Werking with the patch

Patchwerk has been up on the PTR for testing purposes. There are two versions of him, one of which is a tanking test version.

This is a great thread of a guild called Premonition from the Sen'Jin server that did hours of tank tests on the PTR. Of course, this is only with current PTR 3.1 changes and some bugs (Druids don't have our Savage Defense buff we were supposed to get among others) but it's a good read for tanks (and for GM's who want to learn more about their tanks). Funnily enough I am geared almost exactly to the druid in this test so this is a near perfect representation for me to work with.

Doubtful that this type of fight will exist in Ulduar but it gives a good idea as to what damage the tanks should be taking during certain boss encounters.

Dk's are severely overpowered at the moment but only because they have a ton of usable cooldowns that can be kept up at a much higher rate than any of the rest of the tanks. I expect this to come down to a more respectable level (or the other tanks to move up).

This is by no means a such and such class is the best tank test, just how to look at our performance at different stages as well as to see what problems are there that need to be overcome in 3.1.

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WoW Patch 3.0: Time to respec

So patch 3.0 is coming out today. We get to sit around for hours twiddling our thumbs waiting for it to get implemented and then it's a free for all. We get our talent points refunded to us and now it's time to respec.

Since you are going to be asked by guildies the information that you do not currently have in your head, and I'm sure you don't want to do all the research ahead of time, here is a great post by Anna of the Too Many Annas blog. Be sure to send everyone you need to first to my blog and then to these other great blogs to help them out with their specs. Keep in mind a lot of things have changes since even October 8th when this post happened but it at least will steer people in the right direction as most changes have been updated in subsequent blogs on the various sites.

If you have any other sites to add to the list provided by Anna then feel free to post a comment for others to see here on my blog.

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WoW Class Research: Druid

I apologize for the delay in this post, I have had some personal matters to attend to along with a bit of writers block on this subject. Within a few weeks a patch will be coming out for WoW that will change the way all classes will be played and geared so my original intentions of helping people figure out best raid spec, raid gear choices, enchants, etc will be worthless in no time. Instead I will spend the next few days just giving classes a few websites they can go to find out more information on how to play the class/spec now and in the near future.

Lets start with Druids, 1) cause it's what I play and 2) cause it's first alphabetically. Druids also give us a good starting place because they can be every classes spring board if you want to get ahead of my posts.

Druid Wiki - "a compilation of guides and information on just about every aspect of the Druid class in World of Warcraft." personally I find more information on Feral than anything there."

WoW Druid Forums - Especially important now that things are changing with the patch. Lot of great info there.

Feral Druid Megathread - I'm sure there are some for the other specs too but since I am feral and always have been I only have bookmarks to feral stuff, sorry. This is a work in progress thread which has all that mathematical info you don't care about(or sometimes you do).

The Druids Grove - A site I used back in my EQ days back when druids were different. They have WoW stuff too now. Yaya!

Resto4Life - You got it. It's a blog for resto druids. It's a good one too.

Big Bear Butt - It's a feral druid blog but the letters are all small so I cant read it from far away like most sites. Advantage is that he writes like me, long winded. Good info though too and has been writing for a while. Often goes to other non-druid topics which can be helpful for others too.

Of Teeth and Claws - Another feral druid blog. Stays pretty well on topic and is definitely delving into pertinent information for the upcoming patch and expansion.

Unbearably Hot - Yet another Feral blog. Seems to be pretty close with the Resto4Life blogger so they share some posts at times. Another great resource.

Gray Matter - Ok I admit, I have absolutely no experience as boomkin. I don't even have an offset boomkin set so I had to search around for this site. It looks decent though and he does two things, talks a lot like me and does topic posts like me(ie - WoW Class Research - Druid)

There is definitely a lot of info out there so if these don't help then go to Yahoo or Google or whatever site you use to search things up and look for it.

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WoW Addons #2 - Class Addons

As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to talk a little baout class specific addons. There of course a million addons out there and umpteen amount of them are class addons so I'm not going to delve into all of them. Being as I don't even play every class in the game I can't give a great representation of all the addons out there from personal experience. But from research and personal experience combined I'll put up a few that people might find useful. I'll also group up some class types at the end of the post so I'm not putting up the same addon for like specs(IE - tanks and healers). I'm making an attempt to only put up addons which will help with raiding, not addons like CritLine which aren't that useful in raiding respects.

Druid:

Outfitter - This addon is a must for those of us who choose a class which requires a million gear changes all the time. You can save different sets for whatever reason you might have and interchange those with a click of a button. You can also set it to automatically do that but a lot of the times that screws you up more than it helps as you get stuck in the wrong gear for the wrong occasion often.

Druidbar - I just found this one and I'm not sure why i never looked before. It shows your mana while in cat/bear form. Really useful for powershifters or tanks like me who pull with moonfire and find with chain pulling and no good mana regen that I can pull and be stuck in caster form by accident.

Hunters:

Personally I don't use any addons for my hunter that are hunter specific but a good one that is useful is Zhuntermod. Helps with organization and such. I'm sure a more seasoned hunter has specific mods but mine is only used for farming.

Sorren's Easy Rotations - Helps you with your hot rotations to get that extra edge (and makes it so you don't just have to spam 1).

SimpleMD - This one requires the other hunters to have the addon but it lets the hunters know when the hunter Misdirect cooldowns are up so there is no failures on overlapping.

Mage:

Dagassist - While useful for others, sorta, it's greatly useful for a mage. It gives you a dropdown where you can cast your ports and open your tradeskills and such. Cleans up those hotbars like a pro!

Cryolysis - Give syou a circle thing that you can use to do about everything.. I personally didn't find this addon that useful but I know mages who swear by it.

Paladin:

PallyPower - I've already harped on this last post but it is such a great addon that I had to include it.

Priest:
Not much a shadow priest needs specifically that I could find. I don't own a priest alt.

Prayer of Mending Tracker - Tracks your Prayer of Mending, duh!

Rogue:

I'm sure there are some that some rogues use but don't they just turn on auto attack and kill things?

Shaman:

TotemTimers - Keeps tracks of your totems timers and lets you put them down when they are about to expire.

Shaman Friend - Gives you a lot of Shaman related dohickeys. (Can you tell I don't play a shaman?)

Warlock:

The ones I knew about seem to be out of date so I don't want to give out ones that don't work anymore. There are some out there though.

Warrior:

StanceSets - Helps you switch Mainhand, offhand, and ranged based on your stance so you can quickly switch from dps to tanking or etc.

Tanks:

Damnation - This one is great because it automatically removes Salvation from you when you get into bear form, defensive stance, etc(or if you are already in those forms/stances). That way if there is a reason you need to be in bear form you are going to be able to get that threat much faster without having to thumb around looking for the salv that was cast on you.

TankPoints - To let you compare gear to make sure you are staying above the needed caps for encounters.

Healers:

Healbot Sucks. The top healers in No Vacancy use X-perl + Clique for their healing. I've heard others use Grid instead of X-perl.

DPS:

Quartz - Helps with maximizing your dps. For casters is lets you know when you can cast again based off of your connection speed. For melee it gives you your swing/shot timer so you can time your yellow damage and not lose too much of your white.

Most Everyone:

SmartBuff/SmartDebuff - They can be downloaded seperately for those classes that can buff but cant debuff or vice versa. This lets you buff your party members by rolling the mouse wheel backwards, it can also be setup for other various things. It gives you a warning when buffs on other peopel are going to wear out so you can stay on top of it too. SmartDebuff gives you a small frame where you can right or left click those who have the debuff and it will remove it.

Decursive - Does the same thing as SmartDebuff. I've just used SDB for a long time so I never used this one but I know most of the debuffers in the guild use this one so had to include it.

ControlFreak - Makes crowd controlling cake. Puts a movable box on your screen where you can set the sheep/banish/etc target and keep it CC'd while you dps on your current target. Shows a countdown of when it will wear off and makes a noise at you when it breaks.

DurabilityStatus - Very small window that lets you know where you armor is at and if you hover over it you will know how much your repairs will cost.

MinimapButtonBag - Takes all of these addons that I'm giving you and puts the minimap buttons that you have accrued into one single button.


Tommorrow I will finish up my addon section by chatting about External "addons".

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Druid Tank

Part of the reasoning for keeping as leader as No Vacancy in the beginning is because I knew it was the only way that I could tank.  Most people see Feral Druids as a good off-tank or only able to be used for certain fights.  I wanted to prove that a Feral druid can tank almost every boss in BC and not have to be relegated to backup dps and off-tanking.  So, aside from the bosses which I can definitely not tank I tank everything as the primary main tank, much to the ire of the typical tanking classes that feel that I shouldn't be tanking.  In general it seems to work, the healers have gotten used to the type of damage I take and heal accordingly and aside form the handful of bosses that I've had to back down on we've been successful killing everything with me tanking it.

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