Druidic Versatility and Heroic Confidence

OK, right now, it is SO official. I am changing my weekly posting day from Monday to Friday. So look! Now this post is early instead of late. :)

That being said, the events described in this blog happened earlier in the week. I apologize for any inaccuracies if anyone involved happens to read this. :P Also, I'm doing some further organization on this blog - new subcategories have been added under Tooth & Arrows, so that people who only wish to read my WoW blogs can do so, and people who are interested in the other types of games this blog is about can just look at THOSE if they wish! (This doesn't effect you if you're reading this on Blogger or LJ. Blogger already keeps the sub-blogs separate and LJ... well, I THINK I've done a good job tagging all entries!) It'll be a couple of days while I go back into the archives and properly sort all the T&A blogs into their respective new categories, though. Please pardon the dust while I remodel.

That being said, on to the meat of this blog!

I've recently started playing Kalitri, my previously mentioned Worgen Druid, on WoW again. Perhaps it was this month's holiday, Brewfest, (Des has another title now!) and the chance to get a couple of rare mounts and pets that has spurred me on, but for whatever reason, she's gone from L61 to nearly L65 in the last two days, and I only stopped playing her because I ran out of "rested." I'm going to be playing Reyune (my DK) while she has a chance to build up her rested status again. I want her and Rey both to be 85 as soon as possible. And fast leveling means one thing - dungeoning. Both characters are tanks, so this should be easy, except that I still have my aversion/fear of tanking to a point.

That makes this kind of difficult.

However, something happened two nights ago that has given me a huge confidence boost in my tanking ability. I was queuing as DPS so I could do other things around waiting to dungeon, and I had the time to do so. I got into The Underbog for Kalitri's first time after less than half an hour wait (nice, for DPS), and was looking forward to trying out my new "assist the tank" macro. I focus-targeted the tank... and waited.

The tank didn't move. It was a human warrior. The mage got jumpy and started bouncing around. The priest healer tossed a few heals over time (HoTs) on the tank, trying to spur him to move. I /poke-d him. Nothing. Then when he started moving... he was walking. The rest of the party shot ahead.... then came back. The tank slowly sauntered up to the first mob and FACE PULLED it (face pulling = walking up to the mob and getting it's attention via your very presence, instead of using any ability to generate threat and actually try to keep it ON you - not something any tank should be doing on purpose, and something all non-tank characters should do everything they can to AVOID).

I don't know if the mage didn't notice that the tank had only face pulled, or if they were just so jumpy and impatient that they didn't care... But they laid down their ice AOE (area of effect attack - an attack that hits all mobs in a certain radius, usually chosen by placing a "target circle" on the ground that only the caster can see) around the mobs that the tank had annoyed... And of course, with the tank not trying to gain threat, the mobs went straight for the mage. The tank slowly walked back toward the mage as if to take aggro away from him, but by then, the mobs had decided to leave the mage and pounce on the healer. I reacted the only way I could - I shifted to bear form, I hit Enrage, and I Challenging Roar'd the mobs onto me, gained threat with a Demoralizing Roar and two Swipes, and tanked the pull. The healer immediately shifted to healing me, and the DPS focused on the mobs. By the time the walking-tank had gotten back over to where we were, the mobs were dead.

I asked in party chat, "Tank, why walking?" I didn't get a response at first, until it was echoed by both the healer and the mage. We got one response, "Stuck. Can't stop. Lost keybinding." So the mage goes, "Look it up? Fix it?" The tank didn't respond to that... and instead started walking toward the next set of mobs. After a repeat of the previous pull (with the exception that this time, I didn't LET the mobs get on the mage or the healer before I yoinked them onto me), we vote-kicked the tank for being a troll. I mean, really? He couldn't change his keybinding? Look it up in the settings and fix it, then toggle walk OFF? It would've taken us about six hours to go through the dungeon at that pace... assuming I was able to keep everyone alive.

We requeued, with me again selecting DPS, and hoped to get a new tank. After a few minutes, a tank hadn't showed up, and the mage asked me if I could just tank it a bit while we wait, and the healer said yeah, he didn't have much time and would like to get as far as he could. So I tanked, we did small pulls... and we made it 2/3 of the way through the dungeon before our new tank showed up.

The new tank was a blood DK, who showed up mid fight and tried to steal aggro from me. I can't blame him - it must've looked like he got pulled into a mess or like we had pulled accidentally or our previous tank had ditched mid-fight. But we finished up that pull, and then he went RUNNING ahead, not giving us time to loot.

I shifted to cat and hit dash to keep up with him. He got out of line-of-sight of our healer, and died. I once again had to shift to bear and gain aggro to keep the party from wiping. (Now, to make matters worse, I had shifted talent trees back to my cat tree after the tank had shown up, so now I was tanking in my DPS spec, so I lost a lot of my armor boosts and other things I have talented in my bear spec.) I was focused on keeping the mobs off the other party members.... and I got out of LoS of the healer, and I died. But the mage was able to AOE down the last two surviving mobs, and we didn't wipe. I couldn't help but notice that the healer rezzed me before rezzing our new tank, who had been dead twice as long. :P Favoritism, much? :P

Right after that, our healer said he had to go and apologized. The mage and I wished him well, and he dropped party. The tank became dungeon leader, and requeued us to pull a new healer.... then took off running. I said, "Where are you going?!" He responded, "Drood heals."

Drood is a fairly derogatory way to refer to a druid, but I let it go. I chased after him in cat form. "I'm dual Feral, DPS and Tank. I'm not spec'd for healing!" But it was too late, he'd already pulled. I wasn't interested in being part of a wipe, and the other two dps (the talkative mage and the hunter who was so silent he might as well not have been there) had no way of doing anything, so... I shifted into caster form, targeted the tank, and started healing.

I've never healed before. Ever. To me, it's the most stressful role in the dungeon, though now both Nyx and Lona have told me otherwise. I can't change how it feels to me. And I kept remembering the things I know about druids.

First thing's first - a druid of ANY spec (Feral, Balance, or Restoration), can technically perform any role up until level 60, limited only by player skill. At that point, the talent trees and the talents gained from them start to become mutually exclusive. This is why, at 60, I changed my previous dual spec (Feral/Balance) into a Feral/Feral, with my secondary feral specialization gearing toward the bear talents and my primary gearing toward the cat for DPS and questing. As a dual feral druid, my armor stacked agility and stamina, and I was gemming for dodge and crit, so that (until endgame level, at least), I could have one armor set that could perform both possible roles. As much of a pain as it is to build the two sets at endgame level, to try and do it WHILE LEVELING is almost impossible, since you level past items almost as fast as you acquire them.

The point of this being that I could either tank or DPS in dungeons, but I didn't have intellect or spirit on my gear - I wasn't talented to heal. Yet here I was. To make matters worse, the tank didn't wait for me to regain mana after the fights - he just kept going. Thank goodness I had some dropped mana potions on me, and the druid's ability of Innervate to renew my own mana supply (though that ability isn't nearly as good as it used to be, and I really was feeling that particular nerf).

Anyway, I fell into a rhythm and relaxed. Between my limited healing ability and the fact that the tank was a blood DK which has a lot of passive self-heals, no one was dying and we were still moving. Just as we got to the last boss, the new healer finally showed up. A nelf Priest. I relaxed and shifted back to cat to DPS the final fight (I was going to finish the dungeon in the role I'd originally selected, dangit!).

Mid way through the fight, the tank died. I guess the healer lost sight of him around the boss' legs or something, or maybe the healer had to sneeze. I have no idea. All I know is that once again, I had to step up. I leaped backwards (I WISH cats had the Hunter's Disengage ability!), targeted the tank, and hit my in-battle resurrect spell (SO glad I carried reagents for Rebirth). I tossed a heal on him, then shifted to bear and pulled the boss off of the mage and hunter who'd been bouncing him back and forth between them. The healer threw off a "WTF?" but I ignored it. When the DK could tank again, I shifted back to caster and started healing him. The healer that had come in "WTF"'d again, and I said, "We've been through most of the dungeon like this. Just... dps it." And with the healer's "whatever," he and I officially switched roles. I healed the tank, and the healer DPS'd the boss. We finished the dungeon, the healer left immediately, the tank waved at me and left... and the mage told me I was awesome. The hunter /bow'd to me, and I took a bow of my own.

Druids are versatile. I knew this from the very beginning - they're one of only two classes in the game (the other being Paladin) that can fulfill all 3 dungeon roles. But I'm fairly certain that Paladins become rather talent-locked early in their leveling lives, as I've gathered by both playing my pally and watching Lona play hers, whereas, as I've said before, druids can fulfill any role until L60. And apparently, in the right situation, until L64.

I am more confident in my tanking abilities than I ever have been before, and this experience has made me want to roll a druid healer at some point, just to get an idea of what I'd really have been capable of if I'd been properly geared and talented for what I was doing.

In other news, last weekend, Destylae ran her first heroic in which I was NOT in a guild group. I did good, reliable damage, no one complained, we CLEARED Halls Of Origination, and at the end - I won the roll on the Chaos Orb. That's one down, five to go toward making my new gun. :D I'm confident in my abilities as a Hunter, finally. And Kalitri keeps reminding me just how GOOD of a druid I make. Honestly, I can't wait to play Reyune some tonight... Let's see if I'm getting to be a better DK as well!

Catbird

It's monday.... and I'm bringing you a Tooth & Arrows instead of a These Ancient Eyes post. Why? Well, because there hasn't been a T&A post in awhile, and also because I wasn't sure where to go with the TAE post I'd been writing. So, without further ado, a bit on love for a catbird.

I tried valiantly to get Kalitri, my feral worgen druid, to L60 last night, only to pass out about four bars from finished. However, a situation arose that brought up to me just how far I’ve advanced since I was having so many issues with her back when she was a Night Elf (pre Cata, as I remade her Worgen the day after Cataclysm came out).

I started playing Des because Kalitri’s original form taught me that I didn’t have the focus necessary to play a melee class, or so I thought. Questing through Darkshire, I would find myself with 2 mobs on me and be very suddenly dead. The mobs were even lower level than me. I’d just get so caught up in what was going on, and I’d switch targets, not knowing who I should focus on… and then I’d be a dead little nelf kitty. I essentially ragequit the character in frustration, though I didn’t delete her – she was my first character, no matter how upset I’d become with her. And one day I would figure out druids.

In the meantime, I rolled Des, who would eventually become my first level cap character, and started several others. Then Cataclysm was launched and the worgen were released. I played through the starter zone on a hunter the night it launched, but quickly discovered I had no interest in leveling yet ANOTHER hunter. I was looking at my character screen and my eyes settled on Kalitri. The nelves allied with the Worgen and helped them. What if one of their envoys was bitten?

The story continued in my head until even the worgen’s human form was explained – a nelf, cursed with the Forsaken plague, would turn into an undead human (as we all know, there are no non-human Forsaken). So during the battle, she was cursed. But before the plague could fully pull her into undeath, one of the quick thinking Worgen bit her, hoping the power of the wolf would fight off the plague. It worked – but at the cost of her original species. She was now human/Worgen instead of Night Elf… and even her forms had changed.

No, I didn’t pay for a character change, though I thought about it. But then I realized I’d just be stuck where I was, with a Worgen instead of a nelf. I needed to relearn the class, now in my much more experienced state. So… I clicked the delete button on the original Kalitri, and immediately remade her as a worgen. By the time I’d left Darkshore, I already had a much better handle on playing the class than I had when she was a nelf. I’d even tanked a couple of dungeons as a bear. (Another big deal for me, as I’d never tanked anything before.)

It seemed very quick that Kalitri got to L40 – even with me playing most of the time on Des to get to L85, and playing through all the new Cata zones. But then she just kind of… stuck. I wasn’t having trouble playing her so much as playing her took a lot of focus, and I wasn’t in a place where I could do that. As a Hunter, I can tab off the wow window and do something else at any time. If I look back and something’s attacked me, my pet has usually taken care of it and my only frustration is that I lost out on loot. On any non-pet class, however, you get yourself distracted with, say, writing a paper for school, or responding to a friend’s text, and you click back on to find yourself dead. So… I stopped playing her for a while.

From the moment I’d created the original druid, what I’d looked forward to the most was L60 – the flight form. No mounts to fly, no need! Just leap into the air, become a bird, and fly away. Never mind that it’s one of my favorite real life daydreams – I would actually be able to DO it as a druid. And it was even cooler for Kalitri who, until recently, used no form of transportation other than herself. She used Running Wild as her mount, or simply dashed around in cat form. Also, the ability to cast flight form while moving will make for some awesome saves. Being chased by something through Howling Fjord? No problem! Turn, leap from the cliff, insta-cast Flight Form and you’re in the air! An excellent way to drop agro – which is the one thing the class is lacking, as far as I’m concerned. But I’ve been spoiled by my Hunter’s Feign Death.

So recently, as the only thing I’ve been doing on Des is rep grinds, I started playing Kalitri again with the decision to A) learn to focus better – clicking buttons should not make that much difference in speed from hitting hot keys. And B) to see some of the higher level Cata-changed zones. So began her quests. I started in Desolace, finished that zone, and then moved on to Burning Steppes and then Blasted Lands. I can now reliably take on up to 3 enemies at the same time that are at least 2, if not 3, levels above me, and win. I’ve mastered shifting out of cat form to heal myself, but keeping the DoT of thorns and Rake on the mobs at the same time, so sometimes they actually die while I’m still healing myself. This was put to the test in Hellfire Peninsula last night with dramatic results.

I was sent into a Fel Orc encampment to mark their sentry towers with smoke signals so they could be bombed from above by the Gryphon riders of Honor Hold. This isn’t too hard – I Prowled into the middle of the camp and no one even saw me. I neglected to realize that when I used the item it would take me out of stealth mode, however. And that’s when it got fun. The 3 tower guards came down on me. It was only then that I noticed they were L61. I was L58. THAT was a bit of a level difference. I freaked out, and I don’t even have my panic button anymore of shifting to bear form and tanking them with the extra armor, since I had to split my DPS spec from my tank spec at L50 – the talent trees start to get mutually exclusive at that point – so I was throwing everything I had at them. I pulled Tiger’s Fury, I Ravage!’d, I Raked, I Mangled like there was no tomorrow. I put up Thorns and Nature’s Grasp, shifted to caster and leaped back to heal myself as they were grabbed by the Entangling Roots proc of Nature’s Grasp and therefore were out of range while I healed myself, then I shifted cat and Feral Charged right back into the fight. I almost died several times, but I finally pulled it off, and the 3 mobs lay dead at my paws. I looted them and realized in shock that I was fine – I was better than fine, actually. My last round of healing me had stuck, and I had full health and full energy. I stealthed again and headed for the next tower. But this time I Feral Charged in the moment I was within range.

A repeat of the previous battle occurred, except that it went faster because I’d had time to hit myself with a heal over time and put Thorns on before I initiated. Two more times, I repeated the fight, and by the time I completed the quest, I was impressed. Gone was the druid who didn’t know what she was doing and died to 2 low level undead npcs could easily kill, and here was a seasoned feral warrior able to take down three mobs that were each three levels above her.

Tonight, Kalitri will ding 60 and finally gain her illusive flight form. What I’ve been working towards on her since creating the character originally. Onwards to 60!

Cross-Faction Consideration

I am an Alliance player. I am apparently among the minority. However, recently, I've become curious how the other half lives since the Cataclysm. As a result, and thanks to my fiancee's experimentation along the same line, I've rolled a couple of Horde characters on the Dawnbringer server.

A Death Knight, as a bit of a bankroll for the server since I don't have several hundred gold to spend on ease of leveling my server main, and my new obsession - my Troll Druid, Ionaria. And it would seem with my faction cross, a new place, a new start, has given me the mental drive to do something I've never felt able to do before. Ionaria is a Feral Combat Druid, and therefore a Bear Tank. And thus that is what she's queuing, and has been from L15. She's L26 now, hasn't left Orgrimmar except for dailies that required me to head into Azshara after the eye of a stag, and a few minutes to get Joy Ride for riding the Goblin highway from one end to another. I've now tanked everything up through Blackfathom Deeps, I'm excited to say - without a single wipe that was my fault.

However, I'm finally starting to understand the frustration that's been expressed by Kata and Lona when they tank. In an early group, I got a Hunter who insisted on running in ahead of me and pulling stuff. After the fourth time, I said, "Only warning you get - you pull it, you tank it." Meaning, in short, if you choose to get ahead of me and attack something, then I am not going to come running in and take it off of you so you don't die. After that, the Hunter hung back like a good DPS player. We finished the dungeon quickly after that.

However, my last attempt to dungeon was aborted fairly quickly. I randomed into Gnomregan for the first time. I went forward, pulled the first couple of troggs. A warlock darted past me and set his voidwalker (VOIDWALKER?! In a DUNGEON?! Please, use your freaking IMP. We need the DPS!) to pull another group of three or four troggs. He lead them back to me and I tried to take the aggro, but while a Warrior or Paladin... or even a DK, might have been able to generate that much threat on that many targets fast enough, one of the perils of Bear Tanking is that the Bear (at this level) has ONE AOE aggro generator (Swipe), and one primary single target pull (growl). I have a macro that I use for pull that triggers (Auto Attack > Growl > Faerie Fire (Feral) ), and all of those have cool downs. I couldn't get the aggro fast enough.

I should mention now that, going INTO the dungeon, the first thing I said was, "OK, I have one rule - IF you pull it, you tank it. I'm still fairly new to Bear Taking, and I can't pull too fast at this level." Everyone had said OK. Then the Warlock went right past me and dragged that group into the fight.

Needless to say, there were WTFs and "What happened?!" and "damned lock!" all around. I didn't have time to deal with a group like that - I was on a deadline as it was and had time for a quick dungeon. So I said, again, "I said, you pull it, you tank it. Congratulations - you've just lost your tank." and left party.

Now, I understand this could be seen as a bit harsh... and it was. But I was frustrated. And it wasn't until I found myself back in Orgrimmar that I laughed to myself and realized that I'd graduated into official Tank-hood. I'd left my first group out of frustration with a stupid DPSer.

I won't really have time to game again on Ionaria until after the Summer Fire Festival has been completed on Destylae - I need the rest of the achievements for What A Long Strange Trip, and the Violet Proto-Drake. But then I'll be going back to leveling her. It'll be nice to have an 85 Hordie as well as an 85 Ally. I do respect the situation the Trolls are going through, and as Troll and Tauren are the only Horde races I can stand to play, my DK is Tauren. Though I tried an interesting way of creating her, per my fiancee's suggestion.

I built her in the character creator as a druid, what she would've been before being reborn by the Lich King, and then hit the class change to DK. She ended up looking AWESOME. Her name is Koratana. She's still in the DK starting zone, though. I need to get some dedicated time on her so I can get her out of there and actually PLAY her. But I like her. And I like Ionaria. And I thank Ionaria for teaching me what she has, as thanks to her I've reorganized Kalitri's bear form action bar so that SHE can tank now, too.

I think that's it for gaming updates now. Expect a write up once the title of Flame Warden is mine!!

The Hunter is BACK!

Thanks to a dungeon with my guildies yesterday, I finally got back into playing on Destylae. In an odd way, it's almost a relief. I wanted to do the high level stuff with her before I got there with my druid so I wouldn't be doing it "blind," so to speak.

I'd forgotten how nice it was to play the hunter - I don't use my keyboard for that character. Everything is mouse-controlled, which takes a lot less concentration than playing on Kalitri. I loved reconnecting with Hatari, my hyena, and spending time exploring Vash'ir. Though the highlight of the day was subduing my Abyssial Seahorse mount. She's GORGEOUS, and I love her whole lots. I'm sorry she only works IN Vash'ir, because I'd love to use her in normal water situations, too.

Honestly, though, I am still completely enamored with my druid. How do I know? Well... the whole time, I kept catching myself thinking that aquatic form would be awesome down here. And that I wondered if the "sealegs" buff you get would stack with my Glyph of Aquatic Form. In which case, I'd be swimming at 200% riding speed, and almost wouldn't NEED the Seahorse on Kalitri. Which is appropriate, I suppose - she doesn't care much for mounts. She runs on all fours, shifts back and forth from cat to aquatic form when necessary, but has only mounted her horses and cats a couple of times. I can't wait until she hits 60 and can leap into the air and shift to flight form. I have a trick in mind I want to perform the moment I can - leaping off of Dalaran as if it were a high dive, and shifting to flight form to pull up. Oh, it will be glorious...

But for now, I'm going to play Des until she caps. :)

That Run Got Markedly Longer..

Frustration of the moment! :P Alliance Inns are apparently SCARCE in Stranglethorn Vale now. There isn't one at the Rebel Camp, there isn't one at Fort Livingston. There isn't one at the Explorer's League site just inside Southern Stranglethorn Vale. (And don't get me started on that damn path. I got lost and wound up mobbed by Goblins before finding the cling-to-the-cliff-face path that now takes you between the two halves of the zone.)

I finally gave up, got my Worgen butt in gear and hauled ALL THE WAY SOUTH to Booty Bay rather than spend time exploring when all I wanted was to be Resting in the SAME ZONE I was questing in, so I could log off.

Finally made it down there. I was one tired Worgen afterwards, though, I'll tell you! I have mounts - I'm Exalted with both Stormwind and Darnassus, but being a Worgen, (and a druid), I much prefer the feel of the earth under my paws.

I might be rethinking that concept a bit now. Curled up in a bed in Booty Bay, my poor little paws are aching, and it's all because the Alliance apparently didn't see fit to put an Inn everywhere they bothered putting a FLIGHT POINT.

It doesn't take much to make an Inn. Hell, in Northrend, there's an Inn that is literally just a lean-to tent! Why couldn't they have stuck one of those somewhere along that insanely long path? Urgh.

Oh well, that's my gaming annoyance of the moment. :P

A few thoughts...

Not much, but caught myself thinking about gaming WITHOUT putting it here, and realized "what's the point of that? I have a gamer blog!"

The first thing I was thinking about is the Battle Subway in Pokemon Black. You pick 3 pokemon from your party or your box, they're automatically set to level 50, with no exp gained through this experience, and you have to battle your way through 7 trainers without blacking out once in order to "win" the battle points, which you can use to purchase items in the train station.

I was intrigued by the concept, but with only 3 pokemon in your party, there's no way to plan for every contingency... and the opponent Pokemon seem absurdly strong. I also can't pull the trick I do on Gym Leaders sometimes and find out what they have through one battle, then reset my game and go back in with a plan so it doesn't register me having lost, because the trainers in the subway cars, and their pokemon, are different each time.

Perhaps I'm just too low level right now, and don't have enough good items. The Subway seems to be designed to train you how to use held items, since potions and the like can't be used during the battles. I'll try it again in a few levels when each of my team have a power booster in their possession.

The other thing I was thinking of a lot is WoW. Particularly, my Druid. I'm thinking that, once she's finished Northern and Southern Strangelthorn, she's going to go to Theramore Isle and see how much that story line was changed by Cataclysm. She's already over level 30, which means I got over the leveling hump that I hit with her when she was a night elf, but I still find myself... Well, to be honest - I find myself wanting to start doing the exploration achievements. But as I proved with my Hunter, it's best to wait until level 40 (fast riding) to do that. Otherwise you can't really outrun the stuff in the higher level areas of the base zones. Then, of course, when she can fly I'll do Outland and Northrend, and the L80+ areas of EK and Kalimdor.

This is all with the knowledge that my Hunter is sitting at level 80, and REALLY needs to get to her cap. I need to devote some serious attention to her. Five levels! It shouldn't be that hard, and it's all about exploring the new areas. She's currently questing in Vash'ir, which is incredibly fun... But even as I'm doing that, I can't help thinking about my Druid and how fun it'll be when I can do Aquatic Form down there...

Yeah. I need to cap my Hunter before I lose interest in her entirely. And I don't WANT to lose interest in her. Destylae has embodied ME in Azeroth for a very long time. Maybe I'm not losing interest - maybe I'm just out of practice. Perhaps, this weekend, I'll devote a big chunk of my gaming time to her, and we'll see what the new levels are really all about. :)