Feral-Spec vs Feral-spec?

Druids are one of the most unique classes in all of the World of Warcraft.  Not only do they have the ability to mimic the ‘pure’ classes, but they also have access to an exclusive set of spells that other classes are unable to replicate (most noteworthy, shape-shifting, innervate and rebirth).  This alone has always been a hot issue with the pure classes and has been used in countless debates that theorize the need for pure classes to outperform their hybrid counterparts to offset this lack of unique-ness.  If this isn’t enough, druids are the only class in the game capable of filling all 4 potential roles.  Druids have a heal spec, a tank spec and a dps spec of both the caster and melee variety.  This versatility has long been the druids claim to fame;  The jack of all trades and the master of none.

This versatilityis what I both love and hate the most aboot my class.  It’s a double-edged sword.  While it allows me to be effective at my role and (more) able to switch to perform a different function at a moments notice, it also inhibits me from belonging to any group in particular.  I’m not a “real” tank.  I don’t wear plate.  I don’t use a shield.  I can’t block or parry.  I don’t benefit from the same tanking stats my counterparts do.  I don’t bid when any of the ‘tank’ loot drops.  To the tanking community, I’m an outsider…more akin to a rogue than a tank and much more capable of dps-ing when not required to tank than they ever could.  Yet at the same time, I’m not a dps.  I don’t spec for damage.  I don’t gear for output.  I focus on creating hate, not minimizing it.  Even if I equip, gem and enchant for full dps and hit my rotation perfectly, I’ll place 13th on the damage meter…just ahead of that absent minded hunter that stood in the bad and behind that recently returned to the guild mage that is still wearing quest reward blues.  This lack of identity has me wondering where the line is between the two feral specs.  Where is the line between tank and dps? 

An interesting situation came up this week in which I couldn’t decide the answer.  While a handful of us have completed our Glory of the Raiderachievements, several of our raiders are one or two check marks shy of their proto-drakes.  After an hour or so of attempts at A Poke in the Eye, we conquered the fight and went to claim our loot.  To our surprise a Surge Needle Ring dropped.  Though this ring may not be best in slot in terms of enhanced health or mitigation, it is something I have been waiting for, for a long time.  My current gear set is starved of hit and I am relying on several poorly socketed +16 hit pieces to meet my hit quota.  Eagerly, I hit need and watched the resulting roll off between me and the two hunters present.  The RNG showed mercy on me and I won the roll.

Both hunters we upset at losing the roll.  One of them actually tried to enter into negotiations with me for how much it would cost me to give him the ring.  As I started to generate my response telling him that attempting to persuade a fellow guild member to pass a desired upgrade was not only selfish but would be attempting to undermine our entire loot system, a thought crept into my mind.  Is this a main spec bid for me?

On the surface, yes.  My main spec is feral.  This item has nothing but good stats for me.  Stamina and agility are my most important survivability stats.  Hit, crit, agility and AP are crucial to me generating sufficient hate.  There is no wasted stats on this ring that I am unable to benifit from.  It is an upgrade in every way from the ring it will be replacing.  The problem?  This isn’t a mitigation ring.  I know there will be times I will swap it out for a ring with more stamina or dodge.  The hunters on the other hand will certainly use this ring for every PvE fight they participate in from now until they replace it.  Does this trump my bid?  Is this more of a main spec for them than it would be for me?

I have no doubts that I will use this ring for my main spec.  Not all fights favour the same stats or gear sets.  The set I use to tank Sartharion is very different from the one that I use for tanking Patchwork.  But where is the line?

Though it has been several days, the ring is still sitting in my bag unequipped, until I can assure myself that needing that ring was the right, and fair thing to do.

The Aftermath

This is a follow-up to my With Great Loot, Comes Great Responsibility post.  As players started to become bored with WotLK content, our raid numbers began to dwindle.  Week after week, our dedicated raiders would log on for our Sartharion 3D attempts, farm their necessary food and flask buffs, fully repair, stock up on reagents and patiently wait for my instructions to journey to the Obsidian Sanctum … only to discover 19 raiders online at invite time.  Despite having several discussions about the issue both in game and via our guild forums, we were unable to break this trend.  Thus we were left with only one viable option.  In order to continue progression we had to re-open recruitment.

Recruitment is never a bad thing.  We are always on the look out for more friends.  Our guild’s doors will never be closed to quality players who share our sense of community and maturity.  The reason I dreaded the process was because of the problem we knew it would one day cause.

After we began to interview applicants our roster began to swell with new initiates, we were finally able to fill our raids again.  No longer were we forced to bypass 3-drake progression for another 19 man attempt on Kel’Thuzad. While I’ll omit the details of our experience, they are well documented in Reflections of a Twilight Vanquisher over at my girlfriend’s blog.

Naturally, the kill was a huge victory for the guild.  Not only were players excited aboot their new titles and filled with the newfound desire to complete their Heroic: Glory of the Raider achievement, but the highly-coveted Twilight Drake transformed overnight from a distant dream to an inevitability.  There was an atmosphere of excitement in the guild and a renewed sense of purpose.  Within days, our once skeleton raid roster exploded.  Instead of scrambling to find enough healers or DPS to make our raids viable, 35 raiders were online half an hour before invites.  Everyone was enchanted, gemmed and prepared to accept an invite.

We had expected this all along.  We knew that the day we killed Sarth 3D everyone would return.  We made it well known that when the day came and there was wide-spread raid interest once more, we would prioritize raid invites to those who participated in the learning process and made the first kill possible.

Needless to say players who decided to take a break from the game are horrified to discover that we aren’t willing to bump the players that committed to wiping and learning the fight with us.

I can only shake my head.

If I See One More Knockback…

I’ve spent the past few weeks fighting the urge to publish my post on the take of the upcoming 3.1 changes.  There is little to no point on commenting on things that Blizzard is experimenting with, trying to find a balance.  Personally, I feel that having a fit at the mere sight of the patch notes is at best unproductive and at worst, throwing a childish temper tantrum.  The unfortunate side effect is that I have been unable to allow myself to focus on the writing I’d usually be doing.  I am working on breaking this habit given that nobody has any idea when 3.1 will be and I think I’d be punishing myself by keeping quiet altogether while I wait.

For today, I just want to float a thought.  Whoever decided that allowing 25 man raid trash to be vulnerable to knockback effects  was a good idea, needs to give their head a good shake…or perhaps 20 minutes in the military wing with my guild’s core elemental shaman.  I’ll never forget the screams on Vent after that first thunderstorm blasted multiple whirlwinding warriors into our carefree, AoE-ing clothies (I guess grouping for Circle of Healing has its disadvantages :S). 

Don’t get me wrong.  I am a druid after all.  I pride myself on thinking that it was my duty back in TBC raiding to prolong the existence of the last mob on each trash pull by casting cyclone and waiting for the groans on Vent.  The best part was that all our druids did it so even we didn’t know who was to blame!  But never once did I kill a raider by doing this.  Never once did I cause a raid wipe or force us to spend the next 5 minutes summoning back players who needed to go repair as a result.

There’s a big difference between using your abilities to have fun and being a jerk.  If you want to knock mobs away from the tanks, that’s fine.  If you want to punt the carefully positioned pack out of the AoE, that’s fair.  The 3 seconds lost recasting isn’t the end of the world.  But if you are going to do it, at least wait until the tanks have enough aggro that you aren’t ganking your own raid.

Nerf Omen of Clarity

I don’t know if it is the boredom of a lack of new raid content to progress in, or the upcoming removal of the drake rewards for the Naxx based achievements…but recently my guild has been bitten by the achievement bug.  Instead of planning runs to farm gear or earn badges, players are more concerned with ticking off those achievements one by one.  This week something revolutionary happened! 

For the first time ever, I spec’d my druid into a pure cat build.  Ever since the first talent point that I earned at level ten, my druid has been meant to tank.  It is his purpose; It is what I love to do.  But given that we usually raid with 4 or 5 tanks for our progression, it’s hard to draw straws and tell someone that they get to sit out of the 10 man adventure.  Since I’m kicking around the idea of making my 3.1 duel spec a trash dps build, I figured it an ideal opportunity to test my output in a manner that didn’t require the raid to suffer my experimentation.

So as we begin preparations for the raid, I collect the necessary mats for my needed kitty glyphs.  I swap out my bear gems for ones better suited for a dps.  Once I’m properly geared, with proper gems and enchants, I begin casting my most beloved spell, Teleport: Moonglade (you’re not a real druid until you’ve fled from an arena match by breaking combat, restealthing, finding a safe corner and teleporting to freedom!).  I hop into the water, bear paddle my way to the trainer and ask my trainer to clear my mind of what I have learned so that I can start anew.  As I begin to spec, I hear this very familiar sound and my hand twitches instinctively towards my swipe key.  As I ponder the situation I say to myself “thats funny…I usually only hear that sound when omen of clarity procs a…clearcast?!”

I’ve randomly seen it occur when crafting bandages or while skilling up my leatherworking, but this was something I never expected.  Had I not seen it myself, I never would have believed it.  I managed to proc two clearcasts by doing nothing more than spending talent points. 

Omen of Clarity is clearly in need of a nerf =P

A Quick Update

I’m very disappointed with myself for not posting in such a long period of time.  My fellow Canadians will understand why when I say that I am a banker working through RSP season.  For any Americans…think 401K.  All I have to say is /wrist.  But today is the due date for 2008 contributions so I should be back to normal!  /cheer

A brief update however regarding my post Am I Hoarding.  Heritage dropped for what was probably the 20th time and I bid without hesitation!

A Simple Request

I would like to make a simple request to all my fellow bloggers and the World of Warcraft community at large.  Before I do, however, I would like to share a brief story with you all:

A few days ago, I was in Silvermoon cleaning out my mailbox and bank.  Why Silvermoon, you ask?  Orgrimmar is much too crowded for my tastes.  The constant gold seller spam makes it impossible to keep up with tells.  Thunder Bluff is very peaceful, but the small pond always distracts me.  I’m constantly fighting the urge to jump in, shift into angry seal form, and do tricks for fish.  As for the Undercity, while I may be a reasonably geared tank, the raid leader of a successful guild and an-all around veteran of the game for more years than I’d like to admit…I’ll be damned if I can find the flight master without running a few laps around the city first.

As I continue to make my laps between the mailbox, bank and auction house, I notice someone in trade looking for leatherworker with TBC patterns.  I link my profession from my spellbook and he is very excited to see that I can make him the leg patch he wants for his twink.  He tells me he has all the materials required but his hearth is in Orgrimmar and he can’t get to me very easily.  I open my bag to notice that I still have a 47 minutes remaining on my hearth as well.  I tell him not to worry and that I’ll gladly make my way to him, but given that my hearth is down as well, it will take me a few minutes.  I equip my trusty Blessed Medallion of Karabor, teleport to Black Temple, and begin my flight to Shattrath City to make use of its portals.  As I fly I wonder to myself for perhaps the millionth time why they removed the flight speed bonus from Riding Crops and my Charm of Swift Flight. 

A few minutes later I arrive in Shattrath, teleport to Orgrimmar and meet my target in front of the bank.  As he starts to open trade he realizes that he left one of the materials needed with his main and tells me he’ll be right back.  I bite back my comment aboot him not having the decency to take the time to prepare himself as I made my winding journey through Azeroth all the way to him.  Instead, I patiently wait for him to relog and mail himself the necessary items to his alt.  As I sit waiting, my chat log quickly becomes overwhelmed with sales pitches to buy gold at the lowest prices on the server and I remember why I was in Silvermoon in the first place.

After what seems like an eternity, he logs back on and hands me the items.  He asks if I would be so kind as to install the patch on his pants for him as his he is too low a level to do so himself.  I tell him that I don’t mind but that he’ll need to trade me the pants.  For reasons beyond my understanding, I can’t install an armor patch via the Item Will Not Be Traded slot, as an enchanter would sell an enchant.  Reluctantly, he agrees — but only after I make a joke aboot not having made this journey across several continents just to steal a twink Bind-on-Equip green.  I craft the patch, install it on the pants and place them back in the trade window.  To my astonishment he clicks trade without offering so much as a copper as a tip.  As my jaw drops, I send him a two word tell saying “No tip?”  His response is a simple “lol.”  Not aboot to hold his pants hostage for a meaningless few coins while I lecture him on the etiquette of tipping, I simply shake my head and click the trade button. 

At the end of the day, I don’t really care.  I didn’t expect to be handsomely compensated for my services.  I didn’t agree to the transaction to make any profit at all.  Not only do I enjoy being helpful when posssible, but I know firsthand what it’s like to spend weeks searching for someone on your server who actually has the pattern you are looking for.  The point of a tip is to let the other person know that you apprecaite their services.  I did invest many long hours into farming the reputation for that pattern.  I did take a good amount of time out of my day for him.  I stopped what I was doing, made a rather annoying journey to get to him and waited patiently when he wasn’t even prepared for the transaction when I got there. 

It’s taken me a few days to realize the consequence of this one player’s lack of manners.  Everytime I see someone in trade chat asking for a leatherworker, I shift click their name to see where they are.  If they happen to be in the same area as me, I’ll send them a tell.  If not, I find myself shaking my head and going on aboot my business.  One inconsiderate player has caused me to change the manner in which I offer my services.  I’m simply less willing to waste 10 minutes of my life helping a random stranger that may or may not appreciate the effort I make to help them.

So here is my request.  Please, for the love of mana, tip.  Tip your waiter.  Tip your hairdresser.  Tip the pizza delivery man.  You don’t have to make it a huge amount, just let them know that you appreciate what they do for you.  And definitely, definitely, tip your in-game crafters

With Great Loot, Comes Great Responsibility

A fair number of players in my guild, along with a rapidly growing population in the game in general, seem to be starting to burn out on running the same old content ever week.  During TBC or even vanilla WoW there was a far greater variety of instances to raid.  10 man raids could tackle Karazhan or Zul’Aman with the option of scaling up to timed runs when players start to grow weary of killing the same bosses time and time again.  25 man raids had a completely different set of instances to look forward to, along with some very exhilarating fights to take part in (Personally, I found Kael’Thas to be an absolute rush and the best designed encounter in the game…WTB Kael’Thas 2.0?).

In today’s WotLK there is no such variety as of yet.  Naxxramas is the only real raid instance in existence at the moment (with exception of course to the two one boss wonder instances that seem to take longer to summon your entire raid to than it does to collect your loot).  Even more depressing is that there is little challenge;  it can be effectively farmed in a single night by PuGs in crafted PvP blues without any class synergies.  While this may not be any different than the days of Molten Core or Karazhan being the only active raid zone, Naxxramas is recycled content.  But the coup de grac is that Naxxramas can be run twice in a given lockout period via both 10-man and 25-man raids.  The end result is players are growing bored with Naxxramas at an alarming rate. 

This is starting to lead me to an interesting line of thought.  I am sure that many people out there will disagree with my sentiment, but I personally adhere to the old belief that guilds don’t gear players…guilds gear raids.  Raiding isn’t an exchange of goods and services.  It’s not like walking into restaurant, eating the meal prepared for you and offering them monetary compensation at the meals completion.  The guild does not bestow you with that glistening new sword as payment for your long hours of invested time in raids; you receive the sword to enhance your performance in the raid. 

Whether it may be a sword, or a trinket or a ring that drops, one thing never changes.  Only one person will receive the item that 25 people worked to get.  Thus, the winner of the item doesn’t just get his or her new trophy, but they also win the responsibility to use this item to the benefit of the other 24.

Am I suggesting that you are a possession of the guild?  Of course not.  It’s not like receiving an item is the final stage in some dark pact that requires you to drink demons blood and surrender your soul (believe me, I should know!  After all I am dating a warlock).  You aren’t expected to skip out of work early to make raids.  We’re not going to call you in the middle of your anniversary dinner with your significant other and tell you that your presence is required.  But there is an intrinsic understanding that you will use your new power for the guilds greater good.

Suppose I’m running Naxx 25 with my guild and we come to Heigan the Unclean.  We do our dance, make a clean kill and go through our loot.  We discover that Demisehas dropped and our 2-handed dps classes are beginning to drool.  We go through our bids and via our EPGP loot system determine that I’m the winner.  I gladly take the mace, hearth to Dalaran, and inform my guild that I’m bored with Naxx and that I am going to retire my druid to PvP until Ulduar comes out. 

If this was the case, clearly, I would be abusing my guild.  They reward me with a new mace and I turn my back on them until the next content patch.  Obviously this is a rather extreme scenario, but where do we draw the line?  When is it okay to call it quits after the guild has extensively geared up one of it’s raiders?  When is it acceptable to take a break and when is it in bad taste to do so?

This is a problem I am currently faced with.  A few of our raiders are starting to become bored with the games current content.  They already have most of the best in slot upgrades they wanted and are waiting for Ulduar to come out.  Our main death knight dps let his account expire without even running it by us and expects us to still have a raiding slot for him when he comes back.  Our main rogue since mid way through TBC doesn’t log in for days at a time and doesn’t even bother to sign up on our raid calandar as not attending.

We don’t by any means need these two players present to clear Naxx.  Their absence won’t be the difference between wiping on Kel’Thuzad all night and failing to get the kill in before reset.  But it does mean that bosses die slower and raids take longer.  It does mean that Heroic: Make Quick Werk Of Him will need to wait a few more weeks until we get the gear for it.  It does mean that our progression Sartharion +3 Drakes attempts are short two of our guild’s best melee dps. 

Whats worse is the situation that it puts me in.  I am now in an awkward position where I need to make the choice between the lesser of two evils.  I can recruit new raiders to fill these roles so we aren’t forced to clear Naxx without a full raid or cancel our Sartharion progression attempts.  But then when Ulduar comes out and those players taking a break return, I have the unfortunate task of deciding who to bench.  Those that took a break from the game or those that have been helping us raid for the last few months.

Either way, the guild loses.

Am I Hoarding?

Recently my guild has begun to discuss whether or not our current loot system is working.  The last time we took a long hard look at is was back in 2007 when we started running Karazhan, so I think it is long overdue that we open discussion on the issue.  As my co-GM and I have started to realize, the game has changed drastically since TBC.  In this new world of Northrend, the right thing for the guild back then may not be the right thing for us now.

Overall, the issue is that players seem to be point hoarding.  I’ll spare readers the boring details of our ratio-based loot system known as EPGP, but players earn points by raiding and killing bosses (Effort Points) as well as when they recieve items in raids (Gear Points).  Your EP is then divided by your GP and this determines your ratio.  The bidding player with the highest ratio wins the item.  If no player wants the item for a main spec, it goes to offspec for 10% the GP cost.

We are beginning to see two major problems in our raids.  First, players are intentionally attempting to undermine the system.  We are noticing that pure dps classes are withholding main spec bids and attempting to win items on offspec costs for a fraction of the GP.  While a given gun may be more beneficial for a Survival spec hunter than a Beast Master, it certainly isn’t an offspecitem like it would be for the Feral druid rolling on the spellpower staff.  These type of bids are clear attempts to earn upgrades without paying for them.

The second problem we are noticing is that players are passing on marginal upgrades.  Although Ghostcrawler has explicitly acknowledged that Blizzard is intentionally itemizing Naxx gear in a less than ideal manner in an attempt to force players to make decisions, many of our raiders seem content using ilevel 200 gear from Naxx 10 that is inferior in nearly every way to their ilvl 213 equivilants from Naxx 25.  No matter how they attempt to justify it, the only reason they are doing so is because the item would come with a GP cost that would lower their overall ratio.

After drafting my thoughts on the issue and posting them on our guild’s forums, my gf/co-GM pointed something out to me that I hadn’t thought of.  I am currently using Chained Military Gorget for my necklace and have passed repeatedly on Heritage.  While I’ve written this off many times saying “the 9 stamina hardly concerns me,” she posed an interesting question.  She asked me if I was willing to write off 9 stamina on every gear slot I had.  Suddenly it occured to me that while that 9 stamina will never be the difference between a clean kill and us wiping, this line of thinking is clearly flawed.  If I lose 9 stamina on 10 slots, it’s the equivilant of not using my leatherworking stamina patch to bracer.

How can I break this flawed line of thinking that I have allowed myself to slump into?   More importantly … how can I find the right fix to our guilds loot system when I myself have become part of the problem?  /ponder

This tank sucks!

We’ve all been there. At some point between your first Ragefire Chasm run and that recent Heroic daily debacle, you’re almost certain to have met that tank. His heart may be in the right place, but that doesn’t get you any closer to that shiny new belt you’ve had your eye on. You relate the situation to your guildies who double over with laughter as you swear off PuG’s for the 4th time this week. There’s always tomorrow right?

…but what if you are “that tank”? You’ve been reading all the guides on the class forums explaining your maximum hate rotation. You’ve copied that cookie cutter spec to the T. You’ve equipped yourself will all the best addons to enhance your awareness and have cleverly keybound all those handy macros you’ve heard aboot. Yet none of that seems to change the fact that the holy priest is complaining that he needs to drink after every pull, or that the resto druid says he has all his HoT’s ticking on you, yet he still can’t keep you up. What do you do?

First, it’s entirely possible that you’ve just happened across that healer. If this is the case, there really isn’t much you can do. Write it off as another failed PuG and try again tomorrow. But if you find that this rare occurrence seems to be growing more and more common, then the issue may be you after all.

Lucky for us, there are a few things we can do to fix this. One of the greatest things aboot tanking is that half the battle is fought before you even zone into the instance. Though you may have a few abilities to ease the blows or stall your downfall until your healers can save you, there is surprisingly little you can actively do to alleviate incoming damage.  What you can do is select pieces itemized for the stat that you are lacking, or regem to enhance a certain area of performance.

One important thing to realize is that there is no such thing as “one set of gear.”  As tanks we find that we desire a great variety of stats.  While pure DPS classes are mostly content picking the hat the comes with more spell power, or that bracer with slightly more attack power … often times our upgrades come with at the cost of a trade off.  That said, next time you upgrade your ilevel 200 chest to an ilevel 213, don’t be too quick to find that vendor in Dalaranwilling to pay you a few gold to melt it down into scrap metal.  While it may be an upgrade overall, chances are that one of the two pieces is more focused on avoidance, while the other is itemized for effective health.  But that is a lesson for another day entirely…

Before you can start to strengthen your toon and lose the reputation of being that tank, you need to determine what is killing you.  Short of the obvious exceptions like forgetting to move out of the shadow fissure, line of sighting your healer or your healer deciding that you’ve been “hogging the heals” all night and its time to let other people have some too (seriously … this happened to me in Mara once), there are three ways for a tank to die.  Each is attributed to a very different area of stats; enhancing your toons abilities in one of these areas doesn’t make you any less likely to die from the other two methods.  They are as follows:

1) Burst in 2 seconds -

A burst is a sudden influx of damage.  It is not a normal occurrence but rather a series of events that will stack together infrequently.  The most famous example of this is the textbook Onyxia style, breath + cleave combo.  This is the single most dangerous threat in any encounter as healers are powerless to save you. 

The Solution

The reason you are dying is because your healers don’t have enough time to react.  You need to be able to survive long enough to receive that Holy Light or Greater Heal crit.  The only way to combat this problem is to stack more stamina.  With enough life, these dangerous bursts won’t be able to kill you instantly.  Focus on gemming for more stamina and select pieces which grant higher HP pools.

2) Incoming damage -

In between all those dodges and parries, you are going to get hit.  Since you cannot rely on avoiding an attack, you need to depend on your mitigation.  The more damage you are able to mitigate, less healing per second will be required to keep you alive.  If you are receiving too much incoming damage, healers will be overwhelmed.  Slowly you will be able to witness your health drop, moving farther from that full position and ever closer to that fatal zero.

The Solution

Although having more healing output from your healer(s) would solve the problem, this is not an action that you can take personally.  Thus the onus is on you to up your mitigation.  Mitigation (not to be confused with avoidance) is anything that reduces the amount of damage dealt by a given attack.  Armor is the most significant manner in which to do this.  Ensure that you are using your correct “stance” (defensive stance, bear form, righteous fury or frost presence) as well as taking full advantage of any relivant mitigation talents such as toughness or thick hide.

3) Healers running out of mana (OOM) -

During the course of a fight you are going to be taking a huge amount of damage.  The single best way to reduce the damage that a given attack deals, is to not receive.  If you receive too many hits, healers will not be able to find a healthy rhythmm and will be forced to burn through their mana reserves.  An OOM healer saves no tanks.

The Solution 

Even though you can’t rely on avoidance to save you at that crucial moment, it is the singlemost effective tool in lowering overall damage.  Simply put, avoidance is the act of avoiding an attack.  This would be miss, parry and dodge (blocked attacks don’t prevent damage, they reduce it; this makes block a proc-based mitigation stat).  To ease the stress on your healers, focus on pieces that itemize for more defence, dodge, or parry.  Never gem for parry.  Instead gem for defence and dodge as these will yield a higher return.

It’s hard to learn a new class.  It’s intimidating to enter a group as a different element than you are used to … but everyone starts somewhere.  My first toon was a Human warlock because I thought my voidwalker was the coolest thing ever.  Yet today I find myself main-tanking for a progression guild.  So don’t lose heart when your group falls apart.  Don’t take it personally when your healer rants at you for being the worst tank hes ever seen.  Figure out what’s killing you, learn how to fix it and resolve to never become that tank.

My First Confession

What good is having a blog called “Confessions of a Feral Druid” if it doesn’t live up to its name?  We’ve all done dumb things in game.  It could be that time you let your warlock alt drown in the Swamp of Sorrows because you forgot to renew unending breath.  Or maybe it was that run in which you didn’t realize your rogue was duel-wielding broken daggers for the last two bosses.  Whatever it was, just remember that there will come a time when you will look back on it an laugh. Today, I would like to share a story with you. I’m sure this will be the first post in a very long series of confessions that I will make over time.

Last night my guild was making our first attempt at Sartharion 25-man, with two drakes up (Tenebron and Vesperon). Like any guild we spent our first several wipes trying to teach our raiders the crucial positioning: dodging waves, along with the delicate art of avoiding the infamous Bad. We were making wonderful progress. On our very first attempt we managed to kill Tenebron before her whelps acquired a taste for our healers. (Apparently, undead flesh seasoned with holy energies, gently bathed with waves of liquid magma makes for quite a delicacy.)

Slowly it all started to come together until that one perfect pull. With the aid of my ever loyal Worg Pup, I gently guided Sartharion into position. Gliding between the waves of magma, dancing out of the shadowy fissures of bad, I laugh boldly at the mighty dragon. His once sharp claws glance harmlessly off of my armored hide. His menacing flame breath is unable to ignite the fur on my back. As my claws continue to tear at his scales I can hear my allies rallying for victory. Tenebron lays motionless on the ground. Our orcs are painting their faces with the blood of the newly fallen Vesperon. The raid charges at Sartharion and I see the look of terror in his eyes. Our swords are sharp and slash though his weakened scales. Our casters are energized and begin to twist the very nether itself to do their bidding. The mighty beast howls out in pain and I see his legs begin to tremble. His strength has all but left him and he knows he cannot withstand our assults for much longer. Our victory is at hand!

Or so it seems. It was in this moment of celebration that my hand drifts slightly off course. Instead of queuing up that fatal maul, I clip my PvP snarebreaking macro … the one that shifts me into cat form. It is the single longest global cooldown of my life. I watch helplessly as the grimace on the drakes face slowly turns into a wide-toothed grin. Seizing the moment. the leviathan’s mighty maw descends on me and devours me whole. In my final moments I can hear the cries of our raid and the smell of burning flesh.

Surely I managed to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory. We zone in to find that trash has respawned.  Tomorrow is a work day — we don’t have time to reclear, and will have to come back another day. Our healers quietly discuss the situation, trying to discern who missed the heal after that devastating spike of damage I received.

I quietly sit in my chair praising Elune that gone are the days that my druid would remain in cat form instead of reverting to my original caster state before collapsing.