Mooonfire!

The place is a mess, there are posts that need fixing, the various lists on the sidebar are extremely old and you have no idea what I’m up to in-game these days. Also, I have a developing rant about what makes raiding fun.

You do not, however, get any of these things right now, because my first post back after a long, long hiatus, is about my current spec, what makes it fun, and what I might change.

You can find it by examining me on the armory, and it’s something of an odd spec- A variation of the Dreamstate healer (itself uncommon) without the classic support talent Brambles. It takes the DPS-enhancing talents intead.

So why do I like this build? Versatility.

We were in Karazhan last night. We had zero warrior tanks. Nada. We had only two healers (both druids, neither me). Majinbill, a paladin, was our main tank. Maj and I have this understanding, and we’ve now tanked, as a team, all of Karazhan (and upper Kara twice).

We started out fine. No priests, so no real CC against undead. One of the DPS face-pulled a second pull during the stables. We didn’t even notice until after the pull was down. Midnight/Attumen were cake and, coincidentally, dropped the scope schematic I’d been hoping for for a very, very long time.

Moroes? No CC. Shadow priestess, holy priestess, prot warrior, ret paladin. No real trouble. Maj held Moroes/Ret and I held Moroes/Crispin until the priests were down. Fury warriors went to work on Ret. Crispin was my buddy for the remainder of the evening. I died due to healer inattention, but then we were running with two healers where our guild traditionally takes three.

Maiden? Maj and I both put on our healing sets. He cleansed and did spot heals, I healed, one of the fury warriors tanked her (We had already determined that I could in fact hold aggro on her just fine with only my instants, but two healers was insufficient for the damage flying around).

Opera? Romulo and Julianne. What’s the problem here?

No dispel.

Lots of interrupts- no dispel. We tried it with me tanking Julianne and Maj tanking Romulo. Problem? Not enough healing. Okay, I put on the healing gear and strap one of the fury warriors back into their tanking gear, away we go.

Curator? Cake. I have a partial arcane resist set, so I soaked up bolts and pretended to be DPS while Maj took the big guy.

Aran? Double cake. I just pretended I was DPS (and took out two of the water elementals on my own).

Prince? Triple cake. Drop into the healer set and let Mr. Pally have all the fun. Once we hit phase 3 the healing requirements slackened off, but we needed DPS, so… wrath away!

So why this post? We were talking it over in the raid, and realized just how useful it is to have a raid member who can, at need, be any of the three roles.

I love my spec. It makes me all happy.

(It’s pure gravy that neither our prot paladins nor our prot warriors can hold threat against me if I decide to take the mobs away- something we used to our advantage in Karazhan last night. “Llanion, you take skull, I’ll hold the others. Burn skull, then grab one off me and keep going.”)

Is there anything I’d change? Honestly, yes- I’d like a point or three in Subtlety. My aggro is still sufficient to match a Warrior, and I would have a higher cap on my DPS in raids when I’m filling the DPS role. I’m still thinking about it.
Hopefully my next post won’t have such a long gap. Peace!

~Ll

Mad Cow Chronicles: Heroes of Underbog from Llanion on Vimeo.

I have a nice long panzerkin post for you later. For now, I would merely like to note that I was actually on Quel’danas when Arathor took the Armory. It was disappointing- there was no fanfare, no epic battle to take the building. It was just a zone-wide yell of “The armory is ours!” or words to that effect, and the NPCs spawned in (and were mobbed by players).

Sort of anticlimatic.

Waiting in the queue for Arathi Basin at the moment, for my first bit of 2.4 PVP.

I picked up 4/5 blue Faction PVP gear, so I’m toting a decent level of resilience for the first time. Picked it up in Moonkin flavor, in fact, since I’m trying to construct a Panzerkin.

In other news, I switched back to 19/42 Tree build. I didn’t have the mana longevity I wanted. Of course, that was in 2.3, much to my disgust when I realized I’d respecced early. Well, I’m breaking in a new raid healer and the aura helps, so we’ll give it a couple weeks to let the respec cost drop before I swap back and try the Boomhealer again.

It behooves me (ahahaha!) to learn that I should never make predictions about upcoming posts, either in particulars regarding date, substance, category or number. It seems that saying I’m going to post, no matter in what way or how nebulous the reference, leads to my being compelled to spend at least one week not-blogging.

In theory, I have now learned this. In practice, I suspect, not so much.

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I respecced recently. I went from 17/0/44 “Angry Tree” Heal/Solo/Utility build to a 37/0/24 “Raid Support” Heal/Solo/Utility build. I am finding many things about this.

1. Dreamstate + Intensity = Mana Regen, whoa.
2. Nature’s Grace is my friend. Suddenly there’s a point to getting crits on spells.
3. I need to run a heroic to see how this changes my healing style. I do have a couple ideas involving spamming downranked spells to force crits.
4. I miss Swiftmend.
5. My raidmates love me; Improved Faerie Fire means that the hunters, rogues, enhancment shamans, tanks and fury warriors can pretty much slice 47 hit rating out of their gear without injury to their DPS. They’re all happy now about how they can put more gear, gems, and other enhancements towards straight-up damage stats. (In some cases, this means they can use buff foods they want instead of Spicy Hot Talbuk.)
6. Just the fact that Faerie Fire will be on the mobs means the damage happens faster and harder. If only Imp FF gave the same bonus to spells…
7. Insect Swarm. 2% chance to miss makes for happier healers. Just the fact that I can put this up during fights now makes for shorter fights, which also makes for happier healers.
8. Healing Touch can weasel its way back into my healing rota. In fact, I have this neat theory about a downranked Healing Touch- I can’t say too much here, lest the curse strikes again.
9. I can see my gear again. I’ll be frank, I don’t like looking like a wilted piece of broccoli, and I really don’t like the 80% movement snare. If Andriges’ skins (thanks to Phaelia for showcasing these on Resto4Life) were in the game, this would be a different matter, but they aren’t.
10. I have Moonkin form for the first time in my druiding career. It’s rather tasty, though I must admit I keep forgetting to use it. On the other hand, now that there’s no pressing reason for me to be glommed in with the tank group, I can be in the caster group, which means that there are some evil things happening on, say, trash pulls… or during Curator’s Evocates… or on Shade if he’s not hitting us hard enough…
11. I have found that I much prefer Control of Nature 3/3 to Nature’s Grasp+2 points of Impr. NG.
12. If I want to group and they already have a healer… I’m actually useful now. I don’t have to just mumble about raking my leaves and rustle off to sit in a corner. I can DPS in five-mans.
13. Spirit is now on-par, in my personal item-budgeting thoughts, with Intellect (Int takes the place of Spirit as regards the 25% bonus to +healing… though now it gives +damage as well. And even when not in tree form). This is great, because, uh, there are a lot of sources for +int. Including the [Flask of Distilled Wisdom]. An actual flask that has a point for healing now! It’s great. (Well, okay, so 16 +dmg/heal and 6.5 MP5 isn’t exactly gamebreaking. It’s more advantage than I got from that flask in my old build, and better than yet more mana regen).
14. MmmmmmmOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONFIRE!

And this is where it all goes kind of sour, you know?

I want- I desperately want- to try a new build. It’s part of the fun of the game for me.

Besides, A: Tree was supposed to be temporary.
B: I hate not being able to see my armor.
C: I want nicer solo viability so I can do some quests without asking people for help or taking nine years/drinking a lake.

So this is what it all comes down to, calculations and so on taken care of:

34/-/27 for the MP5 bonuses and Moonkin when I’m soloing?
27/-/34 for the Swiftmend and Imp. Regrowth?
Or stay as Tree?

Maybe I should just flip a coin.

Of course, we’re just starting Karazhan and perhaps I should wait until we know it bet…. nah.

Later, I have to write a nice numbery post about comparative damage in the Balance tree, because I promised my guildmaster I would. Tonight, though, I have a different topic in mind.

Innervate. It’s an awesome spell. (more…)

So here it is, after two weeks. The initial and somewhat primitive version of the first Spellcheck:

Fill in the values and press the ‘Calculate’ button.

Rank:

Your total Arcane Power: (Chromatic Power + Arcane Damage):