Hi Ate Us

Hey everyone, I got some pics up on the Pictures page of some new scenery in Kalimdor. Eastern Kingdoms to come soon as soon as I finish my tour of the area and sort through them all.

Some news. I’m going to be taking a short hiatus from the blog until Cataclysm to get things sorted out with my guild and the future of raiding. I’ll still be playing a bit so if you want to hop over to SWC and say hey! But yeah, I just need some time to get some things together for Cataclysm.

Anyway, I will be back in about a week to ride strong into Cataclysm with you all.

Ten more days!

I am renewed!

The past few days have been really bittersweet. Trying to enjoy the new features and not let a cold bring me down, fun times. Anyway, I got a lot of sleep today and I feel refreshed and ready to share my experiences with The Shattering.

The most exciting change to gameplay, for me, was the much-needed change to the resto talent tree. Malfurion’s Gift no longer requires you to spend 2 points in a dps talent, making it more easily accessed. Also, there has been a 5/10 second increased duration to ToL on the Natural Shapeshifter talent. Efflorescence is still recovering from its 6+ players healing nerf, but in time should work out just fine. I will be updating my Spec page to reflect these changes accordingly. I may also try to get in a projected spec for lvl 85 in there, but without experiencing lvl 85 content, I won’t know what works for me talent-wise.

I’ve only just begun to explore all of the new Azeroth, the places I did get to see were absolutely stunning though. Garrosh has brought culture into the New Orgrimmar with a slums for the new Goblins, a valley for the Trolls, and a Valley for the noble Tauren. Each little area has its own Bank, Inn, AH, and select class trainers, providing a little piece of home for these races. Blood Elves and the Forsaken did not get such treatment but are welcome in the city regardless.

I was very excited to see that Tanaris’ beachline has moved closer to Gadgetzan. No more running all the way out to Steamwheedle port for the good beach sand. Gadgetzan’s prime source of income, Noggenfogger Elixir, no longer has a quest requirement. It is sold freely by Marin Noggenfogger’s lovely wife, Sprinkle Noggenfogger. I am very happy about this change because now I can go get noggenfogger on all of my toons without having to do the quests all over again. Hurray!

New cooking and fishing dailies have opened up in Orgrimmar, and Stormwind I’m sure. These dailies are a bit different, upon completion you’re actually awarded skill ups in cooking/fishing. Some quests even give you 2 points, neato! They seem to keep in the bounds of Orgrimmar, unlike the Dalaran dailies that would send you to Borean Tundra for a certain fish, which is very convenient. A new cooking award has been implemented for players to buy the level 85 food recipes as well as a fishing lure. The award has a limit of 10 which isn’t too bad considering the amount of new recipes isn’t too extensive. It will still, however, take you a while to get them all if you so desire.

One of the first things I went and did were the pet quests. Four new pets were included, all of which are adorable and somewhat easy to obtain. Some more difficult than others such as the Singing Sunflower, which is obtainable via mini-game quest in Hillsbrad Foothills. The game, as you may already know, is based off the popular pop cap game Plants vs. Zombies (Peacebloom vs. Ghouls). Of the four new pets, I would say that Withers the most easily obtained, for Horde players. The other 2 pets introduced are Mr. Grubbs and Tiny Flamefly. All of them are just adorable.

I was very excited to see a Bilgewater Cartel champion reputation tabard. After the hotfix, allowing reputation from LK dungeons, some friends and I started to chain run random dungeons. The 10% reputation boost from the Spirit of Sharing holiday buff made our grind less time-consuming. With potty and re-buff breaks, we managed to knock out neutral-exalted in about 4.5 hours. It was a tough grind but totally worth if for the Goblin Trikes.

I’m still sorting though a few of my screenshots, but I have a few ready for share. It’s just some pictures of Orgrimmar in different locations. Enjoy.

This one, I just found amusing. So typical of a goblin to have one of these.

More pictures to come as soon as I shuffle through them all. They will be located on the pictures page. If you follow my twitter, the update will be on there, as well as in a post. The same with the updated Spec.

How were your first few days of The Shattering? What changes do you like/dislike most?

/cast Abolish Cold on Niq

I’m so sorry I hadn’t posted anything in a few days. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather and trying to maintain my spirits for the game and the guild was all but impossible. I have, through many glasses of orange juice and bowls of soup, gotten my strength back and can distribute my attention to all areas of my life that need them. Most importantly, to my readers.

This is just an “I’m still alive” post. I need to get some sleep tonight so that I can wake up early and start sharing with you the past few days. Not so much the sickly part, more so the fun parts…between trips to the kitchen for more OJ and soup. I still have quite a few pictures to take and new areas to explore, but I can still tell you about the few adventures I did have.

So don’t panic, I’m still here. When I wake up tomorrow, I should be at full capacity and be able to crank out the news and excitement of the past few days.

How have you enjoyed the past few days of The Shattering?

The Shattering

has been delayed. Again.

According to this post, server maintenance will be extended further to 5:00 PST. 7:00 My time (CST) and even later for you poor east coasters, I used to live there I know the pain. Although this is a bit depressing, yet unsurprising, it’s the perfect opportunity to post about something I’ve wanted to for a while.

What to do on big patch days? There are a lot of different activities that people can do to pass the time of extended maintenance. Such things might include sleeping (my favorite), watching a movie, playing a different game. I have used any of those options as time-killers.

When patch 4.0.1 hit, a few people from my guild got on vent and just talked about the changes and what their plans were. I imagine they’re doing the same today, but I have a splitting headache and will not be joining them until later. Anyway, I have asked around in guild before what people’s favorite patch day activity is and I’d like to share with you some of their methods.

• Sleep
• Play a different game (Flash games/FPS/SC2)
• Chat with friends
• Catch up on blogs
• Doodle
• Spend time with the family
• Go outside

The list goes on and on. One thing I thought was really clever in my old guild was, we’d play a forum game. It was just a fun little time passer that got people to the guild site for more than just reviewing apps and signing up for raids. The game is fairly simple, but fun and distracting.

The person who starts the game posts a single word related to WoW (Malfurion). The next person posts a single word who’s first letter is the same as the second letter of the person before them’s post (Altiesh). This process continues until people give up or the realms come back. There isn’t really a winner, it’s just a great time-killer that gets guildies to bond while off the game. A typical forum thread would look something like this:

1. Malfurion
2. Atiesh
3. Turalyon
4. Undercity
5. Netherstorm
6. Exodar
7. Xabraxxis

There are so many possibilities. You can even change the rules a bit, maybe use the third letter or last letter. I think forum games like this really bring people together and get the juices flowing. Try this game with your guild while the realms are down.

What do you do to pass the time on patch day? Do you and your guild also play forums games? Are you STOKED for the SHATTERING?

Patch 4.0h my god.3a

That’s right, it’s this week. The Shattering of Azeroth will go live on servers this week!!

Here’s a look at the changes for druids. I’ve only put up the general and Restoration-specific changes. You can find a full list of changes, for all classes and specs, here.

Druid:

• Bear Form now provides 10% bonus health, down from 20%.
• Nourish no longer consumes Omen of Clarity.
• Rejuvenation has had its mana cost increased by 30%.
• Soothe now has a 1.5-second cast time.
• Swipe (Cat Form) can now be used even if the druid does not have a primary target selected.
• Thorns: beginner tooltip revised to no longer imply the spell could be kept up at all times. In addition, Thorns damage has been reduced by 60%.

Restoration

• Empowered Touch now procs from Healing Touch as well as Nourish.
• Heart of the Wild: the Bear Form Stamina bonus from this talent is now 2/4/6%, down from 3/7/10%.
• Malfurion’s Gift no longer has Fury of Stormrage as a prerequisite talent.
• Natural Shapeshifter now also increases Tree of Life duration by 5/10 seconds.
• Revitalize is now a 2-point talent, down from 3. It provides a 20% chance to return 1/2% of the druid’s total mana on periodic heals from Lifebloom or Rejuvenation. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds.
• Swift Rejuvenation is now a 1-point talent, down from 2. The global cooldown reduction this talent provides to Rejuvenation remains 0.5 seconds.
• Symbiosis: heal-over-time spells (Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom) can no longer benefit from this Mastery merely by refreshing themselves. A different heal-over-time spell must be present.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Healing Touch now reduces the cooldown on Nature’s Swiftness by 10 seconds after using Healing Touch, up from 5 seconds.
• Glyph of the Treant (new) allows druids to keep the original treant Tree of Life look… if they must. Must they?

Bug Fixes

• Blood in the Water now refreshes Rip to the correct value.
• Flight Form now properly appears in the trainer window before Expert Riding is learned.

Taking Nourish off the table for OoC procs makes sense, the spell costs virtually no mana anyway so it’s not a very disappointing change at this point. Mana cost increase for Rejuvenation means no more carpet bombing the raid. This, to me, is a much welcomed change. For so long druid healing was very brainless and provoked little to no thought, you could blindly 5×1 the raid and top the meters on Festergut.

Empowered touch already affected your Healing Touch, as far as providing bonus healing, but now the actual effect of refreshing a Lifebloom will proc off HT instead of Nourish alone. Another good change, this should make tank healing much easier since you can mash the big heal if you need to instead of risking the small heal.

Malfurion’s gift is not so worthless now since you don’t have to waste 2 points in a talent that provides 0 healing benefit. Thank you Blizzard!

Natural Shapeshifter makes ToL last longer which is nice. Revitalize is now a 2-point talent, not that people didn’t only give it 2 points anyway. Now I can sleep easy at night knowing I don’t have an incomplete talent. (Huge pet peeve of mine). I always though Swift Rejuvenation should be a 1-point talent anyway. Again, thank you Blizzard!

Mastery: Symbiosis. I’m a little unclear as to how the change to this will work. It says that these spells will not be affected by the bonus by refreshing themselves. I would think that would mean refreshing themselves via talents/procs/set bonus/etc. Such as the LB refresh from Empowered Touch or the Regrowth refresh from the glyph or Rejuv from t10 4-set bonus. In theory that means that you could cast Rejuvenation and then recast it yourself and the second Rejuvenation will benefit, but you have to manually cast the spell. I will do some reading a bit later and clarify if need be.

HT Glyphs is great, 10 second reduction > 5 second reduction. Hopefully there won’t be too much need for the ol’ “Oh sh*t NS+HT” macro, but to have it on hand more often will provide come comfort to worry wart healers like me. I didn’t quote this one, but the AoE heal changes for each class (Efflorescence, Healing Raid, Holy Radiance, Holy Word: Sanctuary) has been clarified. The amount of healing that these spells put out will diminish when they heal more than 6 people at a time. This may or may not work similar to the AoE damage spells’ 10-enemy “cap” where damage simply starts to divide if it affects more than 10 enemies. I would hope that it’s a heal divide and not a total diminish. *shrugs shoulders*

Now for the most important and highly anticipated part of 4.0.3a….. New Tree of Life models!!!!!! This is great because we can finally get that change of scenery (literally). I know not everyone is excited about these new forms so Blizzard has been kind enough to give us a minor glyph that will allow you to keep the old Treant model for Tree of Life. I’m still very much on the fence about this one. I’ve only been playing my druid for about a year or so and haven’t has as much time to “get bored” with the old model. Especially since the CD-based change came into effect and I get to see my epiq armor most of the time instead. The new models look a little strange, but overall clean and Ancient-like.

———————————————————————————————————————————-

I guess this big Shattering thing that’s supposed to happen is worth mentioning. It’s not a big deal just CHANGING THE FACE OF AZEROTH FOREVER, but nothing to fret.

I’m actually really excited about this. One of the things that’s kept me from leveling more alts was the fact that I had done most of those quests many times before and seen the same zones time and time again. I’ve actually considered leveling a second druid (to be feral spec) through the new-old world. It’s not something I’ll be able to do right away since leveling/gearing/raiding and other responsibilities will be taking up most of my time, but it’s a nice project for when things slow down a bit.

The only question now is will I set my hearth to Undercity like my little group of friends, or do I follow the crowd and chill in the new Orgrimmar? Still to be determined. I’ll probably stick to Org since aimlessly flying is my favorite thing to do and Org has more air space. The downside is I’ll have to be near the poop-monster known as Garrosh, seriously, he looks like doodey.

What do you think of the Patch 4.0.3a changes? Will you level an alt in new Azeroth? Where will your new home location be?

Shared Topic: Your Autoblogography

I’ve been playing WoW for almost 6 years now, not quite a day one veteran. This game has been my outlet and escape. It got me though the toughest 4 years of pre-adult life…high school, and continues to be my support in adult life. My passion for WoW was never really something I could share with anyone but my guildmates. Family wasn’t interested and none of my RL friends played so I was limited to who I could talk to about my fun in the game. Or so I thought.

I started following a few blogs when my druid had just turned 80 and I was ready to start gearing him up and raiding. Some friends in my guild referred me to a a few druid-related blogs they knew about and from there I was hooked. I enjoyed reading up on the opinions and experiences that other resto druids have had about WoW. It didn’t take long to discover that there were more than just 4-5 druid blogs in existence. There was a whole global community, players from all around the globe sharing their thoughts on the class and the game itself.

What pushed me to start blogging? I would have to say it was mostly peer pressure, not the bad kind. A lot of people would tell me to “blog about it” when I would go off on druid rants and how I feel about this change and x y z. I’m sure they were really just looking to shut me up, but they had a good idea. Pre-apocalypse seemed like the best time to start, so I made The Grove shortly after Patch 4.0.1 went live.

What challenges have I faced? The biggest hurdle to jump, for me, is getting The Grove noticed. I’m still struggling with this part, but many people have been so kind as to put me on their blogroll and some have even made mentions of my blog in their posts. Another thing I’m struggling with at the moment is content. The game has really slowed down and my guild has halted all raiding until the expansion so the amount of fun and activity is really low. As well, there isn’t a whole lot that’s new at this point. Once cataclysm hits, things will get very busy and I’ll have much more to share. Right now, I just don’t have much in my arsenal to keep it fresh until the expansion.

What are my favorite posts and why? I love posts about things gone wrong. I’ve seen my share of blunders and even been the cause of them. I’ll never forget my first night with Paradigm (my current guild) and we were at LK. They had already had him on farm for months, but this was my first taste of him. Phase 3 hit and I dropped a defile right in the middle of the raid. I thought it was a /gkick for sure, but people were rather jovial about it and didn’t give me too much crap since I was new. It was just the silliness that made it laughable a few weeks later. Things like that just really make me smile because it lets me know that everyone else has noob moments too.

How has blogging affected my gaming? I haven’t really felt the affects so far of being a gamer and a blogger. A few of my friends have come to me with ideas or questions about The Grove. Other than providing some conversation topics, there hasn’t been much else. I think it would be nice to, eventually, be known for the blog on my server.

So far things have been wonderful. Everybody has been so kind as to help me get established in the large community of WoW bloggers. As far as the future is concerned, I really hope that one day my blog is a successful and popular as those that have been around for years. I have a lot of plans and ideas floating in my head right now to make the blog better in cataclysm, but it’s still a few weeks away. I just hope everyone thinks they’re good ideas.

There you have it, the Autoblogography for Niq of The Grove.