Progressive Boink

[Justin]

I'm FINALLY ready for Kara this Tuesday. I was supposed to go like over a month ago, but I'm pretty lazy about getting attuned. Anyway, I've got my mage's +dmg up to 650, so I should do okay.

[Neil]

First time ever, J-Man?

My guild is starting to get Kara on farm. We're getting faster--Wednesday we made it all the way through Curator. Shade is a bit of a challenge still, but nowhere near as much as it was. I still usually go in all my prot-ness, which doesn't help our DPS. All the other fights are usually simple, but we haven't yet killed Nightbane. Our summoner left for another guild (what a dick) and nobody else has bothered to finish the quest yet. Fuck Shattered Halls heroic. We tried Netherspite last week for the first time after avoiding it, and it was such an easy fight. Green beam executes are pretty fun. Maybe I'll get to try one in the blue beam this week?? Only time will tell. We've also tried Ilhoof twice now, and wiped only on the first time (he enraged; his shadow bolt hit me for over 20k).

And a few weeks ago we had an embarrassing run-in with Moroes, where we wiped over and over. The same Moroes that we've never had a single issue with until then. It turns out the adds aren't always the same! So we all felt pretty fucking stupid when we learned that, and were finally able to beat him.

And my gear is now pretty damn amazing. I got a Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyer crafted, Maiden finally dropped the gaunts, Eternium Greathelm...Armory

A few more badges and I'm getting a new cloak, hopefully I can get a new chestpiece and shoulders. Maybe if I'm really lucky Shade will drop the ring I need from him. And I need some +12 stam gems, but they're damn expensive, and I don't have the money

What I'm saying is, I think we're getting close to being ready for some ZA. Hopefully. The bear hits hard

[White Panther]

Grats Neil! You are at the very exciting part. After Kara things really open up. Many of the BT guilds on our server are still in about half Kara gear. That place is a gold mine.

Today I ran with 9 other pandas, and we one-shot every boss in Kara, clearing the whole thing. It took about 5 hours, but we were having a blast the whole time. I got to tank the Illhoof imps without nether-protection, which is insane, but we had no problems. I pulled down 22 heroic badges and finally got the bracers I've been wanting off Maiden. I bought the heroic badge wand today, and now I'm saving for the belt.

I have +1100 shadow damage now. This blows my mind.

[Neil]

Yeah, it's crazy how many badges you can get just from Kara. Throw ZA in there and you might not have to run a Heroic ever again. Though if it's an easy Heroic, and particularly if it's the daily quest, it might still be worth it. The list of heroics I would run is pretty small though, Ramparts, Slave Pens, Mech...maybe a few others, but they're just not fun to tank. Probably easier as a DPS class. It makes me very angry that they don't upgrade the loot for high end dungeons on heroic...why do I want to run Heroic Shadow Labs when the only possible bonus are a few badges and a shot at one epic at the end? Plus gems, but most of the gems suck and are unique-equipped anyway. They should at least make it so all the bosses drop an epic. I guess what I'm saying is that heroics are not fun and I do not like them.

But some of the badge rewards are really goddamn awesome. This is one of the best tanking cloaks in the entire game (until BT/Hyjal trash drops this one at least). It's the next purchase I'm going to make. I already bought this badass neck piece. Expertise is such a great, great stat, particularly for tanking. It's probably too great at this point. I'm expecting them to lower the effectiveness of Expertise a bit, or increase the amount of rating required to get a point. With the Warrior talent Defiance and that neck piece being the only place I get Expertise from currently, I have 11 (while in Defensive stance until the next patch when they make it work in all stances--I'm usually in Defensive stance anyway). That translates into enemies having 2.75% less chance to parry AND 2.75% less chance to dodge my attacks. Not to mention the +hit on that neck. Parries are both bad for threat generation and potentially life-threatening.

Then there is this 75-badge bad boy. It's got Pally stats (ok, just one pally stat, the 35 spell damage) but it's better than warrior tier 4, at least if you don't include the set bonuses. And if you have the 4 other pieces anyway, it wouldn't matter. Three +12 stam gems make that have 96 stamina on it, which is just absurd.

[White Panther]

I know I have a problem when I've never even played as a warrior and I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. Our warriors are going nuts trying to collect badges for all the good badge gear. There isn't a lot I'm interested in, but what they do have is really amazing. This cloak is better than the pvp cloak. And right now I wear a blue belt during raids just for the +hit making this belt a fairly significant upgrade (same +hit, but much better stats.)

I feel ya on heroics. It's all for badge collecting, and all the loot gets DE'd.

[Justin]

Matt and I are now a two-man destruction crew known as "The NAACP IMage Awards"

[Matt W]

fuckkkkkkkk why didnt we name ourselves cryme tyme

[Justin]

that'll be our 3v3 team name with my buddy shane (bergman)

[Matt W]

Huh? What's that? Oh nothin', after 16 Warsong Gulch's to get 18 fucking marks, (nothing like the Alliance strategy of sending one guy at a time) just m'first level 70 epic. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25858#sold-by Heh, no big deal though. I plan to have a matching headpiece for it by this weekend.

[White Panther]

Warcraft skills save children's lives.

[Matt W]

I learned how to taunt from Jurassic Park

[Neil]

In what is probably old news to anyone who has been in a guild before...the guild I'm in that started out so great is turning not-so-great. I guess it's the age-old problem of "we want different things". We started "casual" and have always been casual. I want to stay casual. But I also want to make progress. The problems are fairly small so I think we can work through them, it's just frustrating. We barely get 10 people to show up for Kara. The kid who plays one of our rogues has all the gear he wants from Kara so he never wants to come anymore. One of our fucking druids respeced to FUCKING MOONKIN. We have 3 healers that we can regularly use, so if one of them can't make it, we're essentially fucked. We don't enforce specs, which is cool, but our feral druid had two options to respec: a useless form that is beaten in almost every respect by a mage or whatever other class, or an insanely useful and coveted spec that is essential for raid progression. Not only did he make the wrong choice, but he's already taken a ton of gear for his feral spec that now is pretty useless.

I'm constantly getting into arguments over totems. Our druids are constantly asking for Grace of Air totem, and I'm practically demanding Windfury totem. I don't always win the argument. The shaman is an officer, and while I'm an officer too (sorta), our general rule is "you play your class how you want to". Which sucks. Worse still, when the rogue DOES come, he wants GoA too! It makes my head want to explode. If you've ever played a class that can melee and you've been in a group with a shaman, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Even (especially?) as a tank, Windfury is tremendous. The extra attacks proc off of white attacks + heroic strikes, which make up a large percentage of a warrior's attacks (it doesn't seem like it, but white attacks/heroic strike make up about half, if not more, of a tank's threat. even on this random Illidan fight, Heroic Strike + Melee made up exactly 50% of total damage) AND they generate threat and rage (which in turn generates even more threat). In short, Windfury helps DPS (particularly DPS warriors and rogues. Cat druids can't get windfury procs, so they want GoA for the agility) and it helps tanking, which helps DPS even more by allowing DPS classes to focus more on damage and less on staying below the tank in threat.

In conclusion, I'm hoping we can start up a second Kara group, which we need to do anyway if we want to hit 25-mans. Hopefully with the second group we can get away from some of the younger, stupider (seriously, Moonkin?) kids and find some more serious people.

I always post ridiculously long things here, sorry

[Casey]

I have no concept of how druid works in a large group or high-level setting, I've just found from what I've played of that class (1-35 or so) that they're good for soloing and as part of a small group. How does a druid fit into a raid group at high levels? Is Restoration the spec that you're talking about as being "insanely useful and coveted"? Is it the healing over time that makes it so useful?

I like the understatedness of the Feral Spec for leveling up-- you don't really get any huge awesome new spells or abilities over the course of 20-30 like some classes/specs do, but you slowly build up all of the various stats that make you a better tank or DPS.

[Matt W]

Not only are geared druids extremely useful because of their strong HoT's, feral is now a viable endgame spec, as bears can tank with the best of them.

[Neil]

Yeah, Restoration is a tremendous raid spec. Feral Combat is pretty good, as with good gear they can do either role (tanking or DPS) pretty well. There are still some fights that require a Warrior to tank (Hydross pretty much does, Kael and Illidan 100% do, etc), but they aren't all that way. Two resto druids healing a tank is almost unbeatable--two sets of HoTs constantly ticking will "smooth out" any damage spikes taken. Tree of Life aura is a pretty great thing, and it will even stack if you have two of them. HoTs are particularly great because bonus healing is applied based on the full duration of the heal, not the cast time. Plus, they have two amazingly great talents: Swiftmend and Lifebloom. Lifebloom only lasts 7 seconds but 1) Ticks every second, while most spells tick much slower, 2) Can stack 3 times and be refreshed, keeping all three stacks active and 3) Direct heals when it runs out OR is dispelled (though the direct heal isn't affected by the number in the stack, only the HoT part). Intensity granting 30% mana regen while casting + Living Spirit increasing total spirit by 15% + Tree of Life reducing mana costs by 20% + A potential self-Innervate every 6 minutes means that a Tree with enough spirit could probably chain cast forever.

Not to mention all of the Restoration talents are pretty good. You could spend 61 points there and have a pretty reasonable spec. There aren't many other classes in the game that can do that and still get a kickass build. Of course, soloing 61 resto probably wouldn't be very fun, but neither is soloing 49 Protection as a Warrior.

Feral DPS is pretty good, but unless you need the Druid to off-tank occasionally, you're probably better off with a Rogue. Though I think that's why all druids got Innervate (and they can all use a Battle Rez, even if it's on a 20 minute timer) for the added raid utility. Leader of the Pack is nice but not critical.

[B]

fuckkkkkkkk why didnt we name ourselves cryme tyme

that gold, gold
yeah yeah

[White Panther]

Panda Attack uses Druid tanks, healers, and we have ONE moonkin who raids in 25-mans. We use two druid tanks on the Hydross adds. Druids can tank every boss in Kara, except Nightbane (warrior stance-dance is needed). Actually, they can do pretty much anything that doesn't require an interrupt.

I think Moonkin is pretty useless, but our's is regularly in the top on the damage meters.

Maximising threat generation really becomes a focus in the end-game instances, because of enrage timers and a need for highest possible DPS. For A'lar, all DPS needs to be 800-900 sustained, minimum. We have a couple folks who are capable of sustaining over 1K DPS, which means the tanks have to be pushing for 1200 TPS to hold aggro.

Right now, we're experimenting with using Curse of Recklessness (decreases armor by 800, increases AP by 130) on certain bosses, in order to raise the threat ceiling so DPS can really lay in.

[Neil]

Druids can't tank Kael because you need to be able to use Shields (meaning Paladins still can), but Warriors absolutely have to tank Illidan--his Shear MUST be blocked, which means Shield Block is required. Other than that, yeah, Druids can do just about any of the encounters. Warriors get some Oh Shit buttons (Last Stand adds 30% of your max health for 20 seconds; Shield Wall reduces all incoming damage by 75% for 10 seconds untalented, or 13/15 with talents) which can be useful in emergencies. Also, druids can't become crush-immune, so fights on really hard hitting bosses can be an issue, though they get a ton more health and armor. Prince lands a ton of crushing blows in Phase 2, so you might have a harder time with a druid tank. Druids tend to have better threat generation than Warriors though.

As for Curse of Recklessness, you can use it no problem as long as you have a Warrior with a fully talented (5/5) Improved Demoralizing Shout to offset the increased AP. Otherwise the extra AP tends to really hurt, as bosses usually scale exponentially with AP.