Patch 3.3 hit the PTR today!  I’m pretty stoked about this development, as I’m sure many of you are.  I’ve been downloading the patch for the last hour or so, and it’s nearing completion.  I will probably take a premade character for a spin on the PTR this time around as a) I’ve never done that before, and b) I’m just getting started on T9 gear on Sylly, so I’d really like to have a fully geared toon to try out Icecrown.  But maybe I’ll bring Sylly over too, let her have a look around.  Wouldn’t want her to get jealous now, would we?  As things are just getting rolling for this patch, I’m sure there is much more information to come, but the web was aflurry with news today.  In everything I saw, there was quite a bit to be excited and happy about, despite the bop of a nerf bat on our Rejuvenation. 

So let’s just take a quick look at the bad news first, lest the post end on a down note which wouldn’t match my mood about this patch business at all.  Rejuvenation at max level is losing a tic, returning it to a 12 second spell from a 15 second spell (15 down from 18 if talented into Nature’s Splendor).  Will this hurt us?  Well, sure.  It will.  Some.  When we’re all out healing AOE madness balls to the wall and throwing up Rejuv on every breathing raidmate within our casting radius, we’ll come up 3 raid members short before we have to start throwing them up again (assuming a 1 second global cooldown).  If we’re not healing everyone, we’ll still have 3 seconds less to be doing other things in between our Rejuvenations.  The spell will get a 20% nerf, assuming that every tic was actually doing healing and that final tic wasn’t going to be overhealed.  So, yes.  It hurts.  But, in the end, I’m not overly concerned about this change at this point.  Is there anyone out there who’s going to disagree that Rejuvenation had gotten a little big for its britches?  The best Druids in my guild stand far and away above the other healing classes in terms of total healing in the vast majority of Ulduar encounters, and the majority of TOC as well.  In addition, we have no idea what the boss fights in Icecrown are going to look like.  It’s quite possible that laying down a thick blanket of Rejuve over the entire raid is going to be pointless there, as it’s had less application in TOC than in Ulduar.  I’ll wait and see before I cry foul.  Also, the devs watch the PTRs closely.  We’ve seen nerfs melt away there before patches go live in the past.  If the nerf is too strong, there’s a good chance they’ll adjust accordingly.  So… easy goes it out there.  Let’s just keep ourselves rooted and see what happens with this.

In terms of what there is to be excited for, topping my list with a bullet is Icecrown!  Woohoo!  I am so excited about this upcoming raid that I’m practically doing a happy dance in my chair.  I never made it through TK or Sunwell in B.C.  There just wasn’t enough time.  I never bought the game until halfway through that expansion, so by the time I really hit my stride raiding and was in a guild that was starting on T6, WOLK was released and we were all hell bent for level 80.  Because of this, I never got to experience the full raiding progression to end game.  Not in the pre B.C. level 60 raiding, and not in B.C.  I had no idea how exciting it was to have the true end game set in my sights.  After witnessing Arthas whining and bitching all over the damn place these many months (could there BE a bigger drama queen?!?), I am looking forward gleefully to breaking out the whoopass and smacking QQ Boy down!  Woohoo!

Apart from these delusions of grandeur on my part, I’m also really energized about the upcoming raid just because of the somewhat anticlimactic experience of TOC.  One of the things I always really savored about raiding is seeing the amazing artwork and environments of the raiding instances.  I remember being blown away by Kara when I first went there.  What a magnificent stage Blizzard set there for adventurers!  And traveling through Ulduar is just a sensory buffet of wonder for me.  TOC?  Hell, the whole raid (save the final encounter) takes place in the same single room as an entire 5 man instance.  It’s not a long raid, it’s not a challenging raid, it’s not an interesting raid.  I’m so looking forward to having that “holy shit!” experience that I have had in other raid instances once again, having to battle through unfolding terain and gaining a sense of forward momentum toward ever more challenging bosses. 

Another innovation that I am anticipating is Blizzard’s introduction of daily (weekly?) raid quests for Emblems of Frost, the newest tier of emblem to be released with 3.3.  The quests range through WOLK raiding content, which will provide many guilds with additional incentive to run old content and allow people to gear up new raiding toons or alts in a way that is otherwise more difficult to arrange.  It will allow people just entering that content to gear up more easily and make them more quickly viable to raid at the higher tiers of content.  I know there are those out there who think that moves like this on Blizzard’s part are dumbing the game down, taking away the relevance of earning a certain level of gear or accomplishment.  I disagree.  The harder it is to progress, the more guilds are limited in choices in terms of members, the more likely it is for people to quit playing the game because they feel blocked out from the best the game has to offer, the less viable the game becomes as an ongoing enterprise.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that anyone who gets gear by the easiest imaginable route will be a viable raider.  But good guilds have vetting processes, application periods, ways of weeding out the players who don’t make the grade.  But just because someone came late to the ball game for some reason doesn’t mean they won’t be a talented player.  Hopefully this new system of raid related dailies will present more opportunities for a wide variety of players to experience more content and earn gear that will open up more of the game, and will bring more talented players into the raiding pool.

So, Icecrown?  Bring it, Baby!  Someone go run out and tell Arthas he is NOT prepared… mwahahahaha!!!!

One of the responsibilities that raiders take on is to raise their reputation with various factions in order to obtain items or enchants from them that will buff their performance.  Some of them also offer just cool perks, like achievements and titles, that you might be interested in picking up.  However, it is often hard to find out or remember what factions offer reputation rewards that are beneficial for you as you go through the game.  I thought I’d give just a quick run through of the reputations that offer rewards worth farming in Wrath of the Lich King for Restos.

Cenarion Circle - This faction makes its home in the druid city of Moonglade, but most of the ways to gain reputation with them are in Silithus.  The main reason to farm reputation with them at this point in the game is to get the title of Guardian of Cenarius, which is the coolest title ever for druids to have!

Cenarion Expedition is the other reputation you will need to grind to exalted in order to become Guardian of Cenarius.  Rep is most easily obtained for this faction by running the instances in Zangarmarsh.

Argent Crusade rep can be gotten from doing a number of daily quests in Zul’Drak and Dragonblight, as well as from doing champion level quests in the Argent Tournament.  You might consider raising rep with this faction if you are gearing up and needing a ring upgrade, as the the Signet of Hopeful Light becomes available once you reach exalted.  you can equip a Argent Crusade Tabard while running level 80 instances to gain rep with this faction.

The Kirin Tor reputation can be gained by doing the cooking or jewelworking dailies in Dalaran, by doing quests in Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Coldarra, and by doing the heroic instance dailies.  In addition, you can equip a Kirin Tor tabard while running level 80 instances to gain rep with this faction.  For someone with revered reputation they offer the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, a head slot enchant that serves up crit and spell power, two stats that benefit Restos.  Also of possible interest is the Ghostflicker Waistband, available at exalted, which has Int, crit, spell power, and a blue socket, or the Robes of Crackling Flame, offering Int, haste, spell power, and a generous 26 mp5.  Those last two items aren’t specifically tailored to resto, but might be good choices regardless if they offer stats that you are trying to build for one reason or another.

The Knights of the Ebon Blade don’t offer a lot for Restos, but you might be interested in the Belt of Dark Mending, which has Int, Haste, and Spell Power on it for the exalted with this faction.  Reputation with them is gained largely through daily quests in Icecrown, and by wearing their tabard in level 80 dungeons.

The Sons of Hodir offer the best shoulder enchants in the game, so you really should focus on building rep with them.  There is a long, epic quest chain to open up rep with them, starting with They Took Our Men in K3.    Eventually you will open up 6 daily quests with this faction, and can also turn in Everfrost Chips or Relics of Ulduar for more reputation.  The payoff is the Greater Inscription of the Crag, available at exalted, which adds spell power and mp5 to your shoulders.

The Wyrmrest Accord offers another head slot enchant at revered, the  Arcanum of Blissful Mending, this time offering spell power and mp5.  In addition, you can pick up the Sandals of Crimson Fury from them at exalted, which offer Int, haste, spell power, and a blue socket.  There are a large number of quests in Borean Tundra and Dragonblight that will boost your reputation with Wyrmrest, and a tabard as well.

And that’s it for now.  Unlike in the Burning Crusade, Blizzard has not tied reputation to specific instances or raid instances in Wrath of the Lich King, so all of the needed or enticing rep items in this expansion can actually be obtained before ever stepping foot in a raid.  If you are a raider, you should absolutely work to gain the rep needed to obtain the head and shoulder enchants discussed above, if nothing else.  Even prospective raiders should do so, as guilds will look over your reputation to ascertain how deep your commitment to raiding actually is based upon whether you’ve worked to get these enchants.  So if you haven’t already, work these reputation quests/dailies/tabards into your routine and knock them out to be/become the strongest raider you can be.

I have started to receive several emails a week with different questions from readers out there who would like some advice on specific Resto Druid topics.  I have been most happy to respond to them individually, but also thought that there might be others out there with the same question.  Therefore, I’m introducing a new feature here on Rolling Hots, “Tree Mail,” in which I will answer questions that come up to the best of my ability for the benefit of the wider druid community.  The first installment:  Leveling Resto.

The question:

I am just starting out as a Resto druid and have been searching the net for tips. I found your site very helpful and insightful. I plan on going full Restoin my later levels, like 60+ but am wondering if it would be easier on myself to level the low levels as a tank…What do you think?

Now, I already answered this email before deciding that I might want to make my response to this and other selected emails into blog posts.  Therefore, I am going to include my emailed response to this question, followed by a bit more discussion and advice on what to do if you do decide to stay resto.

The response:

I have a couple of questions for you.  First, is your druid your only
character or your highest character?  If not, can you afford to dual spec
the druid?  I ask for a couple of reasons.  I’m not sure what you mean by
“easier on myself.”  If you mean easier to level, I’d go with a DPS spec, either
balance or cat.  Either a tank spec or a healer spec can be ponderously
slow to level because our strengths are not in causing damage.  Tanks
absorb damage.  Healers heal damage.  Balance and Cat DPS specs specialize
in causing damage.  It’s not that you can’t level as a tank or a healer.
I leveled Syll up to 70 as resto the whole way.  It is just a loooooot
slower.
That being said, it will be easier for you to heal when you have leveled
up if you have had experience doing it along the way.  For example, I’m
level 80 and stopped building a tanking offset at level 70 because I
wouldn’t have the first idea how to tank even if I wanted to.  I’d have to
completely relearn my class, almost like rolling a new toon.  If you heal
as you progress, you get time to learn and adjust to each spell as it is
added to your arsenal, rather than being like a kid at Christmas with a
bazillion new toys and no idea what to play with first.  =)
That is why if you have the means to dual spec, I’d recommend doing that.
Have a DPS spec for leveling and a healing spec for running instances.  If
you can’t swing the 1000g to dual spec, then I guess you have to choose
between the ease and speed of leveling DPS vs. the great deal of
experience you will build up by maintaining the healing spec you
eventually wish to keep.

A bit more about leveling resto seems in order here.  While it was a pretty long and ponderous process to level up Syll as Resto from day one, there were many benefits to my end game play for having gone the distance as I did.  By the time I was level 70 in BC, I knew my resto repetoire of spells like the back of my hand.  I had had practice healing instances for months before I started running heroics and then raids.  I believe that my familiarity with my spec and class gave me a huge advantage out of the gate once I started raiding.

Now the game offers us the opportunity to dual spec, which is not something that I had access to.  In this case, you might be able to solo as feral or balance, while healing as resto in instances to hone your skill.  However, dual speccing comes at a high price and isn’t available until level 40, regardless.  The good news is that if you do not have the means to dual spec, or are not interested in doing so, it is completely possible to level from 1-80 as a Restoration Druid.  If it is something that you are interested in doing, I have some strategy recommendations for you.

1.  Come up with a spell rotation that includes heals for yourself.  Restos do have damage abilities in both the balance and feral trees.  These abilities are just not generally what is buffed by our talents.  Our heals, on the other hand, become stronger and stronger as we level.  Therefore, you should certainly not expect to win encounters by bringing out the big guns.  Rather, your strategy will be to outlast your foe by doing a little damage, healing yourself up, doing more damage, and so forth.  This is not always necessary, but you will find it to be so quite often, particularly when taking on multiple mobs.  I have many times joked that, in her pre-dual spec days, Sylly solo’ed by boring things to death.

2.  Use your crowd control abilities.  When soloing as a Resto, roots are invaluable to me (I do balance damage.  Very, very rarely do I go kitty to deal damage).  If you are fighting multiple mobs, root one.  Preferably, you will want to root an opponent who is doing melee damage to you so that you can distance yourself from them.  However, even casting NPCs take damage from the DOT of roots, so they have uses even with casters.  Cyclone, too, can be used to control multiple mobs while you try to get one down or get heals up on yourself.   Keep thorns on yourself, and use barkskin.  Always remember to have Mark of the Wild cast on yourself.  Every little advantage you have that will either protect yourself or do a little damage while you are busy with other things will quicken the pace as you go.

3.  Get by with a little help from your friends.  When possible, snatch up some guildies or friends to complete quests with you.  It will speed them up some to quest with you, while it will speed you up tremendously.  I am not a shy person, so I have been known to be in a quest area, see someone who seems to be working on the same objectives, and whisper them to ask if they are on the same quest and, if so, would they want to combine forces.  People will very often say yes to such a request.  Not only will you speed yourself along, you may also make a new friend in the game.

4.  Consider a hybrid spec.  Although I myself stayed pure resto, if I were to level a druid again without access to dual specs, I might very well choose some sort of a hybrid build that would allow me to heal in instances, while still going deep enough into either the feral tree or the balance tree to have a little “oomph” to my damage dealing abilities.

5.  Instance, instance, instance!  When leveling you can get a great deal of experience quickly by running instances.  I don’t know if this is always the case for other classes or specs, but for me when I was leveling Syll, instances were absolutely the fastest way for me to gain experience.  The loot was generally better than questing gear, and I was able to move through content with other players, speeding my experience gains.  The best part, though, was of course getting practice healing groups, which was always my end goal for Syll.

I hope that this extended answer is helpful to all the little trees out there looking for their place in the sun!

If you are interested in having a question answered in Tree Mail, please contact me using the contact form here on the blog.  Please indicate if you would (or would not!) like to have your email featured on the blog.  I’ll be happy to respond either way.

/yawn
/stretch

In the wee hours this morning I finished up the Noblegarden meta achievment.  Sylly the Noble at your service!  I must admit that as time went on, I lost some of the delight in the event that I posted about yesterday.  It became much more of a grind for me.  I think that it might have been better to space it out over several days, but I don’t have much time during the week days for anything but raiding, and next weekend is Children’s Week, so I decided to get it all out of the way as quickly as possible.  In doing so, I picked up some tips on how to get all of the eggs you need to complete the achievements or to purchase the goods that you are interested in. 

Overall, I picked up  164  eggs with chocolate in them yesterday.  100 for the Chocoholic achievement, 4 for Noble Garden (5 to buy the Noblegarden egg, but you can loot it after you hide it, so you get one back), 10 for the daily quest, and 50 to buy an Elegant Dress.  I actually didn’t farm 50 chocolates just to buy the dress.  I was farming them go get the Spring Robes to complete the Desert Rose achievement.  The robes dropped for me when I had about 38 chocolates, though, so I farmed 12 more for the dress since I was most of the way there.  In addition to those 164 eggs, I opened two with Tuxedo shirts, one with Tuxedo pants, two with Spring Flowers, and two with Spring Circlets. for a grand total of 171 eggs to complete all Noblegarden achievements with the exception of Dressed for the Occasion, which is not part of the meta achievement for the holiday.

Here is some advice on how to make this process as painless as possible.  First, if it makes sense for you to do this in the very early morning, than by all means do so.  When I was camping eggs Sunday morning I was camping one spawn at a time.  At 4:00 on Monday morning, I was camping 4 spawns at a time, and scooting around occassionally to pick up others, too.  I know this isn’t possible for everyone, but if you can gather eggs when there are very few people on, the process will go much more quickly.

Along the same lines, go to a place that isn’t very heavily trafficked if you can.  I did a lot of gathering at Azure Watch in the Draenei starting area, as the Exodar is easily Alliance’s least visited and most out of the way city.  There were people there, sure.  You had to go out there for the Spring Fling achievement, and others had the same idea that there might be less competition there.  But at 3 a.m. it was mostly a ghost town.

If you open an egg that turns you into a bunny, by all means stay a bunny!  When you are a bunny, the egg spawns are at eye level, making them much easier to see and to snatch up.

If you are gathering during a high traffic time on the server, find a spot where there is at least one spawn, or ideally two or three, within reachable distance of one spot.  Plant yourself there and stay put!  While you might find eggs if you go running around looking for them, there is a high chance that they are being camped by someone patient who is waiting to pounce on them the instant they appear.  You’re much better off being one of those patient people than you are being a yahoo running all over the place hoping for someone to be snoozing.  So find a spot, hunker down, throw on a movie or your favorite tunes, and wait. 

Yesterday at the height of the frenzy I was camping a one egg spawn spot.  I turned on autoloot to snatch the eggs as soon as they appeared on my screen.  I was in bunny form, hiding under a bush outside of Darnassus that had a spawn point that was pretty well hidden underneath of it.  Was it slow going?  Yes.  But it was steady.  Eventually someone directly behind me camping another spawn in an identical way wandered off and my one egg spawn hiding spot became a two egg hiding spot.  While people yelled around me about how it was impossible to find eggs, I collected them by the dozen by being still and patient and listening to some of my favorite music.

Eventually, I ended up zooming in my camera as far as it would go, so that my whole screen filled up with the egg spawn area.  It allowed me to block out the chaos of people running all over the place around me, of spawning bunnies, and so forth.  I also put away my own bunny pet after she had had her little love connection in each area, because when I did not, bunnies were jumping around having baby bunnies all over the place.  Once I cut down on the visual noise, I could be less attentive, for any movement on my screen could pretty much only be the spawn of an egg.  I held my cursor over where the egg would spawn, and right clicked the second the pointing finger turned to a gear shift.  I stymied many a potential egg stealer in this way, by being patient, still, and quick to react.

Also, open your eggs as you go.  There is always a break of some seconds at least between spawns at the same point, and you might as well spend some of that time opening the eggs, which you will have to do, anyway.  You never know… something you are waiting for might be inside one of them.  If you don’t open them, you might just go right on gathering eggs for longer than you actually needed to!  The horror!

Finally, I took breaks.  When the monotony of egg camping became too much for me, I’d go off to do another part of the achievments, hiding an egg in Stormwind or gathering a group of guildies to go to Un’Goro to lay eggs at the hotsprings.  I would recommend spacing out the achievements of the holiday so that you can punctuate your egg watch with some of the fun silliness that is also part of Noblegarden.

I’m now really happy to have accomplished everything that I needed to for the holiday in one day.  There is a chance that I might go back to do the daily a couple of times to see if I can’t get that elegant dress out of an egg for that last achievement.  I would not say that the egg sitting was the best time I’ve spent in the game.  However, I was able to get through it very well, sanity in tact, by approaching the task as I have described.  Best of luck!  Now that I’ve gotten all of my eggs, the field is all yours!

The first WOW blog post I ever wrote was not for this site.  It was as a guest poster for Bell at 4haelz (thanks, Bell!  /wave).  I wrote about leveling 70-80 as a Boomkin, and how I was having so much fun at it that I actually put off reaching the level cap for a couple of days so I could enjoy the sheer fun of lowering the Boom before growing up, acting responsibly, and resuming my well-loved but much more sedate life as a tree.  For the past couple of weeks, though, when I haven’t been raiding, the Boomkin’s back!

I’ve never been much of a re-speccer.  I leveled from 1-70 Resto, from 70-80 Boomkin, then right back to Resto.  When I finally was ready to switch back, I didn’t look back for a second.  When I’m raiding, I am all about being a tree. 

I simply adore Restoration Druids and our healing style.  I love rolling out the HoTs, reacting quickly and decisively, bringing my brethren through the fight so seamlessly that they think the whole thing was easy. 

But outside of the raid or instance setting, the life of a tree is a ponderous existence.  It is nearly impossible to kill more than a couple of mobs at once, and even if you can, buckle up, it’s going to be a long ride.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The way that Resto Druids get through dailies and questing and farming is to bore mobs to death.  This snail’s pace was the reason behind my decision to level 70-80 as a Boomkin in the first place. 

Anyway, a couple weeks ago my GM asked me if I would mind speccing Boomkin to help out on Heroic Violet Hold.  /blink… You want ME to DPS?  Uh… ok… sure!  So I did.  I stayed in my healing gear and managed to stay ahead of the tank on DPS on that run, which turned out to be oodles of fun for me.  Granted, I knew zilch about Boomkin spell rotations when grouped.  All the laser chickening I had done was solo.  But I held my own. 

And, since we weren’t going to be raiding for several days, I decided to stay Boomkin for a while and do some dailies.  Holy cow, what a revelation that was!!!  I could just PLOW through dailies.  Those Oracles dailies, you know… the ones where you have to kill 50 of something to finish the daily?…  I wouldn’t even bother with the quest items that strengthen you.  I’d just round up a crowd, pop barkskin, starfall, hurricane, and they’d drop like flies!  It was OODLES of fun!  I got more dailies done than I ever dream of doing regularly, more than enough to pay for the respec into and out of Boomkin.  It was so much fun that I did the same thing this week.

Needless to say, I can’t wait for dual specs to come.  I’ll be dropping my 1000g at the trainer faster than you can say Typhoon! 

My guild is actually unusual in that we are healer-heavy right now, and we’ve had some discussions about paying for the respec cost for some of our healers to allow them to go DPS for raiding.  I am not much interested in this proposition.  I really adore healing during raids, and I wouldn’t feel at all right about concentrating on my Wrath rotations while my guildies died around me.  So I doubt I’ll be jumping at the guild offer to pay for my respec.  I’ve been happily saving up my own gold for this.  I’ve also been busy gemming all of my “off-spec” Boomkin gear, getting it ready to go.  I won’t mind at all rotating in as DPS on occasion when the guild needs me to, don’t get me wrong.  It will be a fun release valve from time to time.  But mostly I’m looking forward to having the freedom to raid as a tree, solo as a boomkin, and slide along the spectrum between them as needed.  I believe that the fun of the game is going to skyrocket for me.  My inner Boomkin is SO dong the Chris Farley Bop!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I found a clip of the Swedish Chef doing his own oscilating shuffle between vegetation and the boom boom!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS2qNc188Ps