My dirty little secret

Hi everyone. My name's Raevyn and I'm an addon addict.

This is the exact opposite of my husband, who has Omen, DBM, and not much else. I laugh about my penchant for latching onto new addons along with everyone else, but it's not something I'm looking to fix. Around once every month a new addon will catch my eye or an old one will show me something new, and I'll frantically go about changing my UI to make it better. Unlike other addictions, my addon addiction is keyed toward making my life (in this case my gaming experience) better. For the most part, my addons reflect that.

Back in the early days of EverQuest, I tried to work with addons. They were cumbersome, gangly things that didn't really do much besides alter the appearance of your UI. I tried with four of five different styles but I could never get them to function well in the game. I think part of it is that Sony made modifying your UI a herculean effort, so few people used mods and fewer still made them. Blizzard has done just the opposite, making UI modification a cottage industry that's open to anyone with a little time and a clear idea of what they want to do.

Players can change the look of their bars, their maps, their buttons, their raid frames, their chat, their buffs, add timers, overlays, extra buttons, frames that indicate distances, aggro, healing done, damage done, and more! At the end of the day, with some time spent searching sites like Curse or WoW Interface your UI can look however you want it to. The problem, of course, is where do you stop?

My answer: I don't.

The shot above is pretty crowded. My Vuhdo bars are in the middle and my buffs take up a hefty chunk of space along the side while my bars crowd the bottom. I have countdown bars seemingly all over the place and healing done and received scrolls over the other spots. This is actually better than it used to be. I searched for a screenshot of an early UI compilation. I remember it well. My Grid bars were nearly an inch wide per raider and extended over half my screen. With everything else bumping up against that, I had a very small box in the middle that was my view of my character. I could see the fire so I could get out of it, but very little else.

The difference between then and now is pretty big.

Recently I went through and updated my UI to make it less cluttered and easier to see everything. I moved my player and target frames to the center of the screen under my character and took a lot of my superfluous buttons (the two blocks of bars on the left) and made them show up only when I moused over them, and not in combat at all. Then the bits that I need in combat, like healthstones and potions, I put on the other side of the screen. They only show up while I'm in combat. Overall, it's a lot easier to play with.

I use a lot of addons. I enjoy using them because each of them serves a purpose for me.

Vuhdo The big debate between Vuhdo and Healbot and Grid will rage indefinitely. I just don't really tend to get into it. I like what Vuhdo can do with hot placement. It's easy to configure and customize. Although I don't use it, I could easily configure it to use click healing. It's got a lot of features I don't use, but I'm ok with that. I'm comfortable with it. I used Grid for a long time, but eventually having to update two or three addons to get what I had in one, along with the easier to maneuver interface, led me away from Grid. My only real experience with Healbot was in BC and I didn't use it for long. I hear it's a very good addon. When people ask what they should use, I recommend Vuhdo, but I amend it with a caveat to use what they like. Every healer is different.

Shadowed UF I use this addon on every one of my characters. The amount of information you can display (or not display) on player, target, target of target, target of target of target, and boss frames is amazing. All I need is bars with numbers. This addon gives me bars with numbers, and I can say which bars have which numbers. For example, the percentage on the mana/energy/rage bar on my target is actually their percentage of health, rather than their percentage of power. I find that easier to look at than having another number up with the boss health numbers.

Prat A basic chat frame addon. I like class names in chat. I like to know the level of the person I'm talking to. I like having time stamps on whispers. Prat does all these things simply and effectively.

Bartender4 Gotta mod the buttons up! I use this to help unclutter my macros and to make the cool clusters of buttons that only show up in combat or on mouseover. Great for getting things out of the way and easy to configure my preferences for keybinds.

Quartz Everyone's go-to cast bar. I use it to show my own and my target's cast bars and the spells they're casting. Useful, functional, unintrusive.  I love it.

Tidy Plates/Threat Plates I totally grabbed this from Big Bear Butt's tanking guide when I was learning how to tank and now I totally love it for healing and my DPS characters as well. If you're a tank, the nameplates are green when mobs are aggroed on you. If you're not, the nameplates are green when mobs aren't aggroed on you. Perfect for fights like Omnitron Defense System where it's kind of important to know if an ooze is attached to me and if so, which one. I thought having nameplates in my face would be annoying, but I've embraced them. I can see mob health, aggro, and a cast bar for things I don't have targeted at a glance.

Satrina Buff Frames I've heard this is going the way of the dodo and I'm extremely sad. SBF is a huge asset, letting me move my buff frames from up top to a smaller list along the left side. Recently I've configured it to paste a big column showing the buffs (hostile) or debuffs (friendly) of my target. This makes it easier to figure out when it's more effective to use our now-expensive dispels and when the boss is about to start hitting extra hard.

ForteXorcist I used to use SO many of this addons cool features, but nowadays I really only use the cooldown bar. I've since moved the bar back down to the right hand side under my Skada frame, so the screenshot above isn't entirely accurate. It lets me watch how close my cooldowns are to being ready again. I suppose I could add a set of Power Auras to do the same thing, but I still like my bar. It stays for now.

Chinchilla Map This makes my map square on two sides and round on two sides. It also tells me who is pinging the map and what my map coordinates are. It can do other things that I'm not interested in. But that may change. I have been known to go back and make use of old features when I get a wild hair to do so :P.

Mik Scrolling Battle Text This is the addon I'd most like to either replace or get rid of. I like seeing my healing numbers, knowing what's coming in, but I'm not entirely sure it's not just background noise getting lost in the ocean of the raid environment. I haven't seen anything better yet, though, so right now it teeters on the edge of oblivion.

Power Auras Classic This is my current favorite addon. It does a little bit of everything if you take the time to configure it. It can also make your screen look like a complete mess.

Don't try this at home! Actually, do, it's funny to see all your various timers and auras up all at once and try to pick them apart. I have auras that tell me when my Wildgrowth and Swiftmend are off cooldown, when the haste buff from Nature's Grace is active and for how long, how long my Omen of Clarity has to run (thanks to Keeva at TBJ), how long my tree form has left, and then that cluster in the middle are mostly get-out-of-crap warnings for the Twilight Ascendant Council fight (thanks to Beru at Falling Leaves and Wings). There's also a couple that show me the number of Lacerate stacks I have up as a bear. Power Auras is imminently versatile and definitely a mod I use for many, many things.


Skada Probably my newest addon, Skada replaces the functionality of both Omen and Recount, acting as an aggro table during combat and a damage/healing done table out of it. I can track individual fights and Skada comes with absorbs built into the healing numbers, which gives me a better picture of disc priest output.

DBM/Spell Timers Duh, who doesn't use this (or its cousin BigWigs) for raiding? Get out of the bad, here comes the big boss strike, everybody turn away from the boss RIGHT NOW -- it tells you all that and more. I also download DBM Spell Timers (from the DBM site) so that I can see when druid innervates and brezes are up along with the cooldown on heroism. More useful to have in a 25-man raid, but still nifty. If something HAD to go and I'd already ditched MSBT, I'd probably get rid of the spell timers next.

I guess my point in listing all these addons is that they have a purpose (mostly). I'm fully addicted to making modifications to my UI in order to improve my game. I try new things, put them into practice, and if they work, I keep them. If they fall flat (as so many have), then I ditch them. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Hi, my name is Raevyn and I'm an addon addict. And I feel fine :).

A little help from my friends

I mentioned last time about raiding and the niggly part of me that feels like I'm not doing enough to be prepared because of my responsibilities as a parent that come first. But I neglected to mention something very important: I'm getting to raid. And this is entirely because of the kindness of the eight or so other people I raid with.

See, at the tender age of 6 months Vivi finally decided she could go to sleep at a regular time, right about 9pm, each night. That's great, except before she was born, our raids started at 8pm. I was prepared to alternate raid nights with my husband, Grundle, to put the baby to sleep at the right time, respec as a bear as necessary (hence my numerous posts about tanking :P), and pretty much abase myself before these people to keep my raid spot as much as I could. But I didn't have to because they are awesome.

Instead, my raid completely changed the raid schedule to fit mine. We now raid three nights a week from 9:30 to 11:30, sometimes pushing midnight on Fridays. And all of us are pretty happy with it.

I know that everyone would probably like to push the raid schedule back toward 8, but right now Vivi is still stuck firmly at a 9pm bedtime (and since she wakes up at 5:30 to 6am each morning, I'd rather not push that wake up time any earlier if I can help it). We get our farm content down, though, and have at least a full raid day, if not more, for working on new stuff. It's a really nice balance and I am completely content with it.

I am also continually amazed that my guild is willing to do this for Grundle and I, to keep us raiding with them. It's really sweet and shows me just how much we mean to the rest of the raid.

Since we joined the guild at the end of BC our friendships and attachments have continually grown and that is awesome. I love being a part of this guild and when the guild we'd all joined decided to stop raiding and we put together our own raid team for Cata, it felt like a very natural progression. Of course we'd all stay together. Just like we had throughout Wrath.

So despite my complaints, which are entirely about my own failings and mental blocks, I'm having a really great time raiding in Cataclysm because of my friends. Thanks. I owe you big time :).

Me and my raiding buddies with our rustbound drakes, back when getting rustbound drakes was cool!

Back in action!

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog post... Life, mostly. I got bogged down with baby stuff and then Cataclysm dropped and then the holidays hit me and now we're focused on raiding and, well, I kept putting things off. I'm good at that.

Anyway, I'm back now :).

Mostly I'm back because I find myself having things to say again. I'm getting to actually play with the new mechanics and talents and that feels a lot better (and more useful) than just speculating about them. And we've got a new patch coming up that's going to change things yet again! Whee.

Mana

I'm not as bad off as I thought I'd be. Or rather I'm not as bad off as I was when we started raiding. It took the hubby (pally tank) and I about three days to hit 85. My mother (saint that she is) came up the week the xpac hit and babysat for us so we could pretty much play non-stop. Unfortunately, the baby still requires a lot of attention from me, so it wasn't as constant as it could have been. In the meantime, we sort of fell behind the gear curve. By the time the guild started raiding that next Monday (about a month ahead of what I thought we would be!), I still hadn't even gotten into my first heroic dungeon.

It felt horrible. Just absolutely horrible. I was OOM after Innervate, Mana Tide, and a pot and there was literally nothing else I could do to gain mana besides sit there. I felt crushed and useless. But gear fixes many things.

Since then I've enchanted, gemmed, and reforged for a lot of spirit, run a number of heroic dungeons, and picked up a lot of epic gear from raids. And I feel pretty good about it, overall. Last night we downed Halfus Wyrmbreaker and I ended the fight at almost full mana (in large part because of ToL). I'm getting out of my mana dry spell and I'll probably ease up on the spirit scale. Throughput will start being more important now that I've got the hang of how the fights work and I think on the later bosses in the zones it won't be as big a deal to be nearly OOM at the end of a fight.

Tree of Life

I miss it. Mostly it's the aesthetics of it (I have the glyph for the old form), but I really identified with being a "tree" and having to spend most of my time as a boring old nelf is a little depressing. I realize that Blizz had sort of designed themselves into a corner. Tree form didn't do anything but make us on-par healers with the other three healing classes and a lot of those bonuses could just as easily be rolled into our Restoration talents, and most of them have been. I just wish the form itself could have been repurposed in a better way than as a cooldown. I want to be a tree again. It's hard to find myself in raids now :P.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of fun learning how to use the ToL cooldown. I can juggle two lifebloom stacks fairly well most of the time and it really does save a LOT of mana. On our first Halfus Wyrmbreaker kill (back before Christmas when our gear was just so-so) I managed it for the first time for most of the duration of the fight. It saved so much mana through Omen of Clarity procs that I had more than half mana by the end of the fight, which was a real feat at the time. Now I just have to figure out how to work it into various fights rather than just popping it randomly.

Overall I miss the old form. I would give anything (including the new cooldown) to get it back. Not that I don't like the new cooldown mechanic, but I feel like the essence of my healer identity has sort of fallen away.

Patch 4.0.6

So lots of changes are coming to trees in this next patch, a lot of them nerfs. The nerf to Mana Tide will hit us (but since I didn't have any on-use spirit trinkets, it won't be so bad) and the change to Omen of Clarity will, too. The change where multiple stacks of Lifebloom can no longer be maintained sorta sucks. I enjoyed the challenge of that mechanic, because it's not one you can just step into. We're getting a mana cost reduction to Rejuv and some changes to make Regrowth more attractive, so that's a nice step in the direction of making us HoT-centric healers again. I don't think I've cast Healing Touch so much since vanilla :P.

I have to admit that I haven't been taking advantage of Nature's Grace. The increased cast speed is awesome, but I just haven't been casting Regrowth that much. Making it so that the spell also refreshes Lifebloom stacks means I'll have more of a reason to use it on Omen of Clarity procs. Speaking of Omen of Clarity, I've seen the numbers and while I agree that we will be getting fewer procs (and thusly less theoretical mana regen), I also have a lot of procs go unused. And since my most constant HoT has been Lifebloom anyway, I think I'll still be getting my fair share of OOC hits. Reducing the mana cost of Rejuv and giving us a cast speed buff on Nourish when there's three of them up, making Regrowth also refresh Lifebloom, and the change to Omen will, I think, give trees a lot more casting options. I like having somewhat complex mechanics. I think Swiftmend is an amazingly fun spell, and coupling that with our only instant-cast that takes advantage of Omen of Clarity means that I really think about it before I cast it. Now I'll also be weaving Rejuvs in to get faster casts of Nourish and throwing Regrowths out for very fast tank heals that will also take advantage of my mastery (which is also getting a buff).

I think the biggest disappointment for me is the loss of the multi-stack maintenance mechanic on Lifebloom. It's a complicated (again, a plus for me) thing to keep track of and do right. I feel like I've really accomplished something when I do so. But not everybody does like and not everybody can or wants to do that, which is why Blizz is not making it an option anymore. Otherwise they'd have to design encounters and mana regen around tree druids being able to do so, and that's sorta unfair. Still, I like the concept and I wish they could implement it in some other way.

Not your mama's expansion

I have been feeling really down in the dumps this whole xpac so far. And I can totally see why but there's also very little I can do. 

I have a baby. I love her dearly. She's walking and starting to babble a lot. She can pick things up and hand them to me and she smiles almost constantly and she's a tremendous torment to our dog, which is hilarious. But she also requires my constant attention. I knew this was coming and I accept it as part of parenting. When she goes to school, I'll have a little more time to myself. But right now it's all her, all the time. 

So when I do finally get to sit down and play WoW in the evenings, I'm behind. Most days I don't get a chance to do a daily heroic. She naps two to three times a day for an hour or so each, but I can't reliably finish a heroic in that time frame, so I refrain. I farm herbs or archeology or quest. I'm not where I was, gear-wise, at this point in Wrath. I'm desperately trying to get either Darkmoon Card: Tsunami or Tyrande's Favorite Doll. One requires lots of archeology, one requires lots of herbing. Both require a lot of luck. But for the card, I can influence luck with cash.

I think my point is that I want to play more and I can't. I want to farm for the things I want and need, but I can't. I want to improve my gear outside of raids, but I can't to the extent that I want to. I am frustrated by this both because I'm being denied something that I want and because I'm wanting something that, if I were to indulge, would potentially harm my child. Leaving a 10-month-old relatively unsupervised in the house is going to cause damage to the things in it and maybe to the little girl, depending on what she gets into. And I don't want that.

My best coping mechanism so far is to back off. I don't play WoW every time she takes a nap because it just reinforces my unhappiness. I go to raids and I don't compare gear with other healers (fortunately I'm the only tree or this would be much worse :P). I do my best and we're succeeding. Or at least not failing because of a lack of gear on my part.

I don't think I was ever HARD CORE, but I was certainly a lot less casual than I am now. And I definitely feel that. I have to learn to deal with that and it's a struggle. I have more boundaries than I did before. But it's my hope that I'm still as good a player as I used to be. Because I really believe skill can make up for a lack of gear and I intend to prove it.

Back off, DPS! A tank rant

I've seen a theme developing lately in blog posts and rants on the WoW_ladies livejournal community about tanks getting the short end of the PUG atmosphere stick and it hits me close to home. I've paid more attention to these kind of posts because I've started a lowbie tank recently myself and I find the complaints I'm reading about most often are ones I have myself.

Whether it's the anti-CC atmosphere of all of Wrath (I swear, you never see a sheep anymore unless you're PvPing) or simply the result of everyone overgearing every instance imaginable through badge and BoA gear, DPS have lost their restraint. Every fight is an AoE fight and if you aren't pulling as fast as the healer can keep up (if not faster), you are labeled a "fail tank" or told (usually by a ret pally) that someone else in the group can tank instead if you can't do it faster. It's enough to bring newer tanks (including me) to tears.

Now I could talk about DPS taking a lesson in patience, that everyone has to learn to tank somewhere. However, I've seen a lot of those kind of posts around, so I thought I would tackle it a different way.

Tanks need to learn to deal with these impatient, rude DPS.

First, take a deep breath. When they start in with "pull faster" or "I could do this job for you," as a tank you actually do have a few options. If you're interested in a conversation or think this person would actually listen to reason, you can explain to them that you're pulling at the pace you (or your healer's mana) are comfortable with. Or that you've found if you pull large groups, the DPS AoEing makes you lose aggro on too much of the pack and everyone dies because the healer has to heal, literally, the whole group at once. However, I've found more often than not that if a DPS player is going to start berating you for not turning each instance into a five-minute run (so they can sit around for their next 15-minute queue, heheh), they're not usually interested in listening to what you have to say.

An option that many young tanks (myself included) take is to just drop out of the instance. If the entire group seems set on negativity or you are completely outleveled by the mobs in the instance (it's amazing how little threat you can hold on mobs just two or three levels above you) or by the other DPS (this is especially bad with mages and ret pallies), it's sometimes better to take the debuff and not get caught up in the hate mongering. You'll have to wait a bit for the debuff to wear off, but I strongly urge you to wait it out and then get right back into the dungeon queue. In all likelihood, you aren't a bad tank. In all likelihood, you've been given a handful of bad DPS or been put in a situation that is beyond your control (mobs three levels above you only receive a third of the aggro you put out). Take a breather, quest some, talk to a friend who plays a tank and get some tips, and then get back on the horse. After that next dungeon, you'll feel a whole lot better.

If you think you can handle the instance or just want to be stubborn (we've all been there :P), there's always the ignore option. Not only does it completely negate what they're saying to you, it prevents you from queuing with them ever again. Both can be positive things. Check healer mana and move on. Most likely, the healer will follow your lead. And really, the DPS in any dungeon run are just there to make it faster. If pressed, a tank and a healer can handle a dungeon (especially a lowbie one) with just the two of them. I don't recommend telling the DPS that, but it certainly can help your own sense of self-confidence.

You notice that I refer to the healer and their mana situation a lot. In a dungeon, the healer and the tank have to stick together, and the healer is the person I always give the most respect to. They're the ones keeping my big bear butt standing and if they're not happy, then nobody's happy. Since I play a healer as my main spec, I know how tough it can be and I afford them whatever chances to drink that I can.

The last option is one that I seldom use intentionally, but for the most rowdy DPS it's necessary. Let them pull aggro and die. Well, it's really the healer's choice whether or not they die, but you can certainly let the pulls go to them. If the mage won't stop ice storming? Hold down the mobs that you can, use your taunts on a reasonable cycle, and if something is eating the mage's face then it's not your fault.

A huge part of tank burnout (and probably a contributing factor to why there are so few around) is that you feel very responsible for what happens in the run. And probably more than any other role, you are responsible. But that doesn't mean that heals and DPS are blameless. DPS players have skills to drop threat or can watch Omen and learn to stop DPS when they get too high. Or they can die and whine about it. Neither of those things are the responsibility of the tank. Take the blame for things that are your fault, but don't let others foist the blame for their own faults onto you.

We've all been in situations that make us feel really awful, especially as tanks. The important thing is to figure out what you can do to help move things along, both for yourself and for the group. Because tanks who can exude confidence in the face of negativity end up being more successful in the long run. 

Resto's getting better!

So in the most recent beta build some (not all) of my issues with the resto tree have been resolved, or at least mentioned in passing by Ghostcrawler. I'm very pleased to hear that Rejuv will get a GCD-reducing talent, that Furor actually has something to offer the resto druid, and that the second tier of the resto tree is getting something that actually benefits the resto druid. I am intrigued by the extreme mana cost that hots are apparently getting and how they will play against the direct heals (and the carpet of Efflorescence). So color me pleased (though as GC says, they've still got a lot of work ahead of them).

Oh, and I want a moose...

So last week I ranted about what I don't like about the new talent tree builds for the beta in Cata. And after I posted it, I thought about how useful that post is to the devs, to any audience I might accrue, and to myself. And I decided that there is some relevance, but it's also missing something. After all, if you're going to point out problems, you need to point out solutions to those problems, too.

I'm looking forward to Cataclysm. Don't think I'm not. But I have specific things I want to see, both for my class and for the game itself. Some of them I have no doubt Blizzard will achieve. Others are a little more sketchy.

I want healing to stop having a rotation

On most fights nowadays I hit Wild Growth, then five to six Rejuvs, then Wild Growth. Occasionally I mix it up by keeping Regrowth on one or both tanks instead of one of my WG button pushes, but that's about it. If I'm not sticking to this rotation, I feel like I'm underperforming, not living up to my potential as a healer and potentially letting people in the raid die. I'd like to see raid healing as being more about choice and less about spam. And from what I've read about in Cata, that is entirely the case. So that's definitely heartening.

I want my tree form back

I know I'm not going to get it (unless it comes in the form of one of the medium glyphs that Blizz is implementing), but I'm still going to miss it. The tree form dance has always been my favorite and the distinct silhouette of it has always made picking myself out of the crowd easy (I've never raiding with more than two other trees in any raid, so generally it's not hard to find me on screen). Plus I just like the idea of a druid turning into a tree. It feels right that resto druids get a distinctive shape, the same as the rest of the druid pantheon.

And as for lore, one of the most holy and important sites for night elf druids is a tree, the proverbial tree of life. Its destruction signaled the end for immortality among the night elves. Trees and life are tied together in an extremely important way and I think representing the lifegiving form of druids with a tree is entirely accurate. I agree that tree form needed some overhaul and I think that the devs were right when they said tree form didn't feel much different from caster form, but I think removing the form entirely (or reducing it to a long cooldown with some pretty serious drawbacks) isn't really the way to go. Unfortunately, I wasn't asked and at this late date, I'm pretty sure there's nothing to be done about it anyway. Regardless, I want some form of a tree back in Cataclysm, even if it's only a shapeshift form that has no bearing on my playstyle.

I want interesting spell choices

I love how Swiftmend works, that it's dependent upon another of our spells to work and that, through a glyph, we can make it work even better. Similarly, I love how Nourish works, increasing its throughput as I have more hots stacked on a target. Again, I need a glyph to get fully there, but it still works. I want spells to be interdependent. I want to have to think about how the spells I've applied will affect the spells I'm about to apply. And I think that the way the new Empowered Touch works (reapplying Lifebloom to a target when Nourish crits) is a great step in that direction. But I wish there was more. Maybe the whole resto druid heal game would become too convoluted with another step, but I like the complexity.

When I played in vanilla, I was a one-button healer. So I am totally in love with all the shiny new buttons I've gotten since then. I want there to be a fine art to resto druid play, a game that takes time and willingness to fully master. That kind of challenge excites me and keeps me coming back to play every raid lockout.

I want talent choices out of the feral tree

Weird, huh? Balance seems to have all the great caster stuff, but I'm bucking for something out of the wrong tree. Maybe Feral Swiftness is meant to be a talent enterprising druids of the resto or balance persuasion can take, but is it really leading anywhere? I know that feral is already difficult to balance because of its own dual nature, but something in there for the casters to go for would be extremely nice. It seems like the other classes all have options in both their other trees, but resto druids only have one other way to go. And our own tree is cluttered with things meant for balance and feral druids to take at the top, so I feel doubly screwed. Embrace our feral side, resto druids! We're kitties and bears, too!

I want it to be epic

This is less about my class and more about the feel of the expansion in general. With the sad patch that was ToC, all of WotLK felt large and intense. We're rushing to deter the Lich King's minions, but we've been detained from that by the rising of one of the Old Gods, who we must kill to avoid global destruction, and now we're all going to learn to joust, but we will defeat you, Arthas, and take back the Frozen Throne! /end scene

My point is that WotLK was superb in the storytelling arena. And I hope they kept the same writers for Cata, because I look forward to seeing far-reaching storylines, great drama played out on the world stage with the players either in the front row or as part of the action. I haven't heard a single person deride the Wrathgate cinematic as a waste of time, so take that as an example of the heights we can reach with the technology we have. It's worth it for oh so many reasons!

We have a really great game on our hands, no doubt about it here. But I want to see it move beyond even that in the Cataclysm era. I want to see healing become more dynamic and fresh, challenging and interesting. I want druid talent trees to be unique and fun, not locked into a static lump by role restrictions. I want to see the amazing stories I know that Blizzard has in store for us unfurl and take shape. This is not a list of demands, this is a list of wishes. So please, Blizz, grant my wishes!

The Silent Tank

My husband is a tank. It's a role he enjoys greatly and like me and healing, he's been doing his job since day one. I've always been the more social of the two of us; it's the same dynamic as IRL and it works. So in instances and raids, I'm far more likely to interact with the other people (whether we know them or not) than he is.

A month or so ago I rolled another druid (Horde side, so new all around :P) and decided to level her feral, since I've never done that before. And since the dungeon finder system is so easy to use when you have instant queues (as a tank), it's more convenient for me than questing in the small chunks of time I have when the baby is sleeping. In addition, it gives me great experience as a tank, so when Cata rolls around I actually have a clue what I'm doing when I switch my offspec from boomkin to bear. Good things all around.

So despite running with strangers most of the time, I expected to continue to be able to chat when others are in a chatty mood or at least talk to guildies and friends on RealID.

Boy, is that not the case.

Part of it is certainly my inexperience with tanking, but it's also because I have to pay much closer attention to things: the mobs' health, aggro on all targets, my health, healer mana, defensive cooldowns, rage generation, and more. I can barely keep up when people say something in party chat. The multitasking involved with tanking is way beyond what I expected.

Maybe my husband isn't avoiding socializing. Maybe he just doesn't have the mental GCDs. I know I sure don't :P.

Thankfully, it's gotten better. I had a macro outlining my tanking philosophy (I tank as fast as healer mana will allow, you pull it you tank it, etc) that I spammed at the beginning of instances, but it seemed to cause more chatting than it dampened. So now I just watch party chat for the healer asking for a mana break and pretty much keep my mouth shut the rest of the time. I'm in my mid-30s now, so it's not like people are saying anything more than "Pull faster!" anyway.

I like tanking and I'm glad I'm going to be an offspec tank in the xpac. But I'm also really happy that I have vent for raids. Beats the heck out of reading one more thing on an already-crowded screen!

Another beta build, another disappointment

From MMO Champion

At the start of BC, I was super excited to play a tree. We got tree form! We had a brand new spell to play with! Our old spells were getting buffs and we wouldn't just spam Healing Touch anymore! At the start of Wrath, I was similarly excited. Lifebloom got a nerf (it needed one), but tree form was losing its root effect! We were getting a flash heal, one that interacted with our other heals. I love heal interactions! But Cata's announcements and subsequent beta talents just haven't lit my fire this time around. I know the talent trees are still in flux, but right now they are really, really underwhelming.

I figure I'm probably jumping the gun in my negative reaction to the current resto druid beta talent tree, but it seems like nothing is changing and there really, really needs to be some changes made. The resto tree is generally lackluster, with very little in the way of talent choices. In fact, there's a tier or two where you don't really have a choice at all (and I'm not just talking about Furor). There aren't enough actual talents to make the choices meaningful, which Blizz has stated is their goal. Yes, there will be talents that every tree will pick up, but there will also be a few talents to add flavor to your build. Right now there's not much flavor.

The first and second tiers are the biggest offenders as far as talents you have no choice about. I think it's been said many times, but making Furor a resto talent, when it provides no bonus to a rest druid, is sorta silly. I can see that it's there to provide a hook for ferals and boomkin to get deeper into the tree, but I feel like it needs to offer something more than feral and balance options in order for it to stay in our protracted talent trees. Natural Shapeshifter is similarly offering us very little of interest in a world where our shapeshifting ability has a three-minute cooldown. It seems to me that Perseverence is more of a tanking talent, unless Blizz is looking to make healers more resilient. Which may be the case, but it doesn't excite me as much as a tree as it does as a bear. I think adding more ranks to Master Shapeshifter wouldn't be a bad way to make that tier feel less full of useless but mandatory talents. Likewise, Empowered Rejuv doesn't feel all that different from Improved Rejuv. I like talents that do things, rather than talents that push me toward using one spell over another (not that I don't like Rejuv; I'd still use it without talents that augment it).

This is part of what I'm talking about that the talent choices aren't meaningful. Yes, these spells increase HoT ticks and Rejuv ticks, respectively, but what about making Rejuv act differently in different situations? A cooldown that spreads Rejuv to everyone in an Efflorescence, for example, would be interesting and add something to our healing toolbox that's not just more healing. I recall that one of Blizz's stated goals for the new talent trees is to remove or enhance the talents that were just +damage or +healing. There are a lot of talents still in the resto tree that are just +healing and that's not exciting. If I'm only getting a talent point every other level, it should mean something. I'm willing to get behind the concept if Blizz is willing to make talents more fun.

Even the balance talents we can reach aren't all that great. Nature's Splendor doesn't seem to exist at all anymore. I am dearly in love with this talent, giving us a very solid purpose behind taking balance talents while still providing moonkin with some utility. Now the only reason to get into the balance tree is because nothing in the feral tree is useful. In the second tier of balance, we have to choose between increased healing or reduced mana cost. We can't get both because they're both three-point talents. Or we can spec into hit. Personally, I'm not loving those choices, either.

Now, this rant is pretty ranty, especially since what I hear coming out of beta is a LOT of unfinished content and talents and broken quests. It doesn't sound like a complete, or even near-complete, product. But we've gone three or so rounds of new talent trees and I'm not seeing big changes happening to resto. And I think big changes are needed, or at least enough small changes to seem big. Playing a tree is awesome, and I'm willing to give Blizz a shot at this new lack-of-treeform thing so long as they're willing to give me stuff that makes me excited to play again, the same as I've felt at the beginning of each new expansion.