simplegifts

Sylly prepares to play a tree at the masquerade ball

 Hey, hey, everyone!  It’s been ages and ages since I’ve posted here.  I enjoyed the break for the most part, and was considering letting my account with the hosting company lapse and letting Rolling Hots roll right off into the sunset.  But there were many, many topics over these months that I considered posting about while I was away, and several that I sort of framed out in my head, as in, “this is how I *would* post about this if… you know… I were blogging.”  Then I got an email that told me my bank account was charged via the convenience of automatic renewal with the web hosting service I use and, without necessarily meaning or deciding to, I had purchased my blog for another year.  So I’ve had that rolling around in my head for a couple weeks.  And then the Cataclysm class previews started rolling out and I, like so many others, sat on the edge of my seat waiting for the druid preview to come out.  I was also asking myself in the back of my mind if I would be motivated to write about the changes.

I read all of the unfolding class previews with a great deal of interest and enjoyment.  Not only are some of the new abilities for other classes going to be fun for them, they are going to make playing alongside of them more fun and interesting.  Healing rain?  Camouflage?  Dark Intent?  Bring it, Baby, bring it!  So when the time came around for the druid preview, I was practically salivating with excitement.   Our preview was finally posted, I tore through the content of it, and, admittedly, my first reaction was a sinking heart.  No new toys to play with, a new talent that wasn’t explicated enough for us to do anything but guess how it worked, a mastery bonus that seemed questionable, and no healing in tree form.  I felt like someone stole my Easter Basket. 

As I am wont to do, I started reading voraciously around the internet on the topic.  I read expansively on the official forums, looking at the reactions of other players.  I read each of Ghostcrawlers responses on the topic.  I read all the Resto druid blogs I could get my hands on to see what bloggers were saying.  Although much of what I read out there completely backed up my own initial response, I have to admit, timidly, that my opinion began to change.  And while I saw some posters on forums feeling the way that I was starting to feel, I do not believe that I ran across a single blog post from a Resto Druid who wasn’t either lamenting or lambasting the decision to move tree form to a cooldown. 

 It was this silence in the blogosphere that finally led me back here to my own blog, which, by the way, was a mess.  I had dozens of comments that had never been approved, tons of spam comments that needed deleting.  My Word Press had not been updated to the newest version, nor had 14 of my plugins.  I had to reset passwords and update my Hostmonster account.  I then had to download and install WOW Model Viewer in order to monkey around in photoshop and create an image for the post.  In short, I decided to write a post and it took me just under 24 hours of work before I could write the first word.  Please remind me not to stay away so long. 

Want to know how I feel about the changes?  Pretty good, overall. 

Now wait.  Before you start lobbing rotten tomatoes at me, hear me out.  Am I bummed that I won’t get to heal in tree form all the time?  Well, sure I am.  I love being a tree.  I identify with being a tree.  I love that “mmmBLUARF! sound I make when I shapeshift into tree form, dancing as a tree, running as a tree, the casting animations of tree… all of it.  I like that being a tree makes me a special and unique snowflake in the world of WOW healers.  But, here’s the thing.  More than I like that, I like playing a healing class that has a very well defined role and the tools that it needs to do it well.  If tree form were essential to that, I’d jump on my sword for it.  But, as Ghostcrawler has pointed out, it is not. 

Although I started playing Warcraft during the Burning Crusade expansion and distinctly remember dinging 50 and dancing around happily in my newly acquired tree form on the floor where all the Dragonkin pulls are in Sunken Temple, I know now that tree form was not original to the game, but was  added in BC.  So there is that. 

But I also remember that tree form in BC was pretty damn gimped.  It had a snare effect that slowed down your movement speed, and, although it was a healing form that buffed some healing spells, it completely prohibited you from casting others.  In fact, you couldn’t automatically shift out of tree form to cast, say, Moonfire, or even Healing Touch!  You had to click on caster form, then cast, then click back on tree form.  There was a tradeoff for tree form.  There were compromises.  And Resto druids did not always use it.  It was a choice.

When WOLK came out, many of these restrictions were lifted.  We were able to cast our full healing arsenal in this form, making all of our spells benefit from the buff.  The snare was removed.  Somewhere along the line we also got the ability to autoshift out just to cast a damage spell.  And, because we could fully heal in this form, our healing and boss encounters were balanced around the assumption that we were in this form always.  The Tree of Life buff stopped functioning as a buff and started functioning as part of our healing composition.  It became a given.

Now, I don’t really agree too strongly with Blizzard’s rationale for moving Tree of Life to a cooldown from its current iteration.  They want to have one spec showing off the armor they design?  Ok, fine… pick one of four.   Or… wait… who cares?  Do YOU look at your own or your raidmates’ armor while healing?  I sure as hell don’t.  The argument that each of the druid forms unlocks some unique resource ability (i.e. rage for bears, energy for cats) but Tree Form doesn’t?  Bullshit.  Neither does Moonkin. 

 The argument that we have to give up too much to have access to damage dealing abilities, while other healing classes do not… well… that is true to an extent.  A Holy Priest doesn’t have to rotate between gimped damage spells and gimped healing spells if they feel like DPSing a mob at some point.  If they are bored and DPSing and someone takes a collosal hit, they can pop off a full strength heal without having to use an extra click to get into their healing form.  But that doesn’t hold as much water for me as the fact that our Crowd Control requires a shift out then back into tree form, because Crowd Control is something I actually use, believe it or not, and not just because I’m bored.  I Cyclone mind controlled raid mates on Deathwhisper; I occassionally root a blood beast on Saurfang.  And I don’t PVP.  I am certain that I would use this sort of ability, and damage spells, far more often if I did.  Although I’m usually up at the front of the line grumbling when some PVP issue accounts for changes in my own abilities, I do recognize that the game and specs have to function for both PVP and PVE players.  It’s not my favorite part of the game that this is so, but it is what it is.  So, in the end, this argument from Blizzard is, for me, stronger than the others.

But that argument is not compelling enough for me to feel good about the preview.  Certainly not.  So… what has changed my feeling?  These five six things:

1)  Because our healing is now balanced around us being in tree form, and all of our spells are also balanced around us being in tree form, but in Cataclysm they will not be and tree form will be moved to a cooldown ability, we ARE getting a new toy.  We’re getting a new cooldown.  As I have said, I love being a tree, but when it comes down to it, what I really love is healing a raid and doing it well.  If I have to give up some pixels for part of the time I’m healing in order to get a new mechanic that has the potential for awesomeness?  I’m sorry to say it, but /target pixels, /wave.  Of course, I’m very eager to see where they go with this change and what the cooldown looks like.  If it’s lackluster and not a good trade, I’ll be pissed.  But what if… just what if… it’s something really cool?  really fun?  really engaging?  really interesting in terms of theory crafting and game play?  If that’s the case, then it might just liven up our healing experience in unexpected and energizing ways.

2) GC did say that they would consider a minor glyph allowing people to keep in tree form for those who really just want the damn art, dammit!

3) HOTs benefiting from Crit and Haste? OMG yes PLEASE!  That change is just awesome!  I don’t know about you all but I tried Glyph of Rapid Rejuv and dropped it like a hot potato.  The shortened time between Rejuv ticks was not nearly enough of a benefit  for me when the Rejuvs fell off so fast that I was jumping around like an idiot to reapply them constantly.  But if those Rejuvs had ticked more often for the same duration of time?  Pure… freakin… win.  And Crit benefitting HOTs is just as tasty.  No longer will I feel like Crit is a waste if I’m not using a very specific sub set of my spells.  It will always be good.  Oh, so good.  Om nom nom.

4)  The Mastery Bonus, when I first read it, left me depressed.  Who cares if HOTs increase in effectiveness on low level targets?  Isn’t the point of HOTs to keep people topped off?  But then I remembered that I had read that one of the changes that they are moving toward in Cataclysm is larger health pools and that healers would no longer need to keep people topped off just to keep them alive.  I have a feeling that we are going to have to get used to seeing health meters somewhere between the two extremes of topped off and Holy Shit! that we are now accustomed to.  I believe that HOTs will function less as a means to keep people topped off, and more of a means of keeping incoming damage mitigated.  Now… I am almost exclusively assigned to raid healing in my guild’s 25 mans.  And I do a very good job of it.  All the druid healers in my guild do.  We’re insanely good as raid healers.  But… it makes me a little giddy to imagine how much of a benefit we would be with these larger health pools and more steady damage.  I don’t know about you, but a ridiculously large amount of my healing is wasted, either in overheals, or when other healers stomp my HOTs.  I think we may just have a very solid, and very fun healing niche in Cataclysm to look forward to, and the Mastery Bonus will help us to be strong not just as topper offers, but in a real healing crisis.

5) This may be too optimistic, as they have had trouble balancing our full arsenal of spells in the past, but it is exciting to think that, because it seems to be a goal not just for us but for all healing classes to make healing about interesting, engaging choices, they might actually fix our toolbox of spells to the point that they are all fun and interesting to use.  Ghostcrawler talked about using Lifebloom as a tank healing spell again, possibly allowing Healing Touch to renew a Lifebloom stack (!), and changing Tranquility to act more like Divine Hymn instead of just pouring healing only on the druid’s own group.  Those are interesting and exciting changes and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they play out in the Cataclysm world.

6) Because of the current balance around us always being in tree form, Tree of Life is currently wasted space in our talent tree.  My hope is that it will be removed, freeing up space for options that add utility and help us to improve our game.

If these things don’t motivate you past your sadness of losing tree form, I am sorry.  I am Sylly Sad Tree for you.  Even for myself I am sad about this change.  But I guess for me, while I love being a tree and being in tree form itself, the majority of the fun I find in the game is not in the art of my toon.  Don’t get me wrong, I do find tons of fun there.  But most of my fun comes from raiding, from pulling together with a group of friends and solving the steps of the puzzle and executing them perfectly in order to beat a boss, bring him down.  I LOVE the mechanics of healing on my druid.  The way our class meets the challenges of the game are nothing short of elegant.  It is a joy.  That is why, although I wouldn’t be happy about it, if I had to assume the guise of a naked male leper gnome in order to heal raids as a Restoraion Druid, I would.  And, though it makes me shudder now, I strongly suspect that, given time, I’d develop some affection for my pathetically ugly avatar.   So, in the end, I am sadly willing to trade out my constant tree form for flashes of tree laced with super awesome.

/ducks from incoming rotten tomatoes

So as you all may well know, I had been without a workable computer for a long time.  It limped toward complete uselessness valiantly, bless its little circuits. I imagine you also are aware that I got a new computer.  A really GOOD gaming computer.  There it is in the picture.  Doesn’t it gleam and shine?  I bet you thought I hadn’t been posting all week because I was having so much fun that I forgot all about blogging.  Well, God has a sense of humor. 

Let me start by giving you an idea of what WOW was like with the old computer.  A good example is hearthing to Dalaran.  As with you, when I used my hearthstone, my loading screen would come up.   Unlike you (I hope!), I could count on this loading screen staying up for anywhere from 2-8 minutes.  When the Inn in Dalaran would finally appear around me, there was about a 50/50 chance that I would see 3 red verticle lines over my chat window, which would mean that the game had crashed.  It would, however, stay on my screen indefinitely no matter how many times I used ctrl+alt+delete to close it.  More often than not I would have to hard reset my computer.  If, on the other hand, the verticle lines did not appear, I would see the interior of the inn, but likely none of the objects in the inn would be there yet, and certainly no NPCs or player toons.  I might see people’s pets.  It was best if I remembered to zoom my camera all the way in and look at the ground before stepping into ports or using my hearthstone.  Details would fill in around me every 30 seconds or so if I was lucky.  First shadows of things, followed by objects, NPCs, and eventually other players and finally myself.  If I were to move around before this process completed, the chance went up exponentially that my game would crash and I’d just have to go through it all again when I next logged on.  Even after all the graphics had eventually loaded, I could not just run through Dalaran.  I moved in fits and starts as lag froze me in place constantly. 

But I enjoyed playing enough that I put up with all of this with as good humor as I could muster.  It could be worse, I thought.  At least I was able to play.  The death knell began to strike when I started freezing up completely as soon as a raid boss would engage.  It took me so long to reboot my computer under the best of circumstances, and then to get back into the game, that I couldn’t possibly ask my raidmates to wait for me.  I stopped raiding.  When I couldn’t raid, it just seemed far less worth it to wait for the whole process of logging in, and I pretty much stopped playing.

Then, as I posted here, my husband and I decided that I should get a new computer.  Oh, heavenly day!  I went through much runaround, but eventually got a new system.  I got it home, hooked it up, posted here that I had it… and our internet crashed.  Seriously.  That was Thursday.  It’s been intermittent ever since.  Off much, much more than on.  I was able to raid once, although it cut off about half an hour before the end of the raid.  Since then I’ve been waiting in almost painful anticipation for things to get up and running so I could actually play.

In all fairness, I’ve gotten a lot done that would have taken me ages to get around to  if the internet had been up.  I’ve transferred all my photos, documents, and music to my new computer, and loaded and configured all of the software I need that doesn’t actually have to be downloaded.  My house is very clean.  We have a new puppy and I’ve spent lots of time with her.  Awww… let’s have a puppy picture or 2, shall we?

OMG!  Critted by cute!

Ahem!  returning to the topic at hand….  So… lots of good has come out of this in terms of what I’ve been able to accomplish without internet.  But let’s be honest.  Having this amazing new system and no internet has been a hugely agitating kind of awful.  I have been certain, on occasion, that I have heard snickering over my right shoulder.  I’ve whipped around to look, only to see no one there.  It’s God, of course, having a little fun at my expense.

But this morning the internet is working, and my provider assures me that this I can consider this to be a permanent situation.  I have a raid scheduled for tonight.  My house is very clean.  My puppy is curled up on my lap and, apparently, dreaming of chasing rabbits, paws a-twitching.  I have lots of ideas for posts that have gathered over the past week while I’ve been waiting until I had an internet connection to share them with you.  My computer is set up to the point that I can unplug the old one for good and let it pass on to wherever geriatric computers go when they leave this world.  All is coming right in the world here.  I think God laughed so hard at my agitation that he finally relented with a wink and a smile in my direction and fell into a happy nap.

And it’s my birthday today.  Happy birthday to me!

I think I kinda like this theme!  =)  What do you all think?  I obviously have to do some work to make the images the right size for the sidebars and to shuffle things around where I want them and yaddah, yaddah, yaddah… but I think I like the way this looks!  I’d miss the whole nature theme of the old blog, but change is not all bad.  You like?

don’t panic.

I found out that the hack on my site was in my theme.  Now, I could just get rid of all those theme files and reinstall the same theme, except it originally had some things I didn’t like going on, which were changed by a friend and I don’t know how to preserve the changes.  So I’m theme shopping.  Why this is nowhere near as fun as new computer shopping was I am sure you can guess.

Anywho, I’m taking some new looks out for a spin today, so just go with the flow.  I’ll settle on something I like soon.  =)

I’m going on vacation!  Woot!  While, from the picture above, I gather that Sylly will be leaving Northrend for somewhere with white sand and crystal blue seas, I myself will be headed home to Colorado to see my family for a week from August 19-26.  That’s where you come in.  I’m looking for some guest posts for Rolling Hots for the days when I am away.  If you are interested in blogging and want to give it a shot, if you’re a fan of the site and want to add to the conversation, if there is something out there in Azeroth that you are just burning to talk about… now’s your chance! 

Here’s the scoop.  If you are interested in having your post published here at Rolling Hots, please follow these instructions.  Submissions can be anywhere from one to 20 paragraphs in length.  Their topic must relevant in some way to druids, healing, or raiding.  You must send your submission to me no later than August 9, 2009.  Please copy the text of your post into an email and send it to me at Sylly@rollinghots.com.  (No email attachments, please).  Also please include your real name, the name you want me to use for you when publishing your post, and your address (you do not have to include your address if you do not want to be included in the drawing for a game card).  I will choose a winner randomly from all the people who submit blog posts and that person will receive from me a WOW gift card for one month play time.  Finally, I reserve the right to publish or not publish your submissions here on the blog.  You do not have to have your post published to be eligible to win the gift card.

I can’t wait to see what you have to say!  Aloha!

What may be meaningless to you is that there is a new version of WordPress, the platform upon which this blog is built.  What may be slightly less meaningless to you, since you’re here reading this blog, is that I upgraded to WP 2.8 this morning.  What may be still less meaningless to you is that it has wreaked havoc on many of my “widgets,” the tools built into my sidebar here for things like my blogroll, the category links, etc.  What may be meaningful to you, indeed, is that I’m working like a busy little bee to fix what this upgrade broke.  It’s like trying to play on patch day over here at Rolling Hots central.  I’m going bald in patches.  Hoping to get the site back to normal asap…

My friend and guildmate Kahleena has started up a new blog called Fel Deeds Awake that I totally recommend!  Kahleena is a Warlock in my guild, but the blog does not have a strictly warlock focus.  So far he’s done a great job looking at many different aspects of the game, doing a little ranting, a little raving, a little rockin’, a little rollin’.  Go on over and check him out.  Bet he’ll make you laugh!

Most of you probably missed the whole Replenishment debacle that was my last post before Mythology set me straight on my glaring math error.  To be honest, I have been very interested in the subject of that post, but today probably wasn’t the best day to write it.  I got the official word at work today that I’m laid off as of the end of the month.  Even though I knew it was coming, it sure has been a hard day.

Luckily, just minutes after I posted, several friends to this site stepped in and picked me up when I stumbled.  I’m so grateful. 

The whole thing has got me thinking.  I’m supposed to raid in… 24 minutes.  And I’m supposed to handle the healing lead.  I’ve been asked to do this consistently over the next couple of weeks to give our healing team a break from our frequent lead switch ups of late.  I’m wondering… should I step aside for tonight, knowing that it will add to the chaos we’ve had lately in terms of healing leads?  Should I go ahead and take the assignment knowing that my head is not in the game and that I’m likely to make a mistake?  Should I decline to raid at all?  I’m thinking about all of these things, and I just don’t know what I’m going to do…  It’s hard to think it through.  You see, my head is not in the game.

Meet Mr. Street, my new Strand Crawler pet.  If he should start giving out inside information about the game like his big brother Ghostcrawler, you all will be the first to know!  He surprised me by being in my quest rewards for the fishing daily this morning, and made me smile on a day when I’m finding smiles hard to come by.   I learned yesterday that there will be layoffs announced at my job next week.  I also learned that there is good reason to believe that my job is in the crosshairs.  This is why I didn’t post anything yesterday, the first weekday that’s gone by since I started this blog when I didn’t post.  I just didn’t have the heart.  Sorry about that.   I did, however, want to play WOW when I got home from a long, hard day of anxiety.  I raided with my guild and was so appreciative of the ability to forget for a short time about the looming threat in my life, which got me thinking about all of the ways that WOW improves my life.

 The Social Game

One of my favorite things about WOW is the social environment that is always available to me right at my fingertips.  I’ve always been a social animal, and generally have had a tight group of friends where ever I’ve lived that I would spend lots of time with and do lots of things with.  I moved to my current location 10 years ago to be with my husband, who is not nearly as social as I am.  He did not have a big group of friends for me to become a part of.  In addition, my commute is over an hour, so the people that I know from work don’t live close enough to socialize with.  I am gone long hours and am not in my home, my neighborhood, or my town very much and don’t have opportunities to network there and make friends.  So for me, I have a handful of very good, lifelong friends that are spread across many states, I have my family, I have my colleagues at work during office hours, and I have the social communities that I am a part of in WOW.  It allows me to really indulge in my chatty, happy nature, as well as to be a close confidante for some friends and be a meaningful part of their lives.  I posted before about how meaningful relationships in this MMORPG have been for me, and I cherish the friendships I have made.  Because of that, I have a much greater support system right now, both in the game and outside of it because of this blog and the friendships that have arisen from it, than I would have had otherwise.  I’m so grateful.

In addition, I believe that the fact that much of my social life is carried out from my computer at home is a great benefit to my family.  I’m a wife and mother, so it’s lovely that I’m not spending time away from my family when I’m socializing.  I’m able to respond to their needs, laugh and chat with them, and am always there if someone needs me.

I asked on Twitter and in the Blog Azeroth Chatroom today for some responses from others as to how the game improved their lives and many of their responses also fell into the social game category.  They mentioned having people to talk to and learning to deal with a variety of personalities in the most positive way possible as social benefits.  In addition, several people noted that WOW brings them closer to their friends and loved ones, either as a shared interest, or as a way of connecting over great distances.

The Escapism

I’m sure that any counselor worth their salt would probably tell me that escapism is no healthy way to get through life, that it is far better to face your problems head on and sort through them.  With this I would whole heartedly agree.  However, I think they might also concede that a limited amount of escaping from the weight of the world into a lighthearted, social activity that puts a smile on your face is not a bad thing.  Last night it was lovely for me to take a couple of hours out of the evening and leave all of my worry behind, instead focusing on my responsibilities as a healer.  The immersion was bliss.  I then went to bed, tossed and turned for several hours, and returned to my computer to do a couple of dailies.  While this was a more solitary activity, and my employment situation was never far from the top of my thoughts, it still gave me a way to do something that would improve an aspect of myself (albeit virtual) while thinking through the bigger picture of my life.  And then along came Mr. Street, Small Crab of Awesomeness, and I actually laughed with delight.  I hadn’t even known there WAS a mini pet as a possible reward for the fishing daily, so I was thrilled that he came along to brighten my day. 

I am not alone in feeling this way.  In my informal survey of opinions on this topic, there were a handful of people who brought up WOW as a form of stress release, as a temporary shelter from the prevailing winds of real life.  While I think this aspect of the experience can be unhealthy if allowed to become too pervasive or prevalent, I believe that a little bit of sunshine is good for us all.

Skillz

I can’t believe I just spelled something with a Z.  The English Ph.D. student in me just died a little.  But it came out “Skillz,” so “skillz” will remain.  Ok, so it’s easy to recognize that as we continue to play our in-game skills increase, or we reroll to a facerolling class (ha ha!  sorry, couldn’t resist!).  But in my own musing on this question, as well as in the responses of others to my question it has become clear that many of the skills that are improved by playing WOW are transferrable to real life.  Among them are improved writing and language skills, math skills, analytic skills, strategy skills, eye-hand coordination skills, social skills, organizational skills, time management skills… the list is long.  Some of these skill sets will receive greater benefit than others depending upon the individual player, but all of them will almost certainly benefit to some degree.

I don’t have anywhere awesome to go to wrap up this post.  I’ve got no big conclusion lurking in the wings to tie it all together in some meaningful and satisfying bow.  I’m not really together enough in my head to get there as a writer at the moment.  So I guess I’ll close by saying that for WOW and the goodness it brings to my life, I am right now ever so grateful.