I think this is a reasonable and good change.

Druid Healing – Now that I have had time to get used to it, I am starting to like it more.  It’s nice using most of our entire toolset rather than using essentially 2 tools.  It just feels more involved, more thought is put into what to cast and when to do it.  The current mana limitations also play a large part in that.

Saying that, I definitely still think we are missing something in regards to quick AoE healing.  It is curious that Blizzard is pushing us a little bit back towards Rejuvenation in the next patch, since they put in such an effort to push us away from blanketing.

5 Man Heroics – I have really enjoyed the change to heroics.  It actually seems a little more like an accomplishment now than the boring chore it was during Wrath.  I will however be the first to admit that they are a lot more fun if you can run them as a guild.

However, there are a couple things I wish they would change.  First, I believe they are a little longer than they should be.  This could be solved by simply removing some of the trash pulls.  Second, there are currently a few issues that need to be addressed with the Vote to Kick feature.  I have seen, more than once, a DPS character group with a tank to get a higher priority in the queue only to have the tank drop as soon as they enter the instance.  This is hugely annoying.  The other issue is when people get to an end boss or other boss with desirable loot and boot someone so they can invite a friend for the reward.  I’m not sure how this can be fixed, but I think it needs to be addressed.

Raids - I have had a lot of fun with the raids so far.  Our guild started off doing a lot of 10 man runs to experiment while everyone got their gear in order.  So far, I have seen every encounter except for the end bosses of all 3 zones.  For the most part I have liked what I have seen from the encounters.

Currently, most every raid is fairly unforgiving when it comes to missing or not handling a mechanic correctly.  You mess up and you usually die almost instantly and possibly take someone with you (Hi Beruthiel!).  Meaning, situational awareness is a key in these raids.  With healer mana being an issue, it is also very important not to take avoidable damage.

I think my favorite raid fight at this time is probably the Twilight Ascendant Council.  It is a fast paced fight with a lot of stuff to keep up with.  I also quite enjoy Maloriak as well.  Chimaeron is about as intense as they come healer wise.  I’m not a huge fan of the Halfus fight primarily because of the random nature of it.  The fight complexity completely depends on what active drakes you draw and I don’t really like that.

Miscellanous – I enjoyed the process of getting to 85 and gearing through normal and heroic instance runs.  I have done most of the quests in every new zone with the exception of Uldum.  The quests were mostly enjoyable even though they were fairly repetitive.  One thing that I wasn’t a big fan of was how all of the quests in a zone are essentially one long chain.  I would much rather them go back to the old quest hubs.

I also think that overall, they could have put a lot more thought into guild achievements, levels and rewards.  I know it’s been fixed now, but 10,000 flasks?? Are you kidding me??  I also think the low experience cap takes something away from it.  I wish they would have just made levels require more experience.  I hate artificial ceilings and the current system is nothing but that.

I think I will go ahead and wrap it up for today.  I know that I’ve done a poor job posting since Cataclysm and I will try to do a better job in the future.  I have been pretty busy.

What are your thoughts about Cataclysm so far?  What have you enjoyed most?  What do you think could be improved?

Weapon

• Power Torrent – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase Intellect by 500 for 12 sec when dealing damage or healing with spells.

I am assuming that this will be the default weapon enchant for us restos.  Intellect provides mana and spellpower so this enchant is pretty much the upgrade to the current spell power enchant except that it is a triggered increase.

• Heartsong – Permanently enchant a weapon to sometimes increase Spirit by 200 for 15 sec when casting spells.

This enchant seems inferior to Power Torrent.  For more info, please see Moonra’s comment below.

Feet

• Lavawalker – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and mastery rating by 35.

It remains to been seen how important mastery will be in Cataclysm.  At this point, I’m assuming this enchant is better for us restos than the stamina/run speed enchant.  Since I’m assuming that movement speed will still be important in encounters, this will likely be my boot enchant.

• Earthen Vitality – Permanently enchant boots to increase movement speed slightly and Stamina by 30.

This looks like a direct upgrade to the current +15 stamina/run speed enchant.  With the mastery/run speed enchant this is probably suited better for PvP than PvE.

• Haste – Permanently enchant boots to increase haste rating by 50.

Important enchant if you are below the haste cap.

• Mastery – Permanently enchant boots to increase mastery rating by 50.

As I mentioned previously, it remains to be seen how valuable that the mastery stat is.  Since this only gives 15 mastery over the mastery/run speed enchant, I’m assuming that Lavawalker is the better of the two enchants.

Wrist

• Greater Speed – Permanently enchant bracers to increase haste rating by 65.

The obvious enchant if you are under the haste cap.

• Exceptional Spirit – Permanently enchant bracers to increase Spirit by 50.

Since more spirit, gives a higher rate of mana regen.  This is probably the standard enchant if you are already at the haste cap.

• Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant bracers to increase critical strike rating by 65.

Now that all HoTs have the chance to crit, crit may become more valuable.  However, I’m not sure that I see a time that this would be used by a resto druid before either of the two enchants listed above.

Chest

• Peerless Stats – Permanently enchant chest armor to increase all stats by 20.

Not much to say on this one.  More stats across the board = good!

• Exceptional Spirit - Permanently enchant a chest to increase Spirit by 40.

Possibly the better enchant for healers that are having mana issues.

Back

• Greater Intellect – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase Intellect by 50.

I think this is the obvious cloak enchant.

• Greater Critical Strike – Permanently enchant a cloak to increase critical strike rating by 65.

I can’t imagine Crit being elevated to the point where it would be chosen over intellect, but I listed it here for completion sake.

Hand

• Haste – Permanently enchant gloves to increase haste rating by 50.

The obvious choice if you are not at the haste cap.

• Greater Mastery – Permanently enchant gloves to increase mastery rating by 65.

Regardless of how effective Mastery is, this is the obvious hand enchant if you are above the haste cap.

Offhand

• Superior Intellect – Permanently enchant a shield or held item to increase Intellect by 100.

No brainer here.

Ring (Enchanters Only)

• Intellect – Permanently enchant your own ring to increase Intellect by 40. Enchanting your ring causes it to become soulbound and requires 475 Enchanting skill to remain active.

Again this is a no brainer if you are an enchanter.

There are a couple slots that you have a choice of enchants to use, but it still seems like most slots definitely have an optimal enchant.

Did y’all know that it is a felony to play online poker in the state of Washington?  That’s right a felony!  Some of the online sites have began blocking access to their sites from the state.  Since I play quite a bit of online poker, this kind of thing hits home with me.  Why does the government want to tell us what we can and cannot do in our own homes?  I thought this was supposed to be a free country.  It’s also not like the State of Washington can try to pretend they are protecting people from themselves.  This is a state that has both Indian casinos as well as a State Lottery.  Are you freaking kidding me!?

In other news, the Supreme Court is hearing a case from California that wants to make it illegal to sell violent video games to anyone under the age of 18.  Now I agree, that there are many things that should not be allowed for children and violent games are one of them, but why is stance not applied to music, movies, etc.  Violent games are already rated by the industry.  In general, a vendor will not sell an M rated game to a minor.  This is an issue that should be regulated by parents, not by the government.

We (especially our politicians) ridicule other countries for taking freedoms away from their people and yet the same thing is happening here.  The real question here is what’s next?  You may think that these things have nothing to do with WoW, but I think they do.  There have been numerous studies about the addictive nature of MMORPGs.  Would it really be that big of a leap for our government to ban video games that are deemed to addictive?  I mean what the hell is this, China?

Above is my WoL parse from last night.  I have several observations.

1. Absolutely shocked that Tranquility was in my top 3 healing output wise for the night.  I’m really liking the new Tranquility
2. Not casting Regrowth nearly enough
3. Doing a hideous job keeping Lifebloom up
4. Not remembering to Swiftmend on every cool down
5. Obviously not using Nourish to refresh Lifebloom.  One Nourish cast the entire night.  Seriously!?

I guess the main thing that I can take away from last night is that I’m doing a very poor job adjusting to the “new” style of Druid healing.  Also, I think I only remembered to use ToL one time the entire night.

I definitely have some things to work on.

Below is the basic progression map. Obviously your mileage may vary, i.e. If you’re Paragon or Premonition you will be able to skip some of the below and/or mix and match at your discretion.

*Normal Dungeons/Crafting/Questing to get full set of 85 blues (non-heroic) to do Heroic dungeons.
*Heroic dungeons to get full set of 85 Heroic blues to do Normal mode raids.
*Normal raids to get full set of 85 epics (non-heroic) to do Heroic mode raids.
*Heroic Raids to get full set of 85 Heroic epics, which will presumably help a bit on Sinestra and the next tier (when released with patch 4.1.0)

*Badge vendors to help fill in gaps at all tier levels.

*No real gating to speak of for ship.

*Sinestra opens after Cho’gall is defeated on HEROIC mode. No timers or attempt limits, but she will pound you relentlessly. She has better than Heroic epic level gear (half a tier better).

Source

I bolded the most interesting points.  This is the first time I’ve actually heard a Blizzard representative say that there is no real gating at launch.  I’m not a huge fan of the whole concept of gating, so this makes me happy.

The second point kind of sounds like the EQ progression server.  Basically, an area opens up after the boss of the previous raid instance has been killed.  This is still gating, but at least the players have an impact on the length of time the content will be unavailable.  This is probably better than requiring keying or some type of attunement out of a previous instance.

Thoughts?

I also spend a decent amount of time at the green felt and virtual green felt where my user name is also Verile, so there may be some poker updates mixed in.

About the online auction house itself, I find it to be a little difficult/cumbersome to use with my IPhone.  It is just hard to look through a lot of data on such a small screen.  On the other hand, I really like the online interface.  It is very easy to re-list auctions that you have been undercut on and when you post items it shows you what competitors currently have those items listed for.  Here is a screenshot of the post item screen.

As you can see it’s very easy to efficiently list items at competitive prices.

One thing that I don’t really like is that I think the Online Auction House takes away from a little bit of the “realism” of the game.  You can list items from any location, it doesn’t matter if your character is near an auction house or not.  Also, you can post items from you bags, bank, or mailbox.  It definitely makes things more convenient, but it also seems a little bit out of place.  I’m generally not a fan of things that allow people to spend real life money to gain an advantage in a game and I think this feature qualifies in that category.

On a different subject, I was able to play a little bit with my shaman that I’m leveling as part of my have one of every healer project.  I must say that he seems to be a lot more powerful since 4.0.1.  It took a little bit to get over losing some of the abilities that I once had, but the addition of Earth Shield makes life a lot easier at these levels.  I’m still only level 24, but things definitely started to get more fun the last few levels.  I’ve really been trying to spend quite a bit of time in instances.  Right now I pretty much just use Earth Shield and Healing Surge.  I’m not sure how often I’m actually supposed to throw down my totems and most of the time I forget about them totally.  Any suggestions here?  Things have been really easy so far.  Though I’m excited to get some more of the class defining abilities.

One thing I really do like more about Vuhdo than Grid are the separate panels.  I really like that they allow you to have a separate panel for pets.  I wish that Grid allowed this type of thing.  My main issue here is that I have horizontal groups and space allocated for my Grid panel.  However, when there are more than 5 pets in a raid it completely screws up my Grid panel.

I’m considering using both Grid and Vuhdo, but only using the pet panel from Vuhdo.  I wonder if that would even work.  Has anyone tried doing something similar?  How do you handle large numbers of pets in your UI?

Thanks!

I was able to carve up an almost usable configuration last night, but I’m having a couple issues.

Are there any Vuhdo masters out there that would be willing to answer a couple questions from me?