Patch 5.0.4 + Returned

For starters, I'm back for a while. Just trying out some of the new abilities and spells that are changed within the talent system. So far, it's a little tricky with Feral Druid since we're going back to SR uptime, but I'm ok with that. The game maybe simplified, but not all aspects are. Also trying to get back into Survival Hunter as well. Kinda tricky as well since I'm gaining so much focus when I don't need it. Not to mention my pet dies extremely easy now. Overall though, the changes are ok. I would like to use Incarnation more, but Soul of the Forest is decent for Feral Druid at the moment. I'm not too sure with Survival Hunter since it seems like any talent will do. But having Thrill of the Hunt is nice though.

The reduce slots was saddening, but I do get gold from it. So it's not entirely a bad loss. Getting items in LFR is a lot more personal and a welcome change. No more whining about that heroic geared warrior getting raid tier because it's for his off-spec (although there's more whining about Blizz doing this to them). Not to mention getting 25 gold for a lost roll is a pretty good trade off. Getting back into PvP is hard since most people are out-gearing me. So I don't focus on that aspect too much.

The only, true problem I have with this patch is that there is a visual bug where I see half the skin of a player. It was (un)funny at first, but now it's just straight up annoying to look at every time I walk by people. Fortunately, a Blizz rep knows about this and it deals with the CPU. Yes, I have a single-core processor and that is not the problem because people with duo-cores (and a couple of quad-cores) have the same problem. So hopefully, it's not a costly fix on the user side.

Overall, the patch is looking promising to fix up the expansion. A couple of hickups here and there with other classes, but mostly satisfied with what is given. Now all I'm waiting for is the Theramore incident and the expansion to pop out and every can begin playing again.

So Much Is Too Much

So one of my guild mates (beforehand, I didn't know until we were done) was making a pug raid group and asked if there is an able tank for a Nefarian kill in BWD (Blackwing Descent). Most of the other tanks were not on, leveling their alts, or waiting for Hard Modes. However, I came into the picture with my feral druid Meomeo and accepted the offer. The raid group was soon ported to the instance and I began discussing with the other tank for what to tank. At first, I thought I was going to tank Onyxia and the adds from Nefarian. But then the other tank quickly prefer that he'll do what was mentioned instead (since he had experience with it anyways). Intimidated enough, I was in an unfamiliar territory with tanking Nefarian.

At first, my health was in scary place since I never been use to being this low in health. But after a while, it just felt natural and fun taking his attention. Fortunately, the raid group was able to kill him without too much hassle (in one attempt as well). Funny enough, I think I obtain a tier item from that place and never used it. I think I should since all I got is engineering helmet (which is nice, but I prefer the bonus). I'll try to tank later on for other raids, such as Baradin Hold and The Bastion of Twilight. Hopefully, I'll get geared enough to do Firelands later on (or wait for 4.3 to do the Dragon Soul raid). Either way, more stuff to come for my druid. And even if I don't do so well with tanking, my DPS specc is pretty good.

In other news, my holy paladin Hammerwind has leveled up to 85 recently. Now, I have been trying out healing with her and all it has been doing for me is getting my poor tauren crushed under Alliance's feet 24/7. Every moment, I'm looking at the world in gray scale because I can't heal for nothing and I keep dying very quickly. However, when I switch to my Protection gear and specialization, everything suddenly got calmer for my tauren. There's only been a few moments were I die very quickly. Aside from that, I just been tickling (occasionally helping) the Alliance. At the same time, however, the worse treatment I received was from a warlock in PvE gear and that legendary staff that everyone been getting lately (that blue dragon in the sky is becoming very annoying now). Aside from that, I have been very helpful with a few BGs. Of course though, this is just a few. I bet in many more, it'll be a lot worse. Hopefully though, I should probably live up to my tauren's name.

Now, this next moment has been on my mind lately and it's quite irritating to the point I want to be unprofessional right now. But for the sake of keeping this blog up, I'll be calm and explain the situation. Last night, I was on my shadow priest Wilda while searching a group to do BH before today's reset. I found my first one and tried to sample out that someone was saved. So I went back and forth and suddenly, my computer just gave up on me and froze the game. I was rushing my computer to start up the game again and it was just acting very slow. Eventually, I log back on only to see that I'm out of my group. So I search for another group and it was taking a while. Eventually, someone made one and I joined a second group. The same intro to the scenario of someone being saved happened. However, I didn't disconnected this time and the raid leader eventually found out the saved person. We booted him and finally started to get through the raid zone.

Then we got to Occu'thar. Now, we made two attempts on this dog. First attempt, people were being bad and standing in middle of the area were we suppose to group up and kill adds at. For the uninformed that never did this boss, don't stand in the area were people need to stack up. Otherwise, he focus on a random player and place a lasting AOE on the ground. What's worse is that some people that group up while that AOE was below them just sat there instead of standing near each other. Not only the healer is using even more mana to heal people, but they're most likely dead in a few seconds. Eventually, our DPS was too low since people kept dying and had to retry. However, I'm use to stuff like this because I'm quite patient with bad players during gameplay. But this is clearly not the worse part of this ordeal.

On the second attempt, players were still doing poor, but the job was done. And when I went to check loot, T12 DPS gloves dropped. I was quite happy since there was another priest and she was just heals. But soon, my happiness turn into so much endless rage, that Ragnaros would be afraid of. The raid leader (reading only the Spirit part of the gear) gave it right to the healing priest and said priest disappeared. Gave the poorly-geared healing priest T12 DPS gloves...all I wanted to do was express myself in such reckeless and violent rage to quench this anger, but the best I can do is make inappropriate swearing. 

So I learned a very valuable lesson last night. Do my BH runs earlier. Most likely, the smarter players will be trying to get it done as soon as possible. Or worse comes to worse, do my own.

So I filled the Moonwell...

And this happens:

Apparently, these chains events cause Leyara became Druid of the Flame (and sadly die as one). But it goes to show you that anger can run deep into the family. Quite tragic for a night elf, but she shouldn't hurt Hamuul in the process. Big mistake.

Meomeo

Race: Tauren
Class: Druid
Current Level: 85
Date Created: 11/??/2009
Realm Location: Ner'zhul
Current Spec and Gearing: Feral with Bloodthirsty Set

Description: This tauren was my second toon (first Horde character) to be created and now my primary toon after Alehs. Feeling stressed out from my warrior dying all the time, I went on my druid. I tried to experiment with what I wanted to do with my druid, and Balance and Restoration wasn't for me. But once I keep trying with Feral, I felt like I found my WoW sweet spot for dishing out damage.

In PvP, I died quickly but it wasn't as frequently as my warrior and I could choose my battles a little better. So gaining gear back at 80 was a lot better for my druid than for my warrior. Although I didn't get Wrathful gear during the season, I did obtain most of it when it was free. Of course, no shoulders were available, so I never had them.

In PvE, I advanced very well with gear to the point I eventually had T10 with two heroic pieces. And around late November of last year, I got Kingslayer. I understand that I had the 30% buff, but most of my groups usually don't go that far or we would be stuck at Professor, Blood Queen, or Sindragosa. So it was depressing not being in a good grouping until a good PuG came in to help us. But yeah, Patch 3.3.5 was the prime of my druid.

Then Cataclysm came in and still gave some fun for my druid after I painfully leveled my warrior. However, when I got up to 85, problems began to rise. Since it was very early in Cataclysm, I couldn't really do instances so quickly since most of my guild was on and off (the realm is West Coast, but I'm East Coast; blame my Alliance friend for signing me up there). Not to mention PvP was a severe grind fest. Luckily, the 1800+ honor points came in and support my gearing as well. But all was not too lost in PvE. As of right now, I currently have heroic gearing with 4-5 epics ready to be use. The only problem is that my guild can't pass Magmaw or Halfus when I was active. Every time we died and it only got worse each passing week. So I hung up my poor around February and went back to school.

Hopefully around late April or early May, I'll start playing again and make my druid shine. I know the Great Druid Nerfs were nasty back in February, but I seen some feral druids climbing back the ladder (PvP isn't dead, just a little harder now; can't say the same for PvE though since melee isn't too valuable for most fights). So all hope isn't lost if I play my druid a lot better.