Well from the notes, not much really. There has been a lot of talk about a Druid Cooldown to pull us (and our blue chain healing friends) inline with other classes like priests and pallies. Even a blue post saying;

We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn’t the kind of thing we can address via a hotfix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.

The general feeling amongst the community is there are a couple of different options to achieve this;

1. Enhance Barkskin – There has been a lot of talk over the years about Barkskin being castable on other players, this would definately be one way to provide a ‘shield’ type ability and easily lends itself to fullfilling that cooldown/catchup type ability we currently lack.
2. Enhance Mushrooms – mushrooms are a cool little ability, reality is for Resto it’s unused except while stuffing around. Adding a +heal or mitigation to the ability could be a cool way of getting some use out of this spell. Biggest issue here is the GCD’s that would be required to make it work. Maybe a way of forcing the shrooms to auto detonate would remove this restriction.
3. Add a new Proc to an existing ability- Adding a proc type ability that add damage mitigation to Swiftmend or crits from Nourish/Healing Touch is an interesting thought. It would definately encourage the use of more crit in the resto gear sets but may not be as reliable as you would like for a cooldown, but if it is a high proc rate with lesser benefits like 15% damage mitigation per proc to a max of 90% it builds in an interesting mechanic to our healing. Incoming big damage, land 4-5 big heals on a tank prior to the hit and build up the mitigation percentage.
4. Enhance Efflorescence – Either change the effect or add a new damage mitigation to our only new spell in Cata would make this ability more interesting. At the moment it is a weak ability at best, just adding a little (1k per tick if you’re lucky) extra healing, but it definately isnt high on the priority list.

The 4.1 PTR Notes are pretty thin for Druids at the moment but a little sniff of change is there;

Efflorescence has a new spell effect.

I look forward to seeing what they are planning….

Upy

It has been a long time since I’ve really reworked my UI, overall I have been happy with it and it’s been working for me. My one gripe with my setup was my unit frames for player/target/focus etc were below my direct eyeline while raiding. While this didn’t cause too many issues it did mean looking around my screen a lot more than I would like, especially in a pressure situation where a lot of healing and self preservation is required.

The other driver for this rework was the deathly silence from the DXE team since Cataclysm was released. Now myself being a bit of an addon author, I get it, a lot of other things take priority over delivering an update to the community, but this one addon played a core role in my raiding interface. So with a little bit of a grumble I downloaded DBM, an old friend who overall just works but there are some aspects that (from a UI perspective) gives me the shits, and started configuring it to my needs. The boss frames almost made me cry and really inspired me to find a better way of delivering that piece of information.

Enter oUF_UpyHUD (I’m still debating about whether to release this updated layout for oUF) which is an update of my current oUF_Upy layout available on wowinterface, the key objectives to be delivered with this updated layout being;

1. Ensure key unit frames are central to my screen
2. Provide boss frames and remove the ugly Bliz default ones (those ones that sit off to the right of your screen)

So after making the decision to do it, I got my trusty scrap paper and pencil out and started drawing. I went through maybe 10 pieces of paper before settling of a good starting point for the UI.

Now I see a lot of UI’s with raid frames below the character. I’ve tried this but for me, it just doesn’t work. For some reason it encourages me to focus on my raid frames too much and my awareness suffers significantly. I have, and probably always will have my raid frames to the left of my character, close enough that even when I’m not directly looking at my characters surroundings I can see if something has changed or moved or exploded on or near my character. The unfortunate result of this is that it looks like an inbalanced interface, lucky for me I’m not obsessive compulsive about symetry I guess.

I wanted all of my essential pieces of information around my raid frames because that is where my eyes are looking for a large percentage of my raiding time. I decided to move the player frame to sit just below my raid frames (moving the pet frames to the left rather than below the player units) with the goal of improving self preservation, and built cooldown timers above my frames.

You can see in the screen capture below that there is a lot of information in quite a small area, but as a healer this is probably the most important info I need regularly.

On the right hand side I decided to move my other unit frames up and have them lined up vertically instead of horizontally. This will bring some synergy to the layout while also added very important information back into my area of focus.

The screenshot below outlines this part of the user interface

I designed the Layout so that my player and target frames are aligned with each other with my cast bar sitting along side my players from and meeting my targets castbar in the middle of my interface.

I also worked out how to add Boss Frames into my oUF layout (that also includes a function to remove the blizz ones (/vom). This is designed to sit at the top of my screen right in the middle. May not be everyones preference but it works for me.

These are the 3 core areas of change but I also made some significant changes to other areas. The end result is the below user interface. I will be updating my UI page with this and include all the details in terms of what modules are what.

I’m still tweaking and looking at other items I can add into my oUF layout (like tank frames!) but thought I would share my thought processes when designing or redesigning a user interface

Upy

As some of you know Im soon off to the US for another stint for a project. As much as Id love to be able to focus on games and other RL stuff, reality is very different. It got me thinking about what the best way to handle this when leading a guild.

For me being in the US means being on a completely different time zone to my family, friends and girl friend. This by itself is enough to make it tough, let alone trying the manage a guild from afar and logging on at 4am for raids…eeeeeeep

This could of course be relevant for many things; needing a break, having a child etc etc

So when is it best for the guild for you a step down, or hand the reigns to someone else?

I have asked myself some questions;

Do I feel you can still run things? How active and responsible is my leadership group? Can I randomly log in and manage the left overs without watching the guild crumble while I’m sleeping?

I go into this latest trip a little bit more confident knowing it had worked before.

What challengers have you experienced? Did you get over it and push through? Is is selfish to keep the GM position in such times?

What do you think?

Upy

I dont know if this is a common issue for other officers/raid leaders but ensuring raiders come prepared to raids in an ongoing issue for our guild. To assist with this I have built an addon that is installed by the raid and points them in the right direction The addon is called Ayr.

Someone on my guild forums found this tool and I thought I’d post about it, I have already used it for my 2 strats that went up today, it’s called Boss Blueprint and it allows you to drop Raid Markets, Role Icons , movement arrows and area highlights to an existing encounter BluePrint

You can pick from a number of Instances and Encounters (only Cataclysm ones at the moment) and then use the icons to design your strat.

Click on an icon and it will appear on the working area, from there drag-drop is around the area, resize etc.

The only feature lacking is the ability to add text notes. This would mean I wouldnt need to bring the images into another app to add comments etc to the image itself.

Atramedes is a poor soul, blinded and unable to see the annoying pipsqueekes pocking it with swords and other nasties!

This fight is split into 2 phase that repeat until the boss is squished or you adventurers are. The fight also utilises the new “Alternate Power Bar” implemented in 4.0.1 to represent “Sound” (Why blizzard didnt just use a debuff like sanity on Yogg I don’t knokw but there you go). The basics of this encounter is the bosses abilities add sound to your power bar, if your sounds hits 100% then Atramedes can hear you and find you and stomp your face.

Before we start, I’ll give you a couple of links;

Raid Wide Sound Meter: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/atramedes.aspx
Will present you with a list of the raiders with the highest sound percentages. This can be used to call for gongs (more on this later)

Individual Sound Meter: http://www.wowace.com/addons/customplayerpowerbaralt/
If like me the default sound indicator hurts your sense of balance and sits under action bars and unit healths then maybe give this a little looking over.

LitePanels Implementation
I will upload an update to include simple LitePanels code to present your AlternatePowerBar in a more simple method when I get around to it.

Phase 1 – Ground Phase

This phase lasts a total of 80 seconds and is really a tard check. Your real goal is to avoid the avoidable abilities to keep your sound low.

The below image defines the positioning for the ground phase. The boss is engaged and pulled to the middle of the room. Melee should be at max range, the hit box on this bastard is HUGE!! Range. Ranged loosely stacked on one side.

Sunar Pulse – 4 bright shiny disks will spawn under the boss and move out in a random kind fashion. Tanks be prepared to straif left and right to avoid (do not move backwards or you’ll stuff Ranged).

Modulation - Unavoidable AOE damage, generally lands after a Sonic Breath so make sure people are healed up quickly, especially the focus from that ability.

Sonic Breath – Cast at the target with the highest sound, usually being a ranged. Boss will face you and cast for 2 seconds before shooting fire at you. The cast with last for 6 seconds and should be kited by the target right (as shown above in the positioning picture as an X) while the rest of range move to the right.

Searing Flame - Massive AOE ability that must be interupted by clicking on a gong. This should be done by someone who is very reliable and preferably has a movement increase on a small cooldown, Shaman, Rogue or Kitty will do nicely. Once a gong is used the boss will destroy it!

Phase 2 – Air Phase

This phase lasts 40 seconds and it definately what needs to be right for you to down the boss. Best plan is for everyone to be moving during this phase to avoid standing in disks.

Roaring Flame Breath - Works just like Sonic Breath does, he focusses the highest sound player and then the fire must be kited as best as possible. The person who is nominated to gong duty in ground phase must watch this and when the fire is catching (and it will) hit a gong. The boss with then focus on the raider who hit the gong and chase them. This is why the movement increase is important to get away without using another gong.

Disks will continue to be dropped but this time on raiders, move away from them and avoid all the fire on the ground. Ideally you will get through this phase using 1-2 gongs.

That’s it, there is no actual enrage but if you use all the gongs and the boss is up, you’re screwed!! Use gongs sparingly but also keep an eye on people sound levels, you may need to use a gong to reset them outside the normal interupt abilities.

I’m thinking that the best time to take lust would be straight after a gong when there are no other abilities incoming.

Rinse and Repeat, Good Luck!!

Magmaw will most likely be one of the first bosses you attempt in this instance and while it seems there is a lot happening once you have the strat down pat it can be a relatively easy kill.

The fight can be basically broken down into 2 phases

Phase 1

This can be essentially labelled as the ‘stay alive till phase 2 phase’

Things to look out for:

Pillar of flame – Magmaw will summon a lava patch under someone in the raid after a few seconds this will explode and anyone still on the patch will get chucked into the air doing considerable damage + fall damage when they land. We had someone call this over mumble but odds on if you hadn’t started moving by the time the call was made it’s going to be too late. Once the pillar goes off it will also spawn lava parasites which need to be AOE’d down asap and it’s very important not to let them hit you. We had an OT tank them but you can also use frost traps and earthbind totems if your AOE is good enough.

Mangle – The boss will put this on the current tank and once it’s duration runs out the boss will gobble the tank up and do massive damage to the tank. The tank will need heavy healing as well as CD’s being used.

Ignition – About half the room will get covered in steam when this happens everyone need to get out of that half because the boss is about to slam himself there and most likely kill you.

The boss also does a heavy raid aoe as well as random lavaspits, both are unavoidable.

Dealing with this Phase is relatively easy if you execute the strat properly. We had the range dps stack on one side of the room every time a pillar spawned under us we would move to the opposite side, staying stacked up. By the time we had made it to the other side our OT had picked all the parasites and we go ballistic on the adds. This just repeats until phase 2.

At the end of phase 1 the boss will become mountable by 2 people, we picked 2 melee to do this. Once on the boss you gain an ability called constricting chains which you have to throw onto the spike to impale the boss which will induce phase 2.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is very much like the heart phase in ulduar for the XT-002 deconstructer’s heart phase. Once the boss is impaled the exposed head of magmaw will become targetable and the boss will take extra damage, this is what you want to save lust/time warp for. Eventually the boss will pull himself off the spike and phase 1 will start over.

Essentially this fight becomes a lot easier the better you control phase 1.

Not Enough Mana

See what I did there with the title? Clever aye? Well for us “trees” this has probably been the most obvious and painful change; we are no longer running around with wind flowing through our branches, we are no longer the easy stacking point (“stack on the bloody tree! how hard is it?!”) and our new OOM (Tree) Form is lackluster at best.

Firstly the appearance is nothing too pretty, in fact what I thought was a starting point for the models (and posted about earlier) became IT. It’s pretty ugly, the movement looks slow and clumsy (and no little root tail to giggle at), and it’s pretty ugly for all involved. Soooo I have taken the Glyph of the Treant just so I dont feel quite so ripped off.

Secondly the situational benefit of the new treeform buff has really been a big let down, in reality the only viable use for treeform is to pop it, roll Lifeblooms on multiple targets and Regrowth VERY SPAREINGLY for fear of going out of mana in 5 seconds. If we get carried away and spam regrowth, we’re OOM and then we get 40 seconds to look at ourselves, remembering good old times where we had a real tree form while the group dies due to lack of heals.

At this stage I’m considering dropping the talent altogether in favour of more mana savings related talents in the other trees (I will talk through my spec in other post).

In saying all this, there may be some value in this form once gear levels and the current mana restrictions ease up a bit.

What does the rest of the community feel about the execution of this change? Did it fall short of your expectations

In terms of the basic healing style we’ve gone from being the epitome of raid healing to being unable to easily manage healing a party of 5 with the expansion. I do not see druids walking into raids after a few heroics and being successful in maintaining a ‘rolling hots raid wide’ style and staying mana viable for an entire encounter.

With the cost of Rejuvenation and Regrowth so steep right now we can only really afford to keep it up on a tank on long fights. Add to that the limitation of our Lifebloom to a single target (outside of Tree Form) and the increase in the cast time of Nourish (2.5 seconds at entry level heroic gear and I just got mine down to 2 seconds with like 1600 haste lol) and those two spells being our two most efficient spells it’s going to be tough to compete with Chain Lightning and other efficient AOE heals out there for raid healing.

We currently stand as being a viable tank healer and competing with Pallys for that spot in raids. I hope this all changes getting to raid level gear but right now I just dont see it, I loved the druid ‘fix-er-upperer’ style of healing where we could fill healing needs and switch mid fight from raid to tanks and back again, I just hope it works out.

Am I just QQ’ing here or do people agree

So new patch is in with a few changes of note;

It is no longer possible to waste a Soulstone by attempting to use it on a dead target. The player will receive an Invalid Target error message at the completion of their channel. In a future patch, we intend this functionality to work correctly, allowing a Soulstone to be used to instantly resurrect a dead target.

This will be cool when they get it sorted, although will chew up another encounter res I assume

Halls of Origination – The damage of Fireballs automatically cast by Temple Fireshaper with Molten Barrier active has been adjusted in normal and Heroic difficulty.

Halls of Origination – The damage of Pact of Darkness cast by Temple Shadowlancer has been adjusted in normal and Heroic difficulty.

Lost City of Tol’vir – The damage of Dust Flail cast by Lockmaw has been adjusted in normal difficulty.

The Stonecore – The Crystal Shards creatures in the Corborus encounter are now level 86, down from 88.

Looks like the nerf bat (although they don’t say they’ve been decreased in most cases but we can only assume all the casual player QQ has been listened too.

Pyrite Ore is prospectable at 500 Jewelcrafting skill, down from 525.

Cool, I have a few stacks sitting in my bank and am sitting at 507 for JC so this is good news for me, some more high quality gems

Overall nothing too major but but some changes to dungeons are to be expected

A little late, but better late than never I guess Catalcysm has been a breath of fresh are for a number of reasons.

My highlights so far would be;

• Guild Enhancements – The simple concept of Guild Achievements, Reputation and Experience has really encouraged guilds to work towards common goals (and rewards). It’s great to see people actively pushing heroics and guild runs of any kind (including a group going through BC raids for Guild Achieves etc).
• Challenging Game Play – myself and a group of guildies levelled to 82 running 5mans, it was great to see that they were not only challenging but actually hard work with the level of gear we were running with. Personal highlight was hitting Lost City of the Tol’vir as a level 83 (and trying to down 87 level bosses) and getting through it after much screaming and complaints about DPS taking too much damage. The NEED to CC and actually work on strategies, it felt like hitting a raid for the first time and it felt great!
• Personal Accountability – This really comes under ‘Challenging Game Play’ but it really deserves its own point. No longer could WOTLK tanks cruise along pulling the whole instance and expect to survive, no longer can a DPS stand in fire and expect to have a big heal land to save them, no longer can a healer loose focus, even during trash pulls. There are heroic encounters that even know I simply say “I will not be healing DPS until Phase 2″ because with mana the way it is for the gear I’m wearing (A lot better than when I started trust me) and with health pools the way they are, topping up a fail dps not only takes the focus off of the tank, but also sucks you dry of mana so quickly it’s just not workable.

Now I will call out some of the areas of disappointment in the expansion, don’t get me wrong, I have had so much fun and am very happy with the expansion overall but these are commentary of the way I see it, not just blizzards work but the community as well;

• Health Pool Vs Max Healing Vs Mana Pool – I find personally that the size of the health pool even at heroic level gear is so huge, and the max healing and mana pool means that it is very hard for a healer (well resto druid) to get back on top of a lot of group damage. It relies heavily on people using health stones and bandages in high damage encounters, and while I trust my guildies to do the right thing, the reality is most PUG’s wont.
• Average iLevel Requirements (Hackable) – I think it strange that someone can have a stack of blues in there back that contribute to there iLevel, it makes no sense to me. I know people could just wear the items and them replace them when in the dungeon but it really makes a mockery of the system put into place to ensure people who were under geared couldn’t queue for heroics. My suggestion would be that the iLevel should only take into consideration the gear the player is wearing and if their iLevel drops significantly while in the instance they should be auto removed (having a threshold will allow for the occasions a 333 item > 346 item). We actually had a tank in guild I was running with who was waiting to level up Enchanting enough to DE a stack of blues in his bag, on doing so his iLevel dropped and he couldn’t queue any longer. While his tanking was fine, it just proves the stupidity of the current system.
• WOTLK Attitudes & Nubs – Lodur at WoM touched on this phenomenon where people just haven’t taken on board the new mechanics and instance requirements. I put a lot of effort into my spec and play style to adjust for the Cataclysm changes, so why hasn’t everyone else? Pure laziness or elitist attitudes maybe.

That’s all for now Tell me your highlights and lowlights so far!