Another milestone was reached in my raiding alliance on Saturday night. I’m sure you all remember my post about nasty old Leo. This time, it was personal.

Sure, he kicked us around last time. This time, though, we were better prepared to fight our inner demons, and from the start things were going well. Now, we didn’t one shot him or anything, but by the third try we finally seemed to have our act together. It wasn’t long before we took the shot below, over Leo’s dead body.

No good loot for yours truly, but I didn’t have a ton of interest in the T5 gloves anyhow. The exciting part was getting to 5/6 in SSC, and having the opportunity to take on the Big Lady herself. So we moved on, everyone giddy to finally have our own look at one of the final T5 bosses. We’ve been cutting our teeth in SSC for awhile now, learning the boss fights, improving our overall gear, and gaining valuable experience. At the point, we have the potential to one shot everyone up to Leo, as we have a good handle of those fights.

For us, getting to Vashj is our first real payoff.

One of the great things about WoW, and one of the reasons it has held me for so long (since closed beta), is that I have almost NEVER felt cheated. Whenever I have reached some kind of milestone, be it in five man instances or in Raids or elsewhere, I always felt like the payoff was really worth all the work. I have played a lot of MMOs previously, and their payoffs often felt empty. Your chasing that carrot on a stick for some time, when you get ahold of the carrot, it better taste pretty darn good.

Of course there are always more carrots, but the ones I have tasted in WoW have been pretty darn good. My first introduction to Lady Vashj was no exception. Here’s a shot of the hall leading to her, if you haven’t seen it before. Screenshots only do so much, though. It can’t give you what I felt as I walked through that hall.

Epic. That’s how it felt. You hit a console on a platform once everyone else is down, and the whole inside of the cavern seems to impossibly shift and twist to reveal the road to the Lady. Of course the typical Blizzard high attention to detail is present, with moss and vines hanging from the ceiling, vast open spaces, and the haunting voice of Lady Vashj, drawing you to her. You know you’re in for a heck of a fight. Here she is, patiently waiting to kick us around.

Now, I won’t try to bore you with the details of the fight and how we failed. We got in three good attempts, and everyone there learned a lot. We never got past the second phase, but we got that all valuable experience. IMO, when it comes to raiding, it’s all about everyone getting a good taste of the fight before you can succeed. The first phase is pretty basic, and we got through that easily enough all three tries. In the second phase, though, it takes on a very difficult, very chaotic, and very epic feel. Basically adds are coming from everywhere, and you have to deal with them all in different ways. Nasty adds.

Anyhow, we didn’t get her down. But now we’ve been there, and we’ve seen the fight. As it has been with all the fights thus far, it’s only a matter of time before it clicks for enough people and we take her down. I plan to be there that day.

The recent avalanche of information regarding Wrath of the Lich King got me to thinking. What are some of the changes I HOPED I would have seen? This is in part inspired by a post by Leafy at Leafshine: Lust For Flower. I quickly came up with a few things.

Start Experienced Players at Higher Level

What I mean by this is just what they’re doing with the new Death Knight class. Everyone starts at 55. Now, I’m not saying that we should be able to start all of our alts at 55, but it sure would be nice if we could get a little leg up. Maybe 30? 40 perhaps, and get to start out with a mount? Honestly, is there any reason an experienced player, who has seen the low level content at least once, can’t skip it? I don’t have anything to learn in Westfall any longer. I also don’t need my hand held through the development of new characters. I can learn what I need to know about a different class just as well from 30 or 40 on.

Of course you’d have to figure out what unlocks the ability to create alts at 30 or 40. Having one 70? 2 70s? I’d lean towards the former, but could live with the latter. Heck, maybe they could put in some quest to allow you to do so. Make it a fairly difficult group quest where completing it unlocks ONE character slot where you can “jump ahead.” Maybe something in the Caverns of Time? Like you end up pulling someone from in the past into the future?

I don’t really care if it’s cool or not, though. I just want to start my alts at 40!

Make My Armor Visible!

This is a druid centric wish. Like many druids, I don’t get to participate in the “fashion show” aspect of WoW as much as other classes. In 25 man raids, everyone looks all cool with their T5 level, fancy gear, and I look like…well, a tree. A boring, brown tree with boring, brown leaves. Can’t I look at least a LITTLE epic? How about make us get taller based on our gear level? Then people would KNOW what was up when a towering tree shambled around Shatt!!

Of course, I’d also be happy if they changed our forms to be more like shadowform. I mean, you can still see the priest’s armor, he just looks even more cool. Maybe have us take on a different hue or aura when shapeshifted. I’m just tired of looking like every other tree out there!

Insta-Mail For All

I don’t know about you, but I HATE having to wait an hour all the time. Sometimes I only HAVE one hour to play. So you can forget it if I’m waiting for a mat delivery sometimes. So why exactly is it that intra-account mail is instant, but mail to anyone else takes exactly one hour? Are they going for some kind of weird suspension of disbelief? Do they need to read everyone’s mail Big Brother like? I don’t get it!

Player Housing

Ok, ok. I know this is more a pipe dream than anything else, but I swear I remember Blizzard mentioning it while WoW was in development. My first big time MMORPG was Asheron’s Call, and one thing I loved was the housing. Just think of the money sink potential, Blizz! You could get a huge hold on the economy based on how it was done! Heck, I’ll take an apartment above Ironforge if that’s all I can get! (And yes, Asheron’s Call even had apartments!)  I’d just love my own little pad to decorate with, like, leaves and stuff!

Real REZ for DRUIDS, PLZ!

Yeah, yeah yeah. I think about 2.5 billion people have begged for this to no avail. Why are druids the red-headed stepchildren of the healing world? Yeah, I know, Battle Rez rocks. Does that mean we can’t have a real rez to go with it? Bizz, you realize this sometimes makes it difficult for us to get invites to 5 mans, right? If they don’t have another class to rez for us? Would you make tank class that wouldn’t taunt? No? Then why a healing class that CAN’T REZ??

Yeah, I’ve heard the argument. They want the healers to be different. That doesn’t mean you should hamstring us in a vital area. Oh well, at this point it probably isn’t happening. So where did I leave my Goblin Jumper Cables?

This is one of those posts that I’m sure in about half an hour I’ll come up with 8 more things I should have mentioned. This will do for now, though. So what’s one feature YOU would love to see?

First of all, I want to apologize for my absence last week. I only managed to get to 2 posts last week, as opposed to my usual 3 posts. Real Life hit me over the head when one of my coworkers suddenly left the company for greener pastures. Yours truly just happened to be this employee’s backup, so I ended up with a double workload for now. Of course the present state of the economy doesn’t help, as I don’t know if that post will be filled any time soon. Oh well, back to business!

So of course you’ve heard by now about the huge outbreak of news concerning Wrath of the Lich King. I won’t bore you with another features post, as my fellow bloggers and other sites have that well covered. I will take the time to touch on two pieces of news that are salient to the casual player. Here goes.

Raiding and Instances in Wrath

ALL raiding dungeons will have both a 10 and 25 man version. You’ll have to excuse me as I wipe the tears from my face. This, to me, is the most exciting piece of news I’ve heard about the expansion. My regular readers know by now that I come from a Casual raiding guild, with a strong emphasis on Casual. We run a few 25 mans in house, like Gruul, Magtheridon, and a smattering of runs in Mount Hyjal. We are also part of an alliance that is working on SSC and TK. We just flat out have never had the numbers to get serious about 25 man raids.

We can, however, put together at least 4 or 5 10 mans a week. Now, in Wrath, we will have a much larger selection of raiding options. Blizzard also let us know that the 10 and 25 man versions will be on separate lockout timers, and there will be NO attunements.

I cannot freaking wait. My guild LOVES Kara, but ZA was a bit of a letdown for us. It was just plain too tough for our overall gear level (go ahead and read my post on ZA if you like).  I can already see visions of having several 10 mans we could run in any given week.  Monday in Utgarde, Tuesday in Raid Dungeon #2, Thursday in Raid Dungeon #3.  You get the picture.  Ain’t it purty?

The 25 man version of the new instances will have loot a “tier higher” than the 10 man versions, according to Blizzard. I don’t really care. For me it’s never REALLY been about the loot.  It’s not that I want to have the best gear in game, I know that given my play time it wouldn’t be fair to other players. I may never see the inside of the Black Temple (though I could go there now and get kicked around!), and I just want freaking SEE things like Arathas!!!

Blizzard also let the world know that all 5 mans will have heroic versions with completely separate loot tables from the regular versions. I like heroics, but I always wished there was MORE too them loot-wise.  It’s always just a handful of differences.  There will also be a badge system similar to the present one in place, which is more good news.  The badge system is GREAT for Casual players.  It gives us a fighting chance at good loot!  Also, all the 5 mans are supposed to be doable in an hour. Woohoo! You mean I could finally do instances more often in my normal 1-2 hour play window? *sob*

The Death Knight

Really, there’s one big thing that I love about this news. We knew that Blizzard was planning on starting you off with a leg up as far as leveling, but now we know the Death Knight will start all the way at 55. This is great news for casual players! I might actually be willing to give one a whirl, now. If they started in their 20s or 30s, I’m not so sure I would have. My playtime is precious. I don’t know if I’d want to start off Wrath with a new level 1 or 20 or 30 to get a DK.  Now that I know I can start off in the old world, and it won’t be long before I can hit the Outlands, the Death Knight is a much more appealing possibility.  (Heck, I remember when on Day 2 of the BC release I saw a nearly level 60 Draenei Shaman run by. Some people have a crazy amount of time to spend in this game, but I’m not one of them.)

Another appealing aspect of the Death Knight is it sounds like I’ll finally be able to get the skeletal warhorse I always wanted as an alliance player! Woot! And, of course, there’s a whole new playstyle to figure out, and it sounds like the DK will be an appealing, hybrid type class. I love hybrids. It’s also good to know that any race can be a Death Knight. Just how many DK gnomes do you think there will be?

There’s a very big downside to the Death Knight for casual players, though. Now there’s yet ANOTHER alt we will be tempted to start!

Well, that’s the stuff that really jumped out at me. There’s a boatload more info, along with some great screenshots and even some wonderful movies over at Gamespy.com.  Heck, the news about more 10 mans alone was enough to make my heart go pitter patter and all that stuff. Now I REALLY can’t wait for Wrath!

One of the challenges of raiding in WoW is group combination and assignments. Assigning the players to task at which they excel or can use their abilities to their fullest is obviously what we all strive for. Where in a five man instance numbers are easy, one tank, one healer, 3 DPS, things get a little dicier as more people are added to the mix. Then you have to look closely at a number of different areas, including gear, experience and spec.

Most of the time, you end up with roughly 3 or 4 of your healers assigned to specific people, like the MT, the OT, and perhaps the Melee DPS, then the rest get assigned to the “raid.”  As a raid healer your job is to basically try to chip in anywhere damage is being taken.  Some people will assign raid healers to specific groups, others not.  In the raids I have been in, the raid healing role was kind of a “if it bleeds, toss a heal”, free for all mentality.

So to the question at hand: do Resto Druids make good raid healers? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Nobody, and I mean nobody, has as many useful insta-cast healing spells as Resto Druids. We can lay two or three good hots on people before many a priest or pally finishes one spell windup. Our Insta-Cast HOTs can also tick for quite a bit, especially if we have time to put a couple LBs on, or a LB and Rejuv. In a lot of raid encounters, buying a second or two for the other healers to do their job can save the day for a DPS taking damage.
• Acting as a raid healer takes advantage of another strength of the Resto Druid – mobile healing. In a lot of raid fights, being able to get the heck out of the way without sacrificing any real heal time can be a HUGE benefit. I have a tendency to run around while raiding for no good reason, really…just to keep my eye on all parts of the fight. Many druids have great situational awareness, as their healing power is less dependent on staying still while casting.
• We also have the freedom to find people to Battle Rez if necessary. We are the only ones that can prolong a fight by bringing other people back up, and frequently this can be the difference. The Resto Druid assigned to the tank can’t take the couple of seconds out of his/her spell rotation to rez somebody.  A raid healing Tree can quite easily.

Cons:

• In some ways, acting as a Raid Healer hamstrings some of the Resto Druid’s biggest strengths, namely focused HOTs on 2 or 3 tanks. Our nice buff to healing from the Tree of Life aura is largely lost in this capacity as well, depending on what group we are stuck in. If there is only one Resto Druid in the raid, you are doing the tanks a disservice, IMO, if you assign that tree to raid healing.
• Resto Druids really have to rely on the other raid healers for most of the heavy lifting. If there is a LOT of Raid damage, there isn’t much we can do to help. Obviously that kind of situation is tailor made for a CoH priest or a Resto Shammy. Our HOTs do a great job topping people off and buying some time, but we don’t have a real good way to heal for a lot quickly, especially if the damage is extremely spread out.
• If you care at all about the healing meters, which you shouldn’t, you’ll hate raid healing as a Tree. Your numbers will really look pathetic. More often then not, your wonderful HOTs will get overwritten by the other raid healers. Honestly, though, there’s only two things I care about when healing in a raid: how many people died, and whether we were successful.

Conclusion

So what do I think? Well, I’ll be honest. When I first started raiding, I would get the tiniest bit offended at being assigned to raid healing. To me, that was the RL saying, “I don’t trust you, so I’ll just put you on the raid.” Like everyone who raids, I had worked hard on my gear, stats and abilities. You go into raiding after accomplishing a lot in this game, and raid healing felt like the back seat.  Part of the issue with me personally is that I raid in an alliance, so the RL didn’t know me all that well.

Now I realize that raid healing isn’t necessarily the back seat. The fact is, a lot of healing assignments are dependent on the group composition. If there are two Tree healers, the best spot to stick tree #2 is on the raid. You don’t need two Trees to run HOTs on the tanks, at least not in the encounters I have dealt with thus far.

Being largely assigned as the raid healer has also removed my tunnel vision for the most part. I feel a little more invested in encounters, as I have more freedom as a raid healer. I even spend some time DPSing here and there. In the end, if you have more than one Tree in your raid, then yes, Trees make fine raid healers. If there is only one, though, you’re gimping your group by not taking fully advantage of the Power of Tree by assigning the Resto Druid to the tanks.

Still, I’m just glad I’m raiding!  Thanks for reading!

Batten down the hatches, it’s List Time! I don’t know if you realize this, but there are approximately 1.5 million WoW blogs out there. They cover theory, specific classes, patches, everything. So how is one to find their way amongst an ocean of reading on WoW? Well, in my own little way I’ll try to help by giving you some insight into my favorites. There are many, many more than I read, but it’s only the Top 5. The Best of the Best, at least for me. In no particular order, here they are!

1. Resto4Life

It’s best to start from the beginning. This is the first blog I ever read on a regular basis. It may have been the first blog I read period. I am a Resto Druid, after all. Her blog is also the reason that I am writing this today. If I hadn’t found her blog, I might have never started my own. Phaelia’s blog screams quality from front to back. The formatting is always impeccable, and it’s liberally sprinkled with both interesting and useful images. If you are a Resto Druid, this is one of the first places you should always go, IMO. Phaelia keeps her blog fresh by using a nice variety of posts from light, fun stuff to hardcore theorycrafting. If there is one thing I couldn’t tackle, it’s hardcore WoW math. Phaelia does it, and does it well. Phaelia even took issue with one of my posts once, but I still love her blog all the same. (And in retrospect, I may have been a bit harsh…I’ll remedy that some day soon!)

2. Big Bear Butt Blogger

If you read WoW blogs at all, there’s a good chance you already know about this one. This is usually the first blog I read, every day. Part of that is due to the alphabetization of my Google reader list, but it still counts! If he was the Really Big Bear Butt Blogger I’d probably still read him first or second. BBB is great for a lot of the same reasons that I like most blogs. Variety and quality. He’s not afraid to steer away from strictly WoW topics, and at the same time can churn out a gear-centric or strategy type post as well as anyone. His blog can also make me laugh, as few can. I’m notoriously stoic. If you’re a feral druid, or a WoW player at all really, you should read this blog. You can even hear BBB on the WoW Insider Show on WCRadio.

3. World of Matticus

Matt’s blog is one of the best, IMO, from a true “reference” stand point. If there is something I want to know about raiding, healing, or game mechanics in general, WoM is one of the first places I go. Matt has personally helped myself and my guild as we learn the ropes in SSC, and his blog has been an invaluable resource to me for quite some time. Matt’s blog is not only a great source for WoW knowledge, but also tremendously helpful if you write a blog and need some help. He’s great at both promoting and helping the WoW blogging community at large. He really knows his stuff, and his site has a unique, clean, and easily navigable design.

4. Tobold’s MMORPG Blog

If I want pure, unadulterated opinion, this is where I go. Tobold always has interesting, thoughtful ideas about both WoW and the MMORPG industry in general. Yes, I know it is not ALL about WoW, but there is a lot of great info about WoW and other games to be found here. Heck, you can even find out about Age of Conan here if you like. Now, don’t expect any nice design when you hit this blog, it’s all about the content. When you get down to it, though, he has some of the best content out there. He’s like the Bill Moyer’s of WoW, he can make anything interesting.

5. Banana Shoulders

While I Phalia’s blog was the first I ever read, Siha’s Paladin blog was the second. I know, it seems odd. Why would I read a Paladin-centric blog anyhow? Well, in my experience, Siha puts up some of the most USEFUL posts out there. if you check out her site today, you’ll find some great stuff like her guide to the 2.4 dailies (which she was putting up LONG before anyone else) and stuff like one of my most often visited posts, her Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Sheet. Heck, I read it whenever I can, and my highest level Paladin is 8. That’s got to say SOMETHING about the quality of her blog, right?

This is by no means a list of the only blogs I read. I’m sometimes intimidated when I open up my Reader and see how many new posts have stacked up over night! There are a lot of great bloggers out there, and it was tough to list just my top 5. I read blogs of every type there is, and there are at least 30 that I read EVERY post.  That says a lot both about the breadth of WoW and the WoW blogging community.  Thanks for reading!