My own healing output has improved drastically since I joined my guild last July when we were working on Ulduar.  I recently became an officer in my guild and succumbed to temptation, taking a peek at my own application thread from those days to which I now have access.  I found that the other Restoration Druids in the guild were scratching their heads over my performance when I joined the guild.  They knew that I knew my class, but were puzzled by my low healing output and my spell casting decisions.  It seems that I was focusing very narrowly on my healing assignments and relying on a wide variety of spells, rather than filling my rotation with the spells that had the highest throughput and efficacy, Wild Growth and Rejuvenation, and showering the raid with the HOTs.  I remember having a couple of conversations with them at the time and learning from them that what they wanted from me was to diversify my healing in terms of targets, while narrowing my healing in terms of spells used.  Eager to please, I learned this lesson well.

Last night, in a 3.5 hour run in which we cleared 10 bosses, 71% of my healing came from 2 spells, Rejuvenation and Wild Growth (76% if you count the Rejuvs that “jumped” to new targets from my t10 4pc set bonus).  75% of my heals were overhealing.  I don’t think I needed an innervate the entire night.  I have become an expert in the topping off of everything around me that moves.  My other spells have been relegated to “situational,” while these two spells are my bread and butter.  The results in terms of my performance on a numerical graph have been phenomenal.  The results in terms of the joy I take in healing have been pretty flat.

I remember raiding at the end of BC and the constant push to roll Lifeblooms on the tanks.  I remember the trepidation that I felt when I learned that in WOLK the developers were jacking up the mana cost of Lifebloom to the point where it was out of the question that this would be our role in raids going forward.  As the expansion opened, I embraced my full compliment of spells and truly enjoyed spinning out a web of spells to sustain my raid members.  When I learned that some of the strands of the web were much weaker than others, I jettisoned them one at a time.  Lifebloom became an afterthought as the expansion released.  Nourish was out when I left behind the 4 pc bonus from T7 gear.  Regrowth got dusty as my raid leaders stopped assigning me to anything but our strength, raid healing.  My wonderful toolbox got smaller and smaller.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still use all of my spells situationally, and I heal much differently depending on whether I’m in a heroic or a 10 man or a 25 man raid.  But my true passion in the game is healing raids, and it is there where I am the most limited in terms of spells to use to maximize efficacy and throughput.

Am I nervous about the upcoming changes in Cataclysm for Restoration Druids?  Sure.  There is not nearly enough information yet to have any solid idea of how strong or weak we will be as healers.  It is scary to come from a place of dominance and eagerly step into one of uncertainty.  But as a class that is both hugely powerful in some ways and hugely limited in others, I think our class is broken in its own way.  A tree that is too top heavy cannot bend in the wind, lest it become overbalanced and crash down. It is true that the goal of  making all healing specs at least viable in all situations and widening us out of niches will inevitably work better for some classes than for others.  We might end up with the short end of the stick for a while.   But if the developers are, in fact, successful in their bid to make our full toolkit of spells viable, it will be, in my opinion, liberating and exciting.   I don’t want to be a one-trick pony.  I want the fun of thinking on my feet, making quick decisions, having an array of choices for an array of situations.  I want to learn from mistakes how to approach things in a different way.    Of course I hope that the changes don’t weaken me to the point that I’m not a viable choice to bring on a raid.  But I trust that there will be enough testing and observation that if I’m unbalanced, the developers will do their damndest to set me back on my feet.   I believe that is just what they are trying to do now.

Did anyone else see this post from Ghostcrawler in response to a post saying that, now that Heroism/Bloodlust was going to be given to more than one class, Blizzard should now remove the remaining buffs exclusive to one class?  Hold tight, this is a little painful…

Obviously things like Rebirth can’t just be handed to out to more classes unless we did something like a second exhaustion mechanic for battle rez or whatever. For now we’re going to try the cooldown at 30 min again. In Icecrown’s world of limited attempts, a 30 min cooldown likely meant you just cooled your heels until the cooldown was available again. In Cataclysm the hope is sometimes you’ll have the benefit available but not every time, which scales back on how much of a game-changer it is.

So… it looks to me like they are considering not only keeping battle rez exclusive to Druids in order to limit its use, they are also planning to extend the cooldown not by doubling it, but by tripling it.  This makes me so sad.  I understand why they may not want it to be ubiquitous, but it has been SO nice when learning new boss fights that our druids have had their battle rezzes available for virtually every attempt.  This 30 minute thing?  Well that just sucks. 

Edit:  GC has been posting on the thread more today, adding this:

Also keep in mind that Rebirth is much more useful in today’s game where people tend to die from massive damage. In a world where people sometimes die because the healers have run out of mana, then Rebirth doesn’t buy you quite as much.

In a 25 player raid, you’re most likely going to have a druid of some kind. The challenge is the 10 player raid. We don’t want a druid to be required (just like we don’t want a shaman to be required). You can argue that using Rebirth to recover from a death is just inherently harder in 10s since the opportunity cost is larger when 10% of your group is down, and yet another player is going to have to donate some time to bring that person back up. Beneficial, definitely. Mandatory? Maybe not.

Mr. Moneybaggins. Ironforge, 09.

Forward:

In the last 24 hours I have emptied completely the personal bank, guild bank tab, knapsacks, duffels, backpack and wallet of one Mr. Moneybaggins, Gnome Banker, Khadgar-Alliance.  I  depleted in one moton his carefully laid aside stores, built up since just about 10 days before Hallow’s End. 

There’s some irony in the fact that he is, by way of class, a rogue.  The fingers plundering his bank vault were mine alone.  My Great Grandpa stood on the street in Coffeyville, Kansas while Jesse and Frank James rolled into town on their way to lighten the coffers at the Coffeyville bank.  This isn’t quite that kind of story, though.  We’re in cahoots, Moneybaggins and I, having conspired together for months in regard to our own bank caper. 

Indulge me here by defining “caper” as a light-hearted frolic which, in the instance at hand, was motivated exclusively by good will and overflowing holiday spirit.

In truth, he’s probably relieved to see nothing but packing peanuts and scraps of ribbon on the floor of the  banking organization he maintains.  I’m sure after his morning coffee and a look through the financial section, he’ll start to tidy the place up a bit.  Dust.  Lots of dust.  For months the little banker toon has been stacking, storing, and categorizing whimsicalities and wonders from the far ends of the globe (and others, besides!).  He has been most busy in his capacity as  my Winter’s Veil warehouse manager while preparations for holiday gift giving in Azeroth have gone forward.  Moneybaggins, you should know, is an affable sort of fellow who, in faith, has been tickled from his cufflinks to his toes to be minding the store.

While I’ve sent him large quantities of items I have gathered on my own, he has proven to be a great help in keeping a lensed and astute eye on the daily offerings in The Auction House.   Further, I have been blessed tremendously to have the help of guildmates who have engineered and farmed many of the wonders I have gathered.  Faelwen made Steam Tonk Controllers until they spilled out of her bags.  Composite took my mats for 18 fireworks and sent back to me about 80 fireworks, all told.  Yamie tried valiantly with me to farm Voodoo Heads and, when none dropped for Project Winter Veil, donated her own Voodoo Head toy to the cause.  Good friends are good.  I am thankful for mine.

Now at last the holiday has arrived!  Gifts have been wrapped (wrapping paper, for use on non-stackable inventory items, is available daily from many general goods vendors, and comes in different varieties from Greatfather Winter’s attendant buskers).  Countless parcels and packages filled with holiday gifts have been posted from us with love and affection to some of the finest players and people in the World of Warcraft.  The bulk of our work is done, the joy of the holiday is here. 

For me, the moment when Winter Veil truly began came last night while Apatheia discussed the strategy that led to our one shot of Deathbringer Saurfang.  Gathered together, riding a wave of tremendous progression (3 TOGC hard modes and 4 ICC bosses have fallen to us in the past 14 days), listening to our captains lay out the battle plan, my guildies and friends filled my screen with eruptions of celebretory silliness as they played with the toys and gadgets I had sent them for the holiday.  I laid out casks of wine, pastries, and fruit, while spontaneous firework displays erupted, remote control vehicles whizzed and popped along the floor, paper zeppelins and happy fun rocks tossed up among us all across the platform where we would soon bring this minion of Arthas to his knees.  It was a wonderful, soul brightening thing to behold.

 It occurs to me that, just as in the real world, there must be some denizens of Azeroth who adore gift giving as I do.  Certainly there must be others who have not yet completed their own holiday shopping and are looking for bargains, suggestions, or ideas for holiday gifts in Azeroth.  Moneybaggins and I have put our heads together and decided that our gift this season for the blogosphere and Warcraft community generally is  our own holiday shopping list of the toys, gadgets, whizzbangs and so forth we distributed as holiday gifts to our Khadgar kith and kin*.  I extend to you now, reader, this guide to the goodies which spread some joy around my little corner of the world, along with my best wishes for happiness to you and yours this Winter’s Veil, and in the new year to come. 

Sylly and Moneybaggins.  15 December, 2009

 * We have striven to ensure that items presented here will be Bind on Equip and purchasable from either the auction house (when available) or from a vendor in game.  Categorization of items at discretion of Sylly and Moneybaggins, L.L.C.

MoneyBaggins and Sylly’s Holiday Gift List 2009

Fireworks, Crackers, and other Explosive Devices

We gathered fireworks by the hundreds for gifting this season, and found them to come from three major sources:

1) Fireworks made by Engineers

These fireworks are easy to get in large quantities if you hunt down the mats and bring them to your favorite engineer to transform into magical, mustache crisping explosive good fun!  There are a number of fireworks that engineers can make for you this season, so throw them some cash (when else is their profession profitable, amirite?) and have some custom made for you.  From this category of fireworks, this year I sent out dozens of Snake Burst Fireworks that were hand made by a friend.

 2)  Fireworks sold by Vendors

There are some fireworks which are always available from vendors in capitol cities .  Others are available from holiday fireworks vendors at the end of midsummer festival.  I found the Yellow Rose Fireworks that I gave out this year on Khadgar’s Auction House, along with some Red, White, and Blue Fireworks.

3) Fireworks for Auction

On the auction house.  Mhmm.  Seek ‘em out.

One last word on Fireworks of all description and degree of wonder.  Think twice when gifting them to dwarves along with huge steins of ale and such.  Think the consequences through, mate.  Caution is yer man.  Or perhaps your only man is the pint of Plain.  Perhaps that is the way of it, after all.

Toys, Whizzbangs, Zippity Goodnesses of Various Description

Again, some organization into sub categories seems warranted, as Azeroth offers an amazing array of fantabulous contraptions to the holiday shopper this season. 

Mechanical Mayhem:

 Jepetto Joybuzz in Dalaran provides an abundance of light hearted fun and provides easy access to lots of inexpensive, silly, endearing gifts.  At his shop I purchased stacks of  Heavy Copper Racers, Trusty Copper Racers, Zippy Copper Racers,  Grindgear Toy Gorillas, and Paper Zeppelin Kits at the toy store.

I asked a friend to help me make dozens of Steam Tonk Controllers, which have many more uses and the added fun of being remote controled by their operator for small level combat operations unfolding across the toes of bear tanks everywhere.

Charms

I was tickled to find a couple of Lucky Charms on the Auction House to people who are a lucky charm to me in one way or another.  I also farmed a handful of Rabbit’s Feet one afternoon in Loch Modan.  May the road rise to meet you.

 For the need to nom nom nom

Although last year I gave out many Delicious Chocolate Cakes from my own oven, this year I focused on a handful of other culinary treats.  Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream was my confection of choice to give out this year.  I picked up a couple of stacks in Thousand Needles and handed them out liberally.  I also picked up a nice Dalaran White Wine. 

Seasonal Samplings Stored for Four Seasons 

I had a couple of stacks of holiday items in my bank that I’ve held onto for 12 months and gave out to friends.  There are always numerous seasonal items that you can store away in this manner. I brought out some Preserved Holly and Snowballs from last Christmas.  If you didn’t hold onto any from last year, these items are now available in game and quite easy to gather up for gifting.

Sylly’s Special Winter Treasures List 2009 

I watched the auction house for months for a handful of items that I picked up whenever they appeared.  These were the special treasures I gathered, my signature gifts this season, and which are now in the satchels of my friends in Azeroth.

Here is the list…

Happy Fun Rocks

Worn Troll Dice

Voodoo Skull

Dragonbreath Chili

Coal*

*by special request from Greatfather Winter

Odds and Ends 

There is the matter of a collection of other prizes that I gathered and gave along the way that ought to be categorized, but the staff has taken the rest of the day off to begin the Winter Revels in their own personal ways.  Therefore, I beg you grant me a big of license in gathering them together here in this corner.  I know we also were able to gift an assortment of Tree Frogs, and Steamy Romance Novels that found  their way into the stockings of my compatriots.   Perhaps a recent jaunt to the theatre with my daughter played some subconscious role in this selection.  I gave a bouquet of white roses to each lady on my list. 

There may have been a couple more items that have slipped my mind, it is hard to say.  However, the shopping list above is as close to comprehesive as I care tomake it at the moment, and was sufficient to lavish joy and good times on 40 friends of mine.  I hope that, in one way or another, the list brings joy to you and yours, too.

Happy Winter’s Veil!

Sylly

The future of the blog here is, admittedly, quite uncertain at the moment.  I’m deep in the interview process of two different jobs.  Either of them would be great for my family, but would probably mean death to the blog, as either of them would require of me a one way commute of at least two hours from my home.  I don’t know if I’ll get either of the jobs, but much as I love blogging and staying in touch with all of you out there, I surely do hope that at least one of these places makes me an offer!  In the meantime, I’m finding it very difficult to find time to blog about World of Warcraft.  My days are filled with activity.  Research, writing out practice interview answers, shopping for clothes for interviews, and actually interviewing, as well as preparing for things like child care, animal care, etc. in case I do get one of the jobs, have filled up my days.  So, I am afraid that the blog is currently in limbo.  I know that many of you enjoy coming here and reading me yammering on about WOW, and I’m so glad that you do.  But I hope that you will find it in your hearts for me to cross your fingers that I get one of these jobs.  Even if it means the blog will end.  I surely do appreciate it!  Peace love and RAWR unending,  Sylly.

Race changes have gone live!  Druids!!!  Do you have any idea what this means?  This means…

yea.

Absolutely nothing to us.  Sorry bout that.

=P

This is really just a quick post to check in with my readers to say I’m thinking about you out there.  I’ve been preparing for a very significant job interview all week and have been intensely busy.  But I miss you. 

SHOUT OUT TO THE DROODS!!!  SYLLY LOVES YOU!!!

=)

Peace out.

I haven’t posted yet about the new PTR build that went up yesterday and so radically changes our Gift of the Earth Mother talent so that it will give us 2,4,6,8,10% improved haste rather than the current version, which reduces the base global cooldown on Rejuvenation, Lifebloom and Wild Growth by 20%.  I’ve been aware of the change almost from the minute the new build went up, but I wanted to wait to post about it until I had some grasp of the implications.  In the meantime I’ve been watching doom and gloom unfold on the official forums and Elitist Jerks in connection to the change.  But even after those fine folks at EJ had done some of the number crunching for me (thank God someone out there does this for me) and I had something of a grasp of the implications of the changes, I hesitated to post here about them.  Why?  Because I dont’ know if you’ve noticed this about me, but I’m a glass is half full kind of gal by and large.  I always have a good deal of faith that Blizzard isn’t going to just swing a wrecking ball through my spec.  I tend to remember that the PTR is just what the acronym stands for, a test realm where they throw new things at the wall and see what sticks.  Not every idea they have is a good one.  Not everything sticks.  So, while others have begun the gnashing of teeth and wailing in the streets about the GOtEM change in tandem with the reduction of the final tic of Rejuvenation, I’ve not been inspired to say much yet about this.  There are just too many factors for me to quite get my head around fully, and I don’t want to fly off at the mouth when I don’t fully understand the implications myself.  But also… I never am one to believe that Blizzard won’t swing back to center if they go too far with one choice or another.  And so… this just in from Ghostcrawler…

To be honest, we may revert the Rejuv nerf. This isn’t 100% finalized yet, so please don’t say we promised anything.

We definitely wanted to nerf Rejuv. However we also wanted to fix Gift of the Earth Mother. That change wasn’t necessarily aimed at further nerfing druids, even though that was the outcome. It was aimed at not making haste such a wonky stat for Resto.

In short, we think the GotEM change both nerfed druids and fixed the haste scaling problem so the Rejuv duration nerf may not be necessary. Stay tuned.

See?  The glass is looking a little more like half full, isn’t it?  Let’s just wait and see.

p.s. Also, terribly happy to see battle rez cooldown reduced to 10 minutes on the PTR.  How helpful is that???

So 3.2.2. is here today.  Yay?  I suppose that I should just be happy that they’re leaving us well enough alone for the moment, but I’m not sure that I am.  I’m not thrilled with where Restos are at at the moment.  It appears that we can stay competitive with other healers, which is nothing to take for granted, but we have to do so at the price of sacrificing almost all of our heals the vast majority of the time to a mindless repetition of Rejuv and Wild Growth.  Anyone remember being enslaved to the 7 sec Lifebloom timer?  Is this so different?  I’m not sure it is. 

So with 3.2.2… Meh.  There is a “new” raid encounter with Onyxia.   I wasn’t around playing WOW until the middle of the Burning Crusade expansion.  I never got a chance to raid Ony in the good ol’ days, so I’m looking forward to seeing the old gal in her new incarnation.   The 25 man loot table isn’t complete yet, though, so it’s hard to say whether there are yummies in there to get excited about.  In terms of things that directly affect us trees, although they are not monkeying around with our class and nerfing one spell or another which is always nice, there are very few changes that affect us at all, and certainly nothing in a positive direction.  It does make me a little leary that there are, essentially, no changes for any of the healing classes in this patch.  While it is possible that they are just hap-hap-happy with healing right now, I suspect that it is more of a “we’re planning a massive overhaul for healing and are timing it to come out with 3.3 or the expansion” kind of thing where we’re going to get tossed onto our heads all over again.  Time will tell.  As for the patch at hand, in perusing the patch notes, I see that:

1) Leatherworkers can craft Drums of the Wild, which give out a buff equal to the highest untalented rank of Mark of the Wild to raids without a druid, making us druids less vital in raid composition.

2) And this… “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%.” 
Man, this one really bums me out.  I’ve had my T8 4pc set bonus for a grand total of… 2 days.  I picked up my pants on Sunday to complete the set bonus, and my shoulders last night to complete the entire set.  And let me tell you… it made a difference.  A big difference.  I was rockin the Recount at the top of the healers for a good bit of our raid last night.  And now that boost is going to be cut in half.  /sniffle!

But I still get to look goooood!  =)

Last night I was full of fail.  Not just fail around the edges.  Fail pervasive.  Fail massive.  Fail epic.  Total fail.

Here are the factors that contributed to my complete and utter chock-fullery of fail:

1)  Technology

Despite the fact that I now have a nearly top of the line… well… everything… it wasn’t all working.  Nope.  The Razer Megalodon headphones/mic had crapped out on me the last Sunday when I raided.  After doing some research, I learned that this is a sort of common problem with these.  Great.  So glad I paid a pretty penny for that.  My research determined that I should try a powered USB hub for them, which I purchased and installed.   Didn’t help.  They still crapped out in mid fight several times and the mic didn’t work last night at all.  I spent the morning monkeying with this today and think I have them configured better… but am bracing for fail at our next raid as well.  You know.  Just in case.   Sooooo… half the times I could not hear my raidmates during bossfights and I was never able to speak with them at all.  Directions during the raid?  Lost on me completely.  Wonderful.

In addition, and even more exciting, I had total addon failure.  VuhDo, my healing mod, which had worked perfectly fine the previous Sunday when I raided until the internet crashed, was recognizing clicks only from my left and right mouse buttons.  That leaves 3 buttons that had crucial spells mapped to them (rejuv, swiftmend, lifebloom, wild growth, cure poison, remove curse) that were unavailable to me.  I tried what I think was the only strategy of my high school football team for all 4 years I attended good ol’ Central High… run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, PUNT!  I did some very quick reassignments of my most used spells and target command to my left and right mouse buttons, but it was a) clunky, b) incomplete, and c) ridiculously hard to remember on the fly.  By the 4th out of 5 bosses I had, between pulls, managed to locate and update the driver to my Razer Deathadder mouse, and was thrilled to find that my button functionality was restored.  I then had to REMAP my spells to their correct keys before I could heal like a normal person.

2)  Inexperience

Because of the timing of my total system meltdown last month and our vacation to the Rocky Mountains, I had only ever seen the first boss in the Argent Tourney raid prior to lasst night.  I had watched strats for some of the others, but I misunderstood where we would be headed last night.  I thought we were going to hit the Northrend Beasts hard mode, but instead we went right through the instance and cleared it on normal.  Therefore, there were at least 2 fights that I am ashamed to admit that I was almost completely unprepared for.  And I couldn’t hear the instructions in vent for one of them.  Sooooo… that was awesome.

3)  Lack of practice

I’ve been away from the game and raiding for about a month, and it shows.  The fact that this wasn’t exactly second nature for me when I was playing last night, combined with the fact that I was on a completely new system that was going through various stages of failure, left me pretty miserable throughout most of the night.

To my credit, I asked my raid leader before the first pull if he could replace me as soon as I realized VuhDo wasn’t working properly.  There was, however, no one who could come on to take my place, so I fumbled and bumbled around through the night, cursing my luck, my computer, and my damn hubris for posting how wonderful things were.  I was feverishly trying between every pull to fix one thing or another… my headphones, my mic, my addons, my mouse.  When not working on that I was speed reading boss strats.  And it was pretty much a craptastic return to raiding for me.  I felt a burden of guilt on me as my guildmates carried my dead weight through boss after boss.  /sigh.  So I got this…

But the achievement belonged to them, not to me.  The achievement they should have gotten is this one:

The bright side (I’m always trying to find one) is that I spent hours last night and today working through these issues and I think (?) they are resolved.  Time will tell.  I am going to try not to get my hopes up, although high hopes are kind of hard for me to avoid most days.  They’re in my nature.

I think that what this experience highlights for me is the amount of obligation I feel toward my raidmates to pull my weight.  I’ve never been as powerful a healer as the other healers in my guild since I joined Apatheia, although I think a portion of that can be fairly attributed to my old, wheezing computer and related issues.  I am anticipating a boost in my overall performance once the wrinkles are ironed out with my computer and I’m back into the swing of healing.  In addition, my raidmates have had a full month of raiding without me during which they have undoubtedly seen gear upgrades and so forth.  But these excuses do not help me to feel better about not doing my share to support the raid effort.  Last night I felt like a big, deciduous anchor knotted around our healing team’s feet.  It was not a feeling I relished and was particularly depressing given the anticipation and excitement that have been building up for me in relation to returning to raiding on a much better system.

I wanted many times last night to apologize to the raid generally, to thank them for the extra effort it took to carry me, whether or not they realized at that moment that that is what they were doing.  Although I knew that most of the issues I was having were beyond my control, I still found it very difficult to just laugh it off over and over again.

I joined a raiding guild not just to see the content or to get gear or to progress in the game.  I joined a raiding guild because I love the feeling of that teamwork, that large group effort that pays off in a shared experience of satisfaction and, sometimes, elation for everyone.  Not feeling a part of that,  just feeling that I was along for the ride, panicky and disappointed, was a bad feeling.  Terribad.

 Here’s to hoping that when Monday rolls around I’ll be pulling my fair share!

Against all odds, honey, we’re the big door prize.

Enjoy, and many thanks to Shooties!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5axlwCBXC8