[Local Time] 2-7-11

Woohoo! It's been an amazing two weeks for my raiding guild! Last week we downed both Maloriak and the Twilight Ascendant Council for the first time, then this week we took both out on the first try! In addition, we also killed Atramedes and Chimaeron with relative ease, go us! Chimaeron went down on the second attempt, even! Then we got a full night of attempts on Cho'gall and got him to 8%.

This is my guild and Loot Pinata Chimaeron!

It seems like things have just clicked on the raid front. We aren't struggling with low DPS on encounters anymore and the mechanics don't seem to be tripping people up the way they were just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if it's just getting back into the raiding groove or if the little gear upgrades just make a huge combined difference. Either way, it's a great feeling!

My little lock made it to 82 fairly easily, yay! She replaced her winged helm with something more drab: a whitish hood that, when combined with her new white robe, makes her look a bit like a priest. A convenient lure for the wary souls, perhaps? Mwahahahahaha!

I've been leveling her destruction because affliction has changed so much since I played her last in BC. Now I'm starting to look at it again. I don't yet know if I want to try to make her a PvP toon (or even engage in PvP on any toon), but if I do I'm sure it'll be afflic. I used to love the affliction playstyle, but it seems like the dot-and-forget thing is pretty well dead. I might run with it in a few dungeons (with dual spec costing only 10g, there was no reason not to buy it) and see how I like it. In the meantime, I'm happy playing with fire.

My tsunami deck is complete and the Darkmoon Faire is this week! Only I don't know if I want it anymore :P. With the patch coming out tomorrow that includes an alchemist stone for healers, I'm not sure if I'm better off selling the deck I made and just sticking with the cheap-to-make stone that's a throughput buff. I was lucky and picked up the Jar of Ancient Remedies off Maloriak the other day, so it's not like I don't already have a nice regen trinket. Most likely I'll heal Tuesday with the alchemist stone and see if my mana regen is a problem. If it is, I'll pick up the Darkmoon card. If it's not, then I'll sell it. Or maybe I'll keep the card anyway so I can have a regen set and a throughput set. I'm still undecided!

I'm wondering if I should drop Efflorescence. A lot of druid blogs are advocating it, and have some very convincing math to back it up, but I'm just not sure it's the best course of action for my 10man. We run druid, holy priest, shaman, so we do have lots of AoE healing. I'm usually a tank healer, so my AoE heals are sort of afterthoughts, but it's nice to have two of them. After the Tuesday throughput vs. regen experiment I may change my spec Wednesday and take out Efflorescence, see how that goes. Ah, the wonders of new mechanics!

Diapers & Dragons: Being a parent and a raider

I think I've mentioned a couple of times now that I have a baby girl. She's a little over 10 months old. And I raid regularly and if it doesn't count as hardcore, it's enough to satisfy me. My guild is 9/12 in 10man raiding now, with a small, close-knit group who's been doing 10s together since the beginning of Wrath, when we were the first ten people to make it to 80. I'm proud of them as a guild and I need no qualifiers about including raiders with children. Anyone can raid, it's all about priorities and setting boundaries and goals.

The nay sayers are wrong

When I got pregnant, I had a lot of people both in and out of WoW tell me to put my raiding life behind me. "You won't have time to play games," they said. My husband works while I stay home. I was told how he wouldn't be able to take care of the baby so I could play occasionally. And just give up the whole concept of us both raiding together.

I was heartbroken by this. These weren't just people who saw WoW as a silly, pointless game, but people who actually have kids and play the game. Surely they knew what they were talking about.

Except they didn't. I talked to my mom, worried and scared that I wouldn't have any free time for games or my own activities. I was looking forward to being a mother, but I didn't want that to be my only definition. She was understanding and patient and, like always, supportive.

"You can make the time," she told me. And I knew it was true because that's what she did. Her situation was different; both my parents worked, but they always spent lots of time with me in addition to doing their own things. Mom played volleyball in a work league for years (until her knees gave out!). She worked in the yard and did crafty things and went shopping (this is a hobby for her, you must understand). Being a mother was probably her most defining characteristic, but it wasn't her only one.

Armed with that confidence, I set out to have my own life in WoW, to keep being a raider. And it's worked out better than I hoped.

Communication & Compromise

My husband and I both play WoW. He's our awesome pally tank, while I'm the trusty tree healer saving his ass from the fire. We've enjoyed this hobby together ever since WoW was released and we played EverQuest together before that. Our WoW characters predate our marriage and playing games together is one of the cornerstones of our relationship. We love it.

He wanted to raid. I wanted to raid. So we sat down and talked about how it would work out. With the 25man guild we were in before Cata came out, it wasn't so hard to swap nights when the baby was young. But we still wanted to raid together and when we split into a 10man guild, losing one of us every other night didn't make for a great raiding environment. We talked about it and decided we wanted to make that happen and we would both do what we could to further that goal.

So he helps out when he's not at work, watches the baby for me sometimes when I need a nap or am making dinner. I try to let him have some time to destress before raids and on our days off from raiding. Neither of us is wholly responsible for our daughter, and that has worked out for the best.

Scheduling my time -- and baby's

The baby books tell you to get the baby on a schedule and keep it up. I second this, wholeheartedly. The first three months there wasn't much scheduling to be done. Vivi ate every two hours for 45 minutes or an hour, then slept until she was hungry again. My time was split between feeding her and sleeping myself. It got better, but during that time I didn't play WoW. I knew it was coming and I let my guild know that I wouldn't be around a couple of months.

Gradually Vivi began to have more of a schedule. The real turning point was the introduction of solid foods, so she would take a nap right after a big meal. Those touchstones throughout the day gave stability to her life, and mine, and a much-needed framework for my day and meeting my goals.

At around five months, Vivi slipped into a relatively regular schedule as far as when she went to sleep at night. Almost every evening she's asleep by 9pm. Now I take her at 8:30 for a bath, a book, and bed. That one thing is the backbone of my ability to raid. I would love for her to go to sleep earlier, but I have deferred to her body's clock. She can't get to sleep (without long bouts of crying) before then, so I don't push it. The baby will always come first, we just plan our lives around her :).

During the day I get about an hour for housework, blogging, and WoW during her naptimes. I try to keep it to things I can get out of easily if she wakes up early (dailies, gathering, leveling alts, research for raids or gear), but the extra time I get before she goes to bed means I don't have to stress about which boss a BiS piece will drop off. I've already looked at the loot tables and made my list. These are things I would have done on Tuesdays or when I was bored of playing (when you have all day to play, it's amazing how often you decide you don't want to :P). Now I do them in smaller pieces.

Honesty with the guild

I knew going in that having a baby would change things as far as raiding. I let my guildies know that, too. I told them when I could raid and let them decide how to work me into that schedule. It turns out that they are truly gracious, amazing people and scheduled raids so that I can make the whole thing. I cannot say enough how thankful I am that I'm friends with these guys.

If I hadn't been as clear or as up front about my limitations, I think there would have been more resentment. Communication is important in all relationships, not just the spousal ones. I was a recruitment officer for a long time and it caused fewer headaches for me if I knew that a recruit had family issues that might come up. I keep the guild up to date and they keep me raiding. It's a good balance :). 

Setting reasonable goals

This is something I've had a hard time with. My expectations of myself were far higher than my ability to reach them and I've had to tamp down the frustration with a heady dose of reality. I can run a daily heroic three or four times a week. I can raid three times a week. I will not have the gear I could get if I could run more of these things. I am not a failure for not managing to be the best.

This is the important thing and probably the biggest lesson I've learned. It's early in the expansion. I have time to catch up and my guild is making progress. I am okay.

Parent AND Gamer

I didn't want to be one or the other. I want to be both and show my daughter that I can take care of her needs and my own as well. I want her to see the confidence that I have and make that a part of her. I don't think parents who have no life outside their children are making the best choices for the child or themselves.

That doesn't mean it doesn't take work. The evening of every raid day is a little rushed, with making dinner and getting Vivi fed and in bed by 9. The schedule is just a bit tighter. And the morning after a raid, which ends at 11:30 (but I never get to bed before midnight), always comes just a little sooner than I'd like. But it's worth it. I have an adorable, curious, giggling little girl who is the center of my universe. And orbiting her I have a great network of friends and games that my husband and I rely on to keep us sane. Our full, rich life is totally worth it :).

[Local Time]

When I started out as a newspaper reporter, fresh out of college, my editor told me I'd need to write 8-10 stories a week. That was a daunting task; researching, interviewing, taking photos (it was a small paper :P), and editing 10 pieces a week was more work than I'd ever done. But really, it wasn't so bad. The paper ran five days a week (one of those rare small dailies), and each day my section had a different theme. Big feature Monday, economy Tuesday, Schools Wednesday, etc. So I'd write the story for my section. Then I'd write a column that gathered up all the small-town bits that weren't really big enough for their own story. Then I'd write a feature for the front page. And maybe I'd cover an event. My point is, by breaking down the overall task into smaller bits and focusing on those, the deadlines themselves weren't so daunting.

Enter [Local Time]

I'm trying to keep this blog active and this is one way I can do it. Each week (or so) I'll post a sort of roundup of the things I'm working on and that my guild is working on. I keep writing and I keep an idea of what kind of goals I was working toward and how close I am to finishing them.

This week I've pulled my trusty lock out of BC storage. She was my PvP character in the closing months before Wrath came out and so she sports a full set of epic PvP gear (this is back when the term "welfare epics" was coined). Now she worked her butt off to get these epics, don't get me wrong, but it's not nearly the work load we see in Arenas today. Mostly she was a battleground toon and I liked it that way.

Anyway, she was level 73 on Monday and she's level 77 today. Big jump! A full rested exp bar and all the heirloom items I can get my hands on sure does help :). Unfortunately, I dropped Affliction and picked up Destruction. I say unfortunately because I have a great love for Affliction. Or at least I used to. I leveled Affliction all the way to 70 and then kept it up through the months of battlegrounds PvP. But I didn't play her much at all during Wrath (about two levels over the course of the xpac, total), so I know this is news to no one but me, but I miss all the instant dots that differentiated that spec. It's become less about the instant casts and more about lining up Drain Soul and Drain Life. And that's not really the spec I want to play. Destruction feels much more like what I'm used to, where I cast one or two spells with a cast time and finish off the rest with instants that really do damage. I suppose dots don't tick as hard as they used to. Ah well.

Who would get rid of these if they had the choice?!

She's still wearing her Vengeful Gladiator's Felweave Cowl, though. For those of you who either didn't play during BC or have forgotten the awesome, that's the purple demon wings. Every so often they flare out, flap, and then disappear. It's a really random but exceptionally cool animation that I am reluctant to give up. I've seen upgrades, but right now it's still not worth it to give up the cool factor. Probably once I hit 80 I'll let it go.

On the guild front, we're making serious progress! 7/12 is, I think, our official progression. This week we downed Maloriak and the Twilight Ascendant Council and I'm really proud. We came into both fights knowing the encounters (we spent last week beating our heads against both), but without a whole lot of upgraded gear throughout the raid. Either we were totally on our A game or the stars aligned (or both :P), but we were able to make the interrupts stick on the potion guy and we got all four Twilight Ascendants to right around 25% before the third phase.

We took a look at Cho'gall and tried to figure him out a bit, but we didn't really get that far with only 30 minutes left in the raid. Hopefully we'll get him down next week.

We've been plagued by DCs and bad lag on Tuesdays the last two weeks. I wonder if that's a sign from Blizz?

Goals

This coming week I want to get my lock to 82. I figure it's doable and probably easier solo than duoing (and I think I want to blog about making quests harder to do in a group :\). Hopefully I won't run out of rested and I'll still have time left over for flask farming.

Sell those Darkmoon cards! I have a stash of several leftovers from making the pieces of my Tsunami deck. The Darkmoon Faire is coming in a week, which means prices will only go up. I'd like to make some cash on these while I have the chance since the prices on them will continue to go down each month as more and more people get their decks.

Kill Atramedes and Cho'gall! That may be a little far-fetched, but right now I'm still riding high on getting two new kills this week. At least one of them should be doable, I'm just not sure which :P. I suppose it'll depend on which bosses we kill first and what our raid leader decides to do on our progression night.

Until next week, good luck!

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.

Not a morning person!

And so my beginnings are usually pretty meh. I'll start with a manifesto of sorts, just so I, at least, can remember what I'm here for :).

 I want to go back to work eventually. That's a good number of years away but I still need to be working toward that goal. To that end, I'm adding skills to my old set, as the old set will probably be a little out of date. The skills I'm adding are all web-based, like web site design and maintenance. First off they're easy to jump into in this day and age, and second they're pauseable, so I can go chase after my daughter or feed her or whatever in the middle of something and not lose anything. This blog is my first step in that direction, to force myself to write and keep up with something online on a regular basis (shooting for three posts a week, minimum, to start). It's also going to be a place for me to try out my burgeoning skills, so there will probably be freaky changes after a while!

As it says on the side there, I also identify as a tree, which if you play World of Warcraft you know it means I play a restoration druid. The next expansion, Cataclysm, is slated for release this year sometime, which I'm excited about. I've been a raider almost as long as I've been a player, and I've played since launch. Always as a resto druid. It's my niche :). So a lot of this will probably be talking about resto druid stuff, though I do love my death knight just as much, so she'll probably get some love :). I like to theorycraft as a hobby, which means I'm not big on math, but I like to speculate. Fortunately, the info coming out of the Cata beta leaves me with much to speculate upon :D. Like new tree form graphics! I'm not an autumn, Blizz, I'm so much more a spring :P.

Covering all the bases here, I'm also a writer. I've participated in NaNoWriMo for three or so years (maybe four? I can't remember anymore :P) and I won twice. The second novel is actually something I'd like to publish. I think it has potential. Anyway, when I got pregnant, it was like my muse left town and she hasn't gotten the memo that she can come home yet. I've got a few ideas simmering that I will hopefully have time and inclination to write (practicing writing blog posts will maybe unstick the gears in my head?) and I may decide to post them or parts of them. Might be password protected if I want to reserve the right to publish them. We'll see! Writing is one of those old working skills that's gotten rusty. I need to move those muscles!

I save the best for last. I'm a very proud mom of a four-month-old baby girl, Vivi. She's sweet, especially since she started sleeping through the night! I love that I get the opportunity to stay at home and take care of her, watch her learn and grow. I know I'm extremely lucky and I never forget that.

So that's it for the first post. Beginning, middle, end and some graphics in between. See, it's almost like I know what I'm doing :). With luck this will get easier as I learn to streamline the process. It's all about learning, really: web design, writing, WoW, babies. Each step improves on what I've done before :).