Posts with tag druid
Posted Oct 18th 2007 1:40PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion
The EU community MVP Schwick is really great at compiling lots of good info. In the past, he's done compilations on issues raised by the community for
Hunters,
Priests, and
Rogues, as well as
a bunch of other stuff.
Now he's come up with the first draft of his
compilation on Druids. He asked forum-goers what their main problems with the Druid class are, sifted through all the responses, and put them together in a very readable format for the Blizzard devs (and other players) to have a look at.
It seemed to me that most of the Druid issues had to do with items and abilities not scaling so well in endgame raids after Karazhan. There were some points that addressed other general issues, as well as arena PvP, but overall casual druids seemed pretty content. There wasn't even any mention of the
graphical updates to the shapeshifted forms that many druids have been asking for.
Keep checking the thread to see what additional thoughts the players had, and to see future drafts of the compiled suggestions.
Posted Oct 17th 2007 3:03PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Druid, Patches
We just talked about this issue in
Shifting Perspectives a week ago, but it appears Blizzard is already doing something about the tauren cat form -- albeit not very much. Many tauren have long complained that their cat form is much uglier than the night elf version (compare for yourself
here), and while these changes aren't comprehensive, at least they're a tiny step in a new direction.
Beaux on the US forums showed everyone how, in
patch 2.3, Blizzard has modified the tauren cat form's face to look more like a lion and less like a monkey, and changed the neck of the lion so that it doesn't look so hunchbacked as it moves. It's not as pretty as the
tauren cat form suggestion submitted in Blizzard's art contest, but it'll do for now I would think.
[Update]: Our reader tmklein supplied us with some interesting links for what the EU player Andrige thought the various forms should look like -- all with a distinct visual style. Would you like this sort of change?
Posted Oct 10th 2007 6:00PM by Eric Vice
Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Classes
Last week
I talked about mid-level content and as expected, many of you expressed an opinion. One comment in particular from autumnbear got me thinking. Autumnbear writes:
"How about updating the overall lore for the game, and allowing more class choices for the current playable races. Still waiting for the Night Elves to teach my Human how to be a Druid, especially since he's Exalted with both Darnassus AND the Cenarion Circle."
Now that's something I can chew on. What about quests that will allow you to make race/class combinations that are not otherwise available in the game? I think this is a tremendous idea if the process is sufficiently difficult to prevent everybody and their uncle's cat from doing it. The original Everquest had epic quests that took some players months to complete. Everquest 2 had the betrayal quests which allowed you to change factions which took a really long time to complete.
Why shouldn't a human, in Autumnbear's case, who has earned significant faction with Darnassus not be able to learn the finer points of being a
druid?
Gnomes have no healing classes. Why not create a very difficult quest line for those gnomes who are exalted with Stormwind that would allow them to become a
paladin or
priest?
I know I'm going to get a billion comments about game balance. Admittedly this would likely not count as "mid-level" either, but I think that if it was properly implemented it could be a valid source of that new content that everybody is craving.
Posted Oct 9th 2007 5:00PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Druid, Shifting Perspectives
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Some people say that Blizzard is lazy. Players tend to start voicing this sort of opinion when it seems like Blizzard hasn't done something they think should have been done a long time earlier, such as adding new dungeons they won't visit, or new features they won't use. Sometimes there's just one particular thing that grates and grates on the players' nerves so much that they simply cannot understand why Blizzard hasn't done anything about it yet.
Even I have been guilty of this sort of thinking now and then. But ultimately, it becomes apparent that, whatever the status of Blizzard's list of flaws --
laziness is not one of them. Indeed, we simply do not realize the massive extent of work that is required to achieve some things, especially the things we don't personally desire, and therefore fail to give credit for hard work done where we don't realize such credit is due.
The topic at hand today is a prime example of such a problem, a druid pet peeve which has gone on for a long long time.
Exhibit A, above, is the Tauren Cat Form, or rather, what some of us might wish the Tauren Cat Form looked like -- a player's own suggestion submitted in
Blizzard's own art contest of 2007. The Tauren Cat Form that Horde druids have been seeing since 2004 is pictured to the left here in
Exhibit B [Update: Tauren cat form has been slightly updated in patch 2.3]. Whether or not Exhibit A is the perfect replacement for Exhibit B can be left up to the good judgment of the reader, but for the purposes of this article, it is sufficient for us if we all agree that something must
eventually be done about the feral druid's monotonous appearance problem. That's to say -- we tire of staring at the Same Old Animal Posterior (or SOAP).
Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: The same old animal posterior
Posted Oct 8th 2007 2:00PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Druid, Patches
It looks like feral druids will not be denied their bit of love in
patch 2.3. The feral talent Heart of the Wild, will be changed to gain +10% attack power in cat form rather than +20% strength as shown in the current version above. As
Vorox notes for us in his forum post this is a buff for feral druids.
It may be a nerf for those druids who have stacked as much strength as possible to the exclusion of other stats, but especially considering that
they plan to raise the attack power on items that buff druids' attack power while shapeshifted, having this talent to make them even more powerful seems pretty nice to me. It also makes agility scale even better for cat druids than it did before, and in many cases it enables us to get more bonuses from many buffs and items (such as Blessing of Might, and... rogue gear!).
For the mathematically inclined amongst you, here is the formula for calculating your new buffed-up attack power from the
original poster Vorox (who translated from
German): (Current AP - (Strength in cat form - Strength in caster form)*2)*1.1
Posted Sep 28th 2007 7:55PM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion
With DPS, this question is simple. You can take a glance at your damage meter of choice and see how much damage they've done, perhaps combined with how much damage they've taken (hitting the top of the damage meters may be impressive -- but if the only way to do that involves being a major drain on your healers' mana, it might be better for your group as a whole if you cut back), and can have a pretty good idea of how they're performing. On the other hand, measuring a healer's performance is a bit more ethereal, as discussed in depth today on
Priestly Endeavors. Of course, you can watch the
healing meters, but they don't tell the entire story of a good healer. What about mana management? The 5-second rule? Heal timing? (Heal too soon and you're overhealing and wasting mana -- but heal too late and you may not have anyone to heal at all.) Kirk on
Priestly Endeavors breaks it down into the data you'd want to see to completely determine healer effectiveness:
- The health of every party member over time.
- Information on every heal that was cast and when it was cast (including things like Power Word: Shield which usually aren't counted).
- The healer's mana over time.
But while having a spreadsheet showing off all of this information for the duration of an instance run would certainly tell us exactly how our healers are doing, this much data would be heavy information overload. (Fascinating to sort through when you have specific questions, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it every day.) But seeing as we don't currently have access to such detailed information, I'm throwing the question out to you -- how do you measure the performance of a healer? What extra information would you like to have in measuring the performance of a healer?
Posted Sep 25th 2007 4:15PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Druid, PvP, Classes, Shifting Perspectives
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Every class has its pet PvP problems. Some whine a lot about how many times they've been nerfed; others just whine about warlocks. But most of these classes have a pretty clear idea about what they're supposed to be doing. Sometimes they whine that they don't like "what they're supposed to be doing" and would rather remake their class into something completely different -- but that's another issue.
Here's the generally accepted conventional wisdom on what each class is supposed to be doing in PvP:
- Rogues: Kick buttocks (by surprise)
- Hunters: Shoot buttocks (from a distance)
- Mages: Freeze and burn buttocks (and sheep)
- Priest: Melt buttocks (or heal)
- Shaman: Shock buttocks, drop totems (and heal)
- Warrior: Charge in and smash buttocks (with a healer in tow)
- Paladin: Stay alive (and heal)
- Warlock: Laugh maniacally (a lot)
- Druid: Mix and match your healing, damage absorption, and buttocks-destruction by being in the right form at the right time to do the right thing that needs to be done based on whoever is around you and whatever is going on at any given moment (lol wut?)
Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: PvP is hard
Posted Sep 13th 2007 7:50PM by Chris Jahosky
Filed under: Alchemy, Items, Analysis / Opinion
For those that aren't familiar with
Fel Mana potions, they restore 3200 mana over 24 seconds, but also reduce your spell damage by 25 and your healing by 50 for 15 minutes.
On the surface, this seems like a bad deal, at least to me. I've intentionally not used them because of their negative side effect. Besides, a
Super Mana potion will restore 1800-3000 mana instantly -- so why wait for the mana
and incur a spell penalty?
Phaelia over at
Resto4Life recently did some math that may or may not change your mind about using them,
if you use them at the right time.
Mostly the article is aimed at discussing when healers should pop a Fel Mana potion, but good news for all you hunters out there that may not have thought of this yet... there's no downside if you use them!
Posted Sep 11th 2007 7:59PM by David Bowers
Filed under: Human, Druid, Lore, Shifting Perspectives
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.Druids weren't always night elves and tauren, you know. Well, in
World of Warcraft they were, but centuries before the first snowflakes started to form in the clouds of Blizzard's creative minds, the authentic human druids actually walked around casting regrowth, shapeshifting, and spamming moonfire.
Or did they? How much of the class that we know and love in WoW is actually based on the real life druids of old? How did the word "druid" come to refer to our fantasy fighters rather than some ancient wise men in robes?
Continue reading Shifting Perspectives: The human druids
Posted Sep 8th 2007 10:00AM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth
Reader Sanari of Khaz Modan sends in this nicely composed shot that really catches the speed of the Druid's travel form. Here we see a Druid speeding across the Tanaris desert towards the moonrise. (I want to say towards Un'goro, but with the landmarks in this shot, it could just as easily be running the other way.)
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing
aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from
Around Azeroth.
Posted Sep 7th 2007 8:00PM by Chris Jahosky
Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, How-tos
Karthis over at
Of Teeth and Claws has posted a
great new article about druid threat generation. It's a good read, supported by some solid math, so if you're into theorycrafting, or just want to squeeze every drop of threat out of your Druid, I recommend stopping by and reading up.
Be sure to check his archive, too -- he's got some very good posts up there, as well as some useful links to up-and-coming druids looking to better their gear.
Posted Aug 19th 2007 10:00AM by Elizabeth Harper
Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth
One of my favorite games at the Darkmoon Faire is the cannon that you can shoot yourself from. When you launch from the cannon, you will have a lovely set of wings (as seen above) which come with a quite handy slow fall effect. However, this is the first time I've seen the cannon launch cats into the air... or perhaps this shot, sent in by reader Donna, is a preview of the upcoming Druid Gryphon form? Only time will tell!
Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing
aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from
Around Azeroth.
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