access to 2 talent specs that can be changed at almost any time. Needless to say as a druid I jumped at the chance to no longer pay 50g + glyphs per respec which was generally happening 4-5 times per week.

At first my second spec was a Feral tanking spec which I figured would be handy both for soloing quests/mobs/etc as well as tanking an occasional heroic or 10man instance.

After a few weeks with feral tank as my second spec I decided to swap some of those talents and glyphs around and turned it into a feral dps spec since tanks seemed to be in abundance and doing some high dps from time to time is rather fun.

At some point my bro Logsie and I decided to give arenas a shot for the new season and my second spec turned into a pvp resto spec which severely limited my soloing ability for quests/grinding and such since both specs were Restoration, but I kept this spec for a few weeks as well.

I'm now back to a PvE Resto main/Feral dps dual spec and I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet once a week and change the feral spec over to PvP Resto so arenas can happen then back to the Feral dps spec once we've finished our games.

All in all I'm very happy that blizzard has given us the ability to freely swap between two different talent specs. It has saved me a considerable amount of gold and my changing to PvP resto then back to feral once per week isn't nearly as big of a burden as respeccing prior to 3.1.

Tier 8 Resto 4 piece bonus

So I got the fourth piece to my Tier 8 resto set last night. I guess what I was hoping for was to have a tic of rejuv happen at the very beginning when I cast my rejuv but it seems that the instant heal is a completely independent spell. Here's the post I've put on my guild forums with the pertinent information.

Description: Your Rejuvenation spell also provides an instant heal for your target.

The amount of healing provided by this instant heal is NOT the same as your rejuvenation tics and is affected by few of the talents which Rejuvenation is affected by.

Formula: Healed Amount = 0.497(spellpower) + 373.3
This formula is based on a sample size of ~100 different spellpower combinations and includes the buffs provided by Tree of Life, Imp ToL, Imp MotW, Empowered Rejuvenation, and Master Shapeshifter. In total, the amount healed is roughly 3/4 of the amount healed by a rejuv tic.

Glyph of Rejuvenation: Does NOT proc from the instant heal.

The instant heal does not crit.

The following Talents do have an effect on the heal:
Imp MotW (albeit very minimally and only in ToL form)
Tree of Life form (the 6% healing bonus is taken into account for the heal)
Imp ToL (enhances ToL)
Master Shapeshifter (Only in ToL)
Empowered Rejuvenation (strangely this talent does have an effect on the heal)

The following Talents do not have an effect on the instant heal
Genesis
Nature's Splendor
Improved Rejuvenation
Gift of Nature (I find it is as surprising to see this talent here as it is seeing Emp Rejuv up above)

I'm pretty sure my formula is incorrect but the numbers have worked out for me for the viable amounts of spellpower.

All in all, uber bonus even though it's slightly less uber than I had first envisioned.

Slow Going

This whole blogging thing appears to be rather daunting. Luckily I've finished finals for the spring semester and after today will be nicely moved to my summer apartment. Hopefully then I can find some time to figure more of the ins and outs of this whole blog thing. I think I'll be using trying Wordpress so we'll see how that all works out.

As far as WoW goes, Ulduar 25 was a successful week as we downed Freya for the first time and are now moving on to Hodir and Thorim. No progress on the 10 man this week as the guild spread ourselves a bit thin and tried taking 4 separate groups when ideally we should only be taking 2-3 10 man groups.

The guild also recruited another tree druid which I'm exstatic about since currently I'm the only full time Resto druid in the guild and I think it'll be nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Sunkist

Enter the Sunkist

Where to begin?

I'm Sunkist, a Restoration Druid character in the World of Warcraft on the Ner'Zhul (US) server. I've been playing WoW on various characters since December of 2004, I've quit the game and been drawn back three or so times (it's usually a yearly cycle that happens around finals time.) I've decided to make this blog to perhaps write some useful musings to other tree druids out there but quite honestly I've got no idea what I'm doing at the moment. I'm not exactly sure how regularly I'll be posting or even exactly what type of information I'll be posting but we shall see.

My main inspiration behind starting a blog comes from Phaelia from www.resto4life.com.

So here goes my trial and error process. I've got some general blogging know-how to figure out and my goal for next post is to put up screen shots!