Cataclysm Final Grades: The State of the Resto Druid

Today’s post is my contribution to the Cataclysm Final Grades.  Sorry for its length – I couldn’t quite help myself.  A list of posts evaluating Warcraft classes at the end of Cataclysm can be found at the end of the link above.  If you are interested in writing something similar I encourage you to do so on your own blog, or if you do not have a blog, please send me an email as I would be happy to provide a space for additional guest posts.

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Working Within a New Healing Model

Healing a heroic as a Resto druid in Wrath and healing a heroic as a Resto druid in Cataclysm have exactly nothing in common.  Few in-game experiences I’ve had were as jarring (and humbling) as when I stepped into my first few heroics shortly after the Cataclysm’s release.  We had been warned that mana would be an issue, that we would have to learn to “triage,” and that CC would not be optional.  But still, for someone who regularly had “OOM fights” in the streets of Dalaran (how long can you cast your biggest heal before your OOM yourself?), there was no amount of reading that could have prepared me for what it would feel like to be healing a heroic dungeon and feel utterly helpless.

Things got better quickly, with more gear and a better understanding of the dungeons themselves.  But the early days of Cataclysm really did teach us that we had to prioritize our healing and that we couldn’t be wasteful anymore, and these were essential lessons to carry into T11 raiding.  For druids who were used to our Wrath healing model, it was really shocking to see ourselves running out of mana and to encounter bosses who put out more raid damage than we could heal.  Slowly, and with plenty of internal conflicts along the way, healers re-learned their spellbooks and began to pay attention to those little blue bars.  Druids had a long way to go – we’d long been guilty of being able to heal most heroic dungeons by tossing a Rejuv on the tank and then DPSing to our heart’s content, sometimes even in our balance specs.

The numbers probably would prove that I’m in the minority because I like this new model, given that my guild often had to sit healers or ask them to DPS in ICC and now we can hardly find enough healers to make our raids function.  But I have to say that, for me, healing now is exponentially more interesting than it ever was during Wrath.  I also imagine that getting into healing is probably much more intimidating for people who haven’t tried it than it used to be, which is understandable.  There is a lot more to learn than before, and PuGs can still be a difficult place to figure out a new spec or class.

But now, on to the good stuff … druids.

Something Old, Something New

Sadly, none of the new 81-85 abilities introduced in Cataclysm were specifically designed for Resto druids.  Thrash obviously has no benefit for us, and while it can be fun to detonate Wild Mushrooms on trash and – for one glorious, shining moment – see yourself at the top of the DPS charts, it was really only Stampeding Roar that we could put to any use.  Though it did require us momentarily to shift into cat form, Stampeding Roar was situationally very helpful.  Any fight that required quick movement from the entire raid group (Magmaw, Ragnaros, Yor’sahj – off the top of my head), was a great opportunity to give everyone a brief speed boost so they’d be out of harm’s way and could get where they needed to go faster.

Of the changes to our individual spells, Lifebloom was perhaps the largest at start of the expansion.  During Wrath, Lifebloom could be cast upon an unlimited number of players, making it a nice buffer to cast on anyone who you knew would be taking damage within a few seconds.  Now, Lifebloom is limited to one person and is automatically refreshed when we cast Healing Touch, Nourish, or (since 4.0.6) Regrowth on that person.  The only exception to this is when we are in Tree Form, which allows Lifebloom to have unlimited targets once more.  This change has meant that we exclusively keep Lifebloom rolling on the tank, and we generally strive not to let it bloom at all.  The new and improved Lifebloom also provides the Replenishment buff to your raid group – something that was an absolute must have during the constant mana-issues all the healing classes had in T11 content.

I really enjoy the reworking of Lifebloom to make it a more interesting mechanic for tank healing, and I can conceed that limiting its maximum number of targets was necessary – particularly because of how powerful it can be in PvP.  The only lingering concern I have with the current design of Lifebloom is that it’s extremely clunkly to switch from healing one tank to the other.  It costs us 3 GCDs to get Lifebloom up on one tank and another 3 GCDs to switch it to the second, which is a lot of globals I’d prefer to use casting other things.  This was a problem that I saw discussed multiple times when the Blizzard designers called for class feedback a few months ago, and I really hope they can find a way streamline the process for Mists.

(And as a brief, but hopefully related, aside – I am not at all excited about the changes to Wild Mushrooms that will make them a ground-effect healing spell in Mists.  Personally, I never understood the push from the resto community to add these to our toolkit.  Wild Mushrooms are a clunky enough spell for balance druids – 3 GCDs to place, 1 to detonate, endless praying that your tank doesn’t move the boss away from where you’ve placed them, etc. – and I have absolutely no desire to add another clunky, GCD-heavy element to resto healing.  Beyond this, I think one ground-effect healing spell per healing class is plenty.  I’d rather not need to depend on a second spell that requires me to trust my raid to stand in it, no matter how good they’ve gotten at recognizing that Efflorescence isn’t going to kill them.)

Returning to the current expansion, one of the biggest changes to our spells didn’t come until 4.2, when Tranquility got a reduced cooldown lumped into our Malfurion’s Gift talent.  Not all resto druids were thrilled about the change, particularly because we were promised a ” new raid cooldown” alongside the announcement of Spirit Link Totem, and were hoping for something that would offer damage mitigation rather than even more throughput.  Tranquility’s 3 minute cooldown has proven helpful, particularly in Dragon Soul with its massive raid-wide damage fights, but druids still find ourselves lacking any kind of mitigation and are often accused of meter-padding when we make best use of this spell.  C’est la vie – we always have been misunderstood flowers.

Efflorescence: The Little Spell That Could

When the Cata changes were first announced for Resto, Efflorescence was easily the one I cared the least about.  As originally designed and implemented in the beta, Efflorescence was supposed to have a chance to proc from Regrowth critical heals.  I couldn’t understand why on earth druids needed a second AoE healing spell when Wild Growth already did the job so well.  I also couldn’t imagine what could possibly be desirable about (and worth the expense of talent points) a spell that we would have so little control over.  We used Regrowth much differently in Wrath in that we used it more for the HoT than the direct heal - essentially the opposite of what we do now.  Regrowth was a spell that we generally kept rolling along with Rejuv and Lifebloom on our tank(s), so we might have a decent chance to see Efflorescence proc but it would probably be under the tank’s fight 90% of the time.  That’s fine for bosses with small hitboxes, but on the vast majority of encounters an Efflorescence centered under the tank’s feet is unlikely to hit the melee who should be standing behind the boss.  Everything about this new heal sounded pretty lackluster.

Fortunately that version of the spell never went live, and Blizzard’s designers instead decided that 3/3 points in Efflorescence would give us a 100% chance for the spell to proc on our Swiftmend target.  Though a nice supplement to our healing arsenal, Efflorescence was still undervalued and underpowered enough at first that not all druids chose to take it in their specs.  Originally this spell was linked to Living Seed, so we had to spend 6 talent points on it – 3 to fill out Living Seed, and 3 in Efflorescence itself.  But a greater part of the problem with Efflorescence lay in the mechanics of the spell … until a PTR bug for the 4.1 patch turned Efflorescence into one of the most powerful spells in our toolkit.

Keeva’s post on the PTR bug that turned Efflorescence into a “smart heal” describes (and maths!) the full story better than I could.  Essentially, Efflorescence went from being weak and wasteful to being an extremely powerful and mana-efficient spell nearly overnight.  Thanks to a positive response from the community, the WoW developers eventually decided to make the change permanent and Efflorescence became a smart heal in patch 4.1.  To make things even better, the spell was finally unlinked from the less-desirable Living Seed, ensuring that Resto Druids would have no qualms about spending talent points on it.

Today, it’s rare that a fight on Dragon Soul ends without Efflorescence being either my second or third top healing spell, generally only beat by Rejuv and Wild Growth.  It’s still at its best in fights that allow (or require) the raid to stack tightly, though when we do have to spread out it provides a solid amount of healing to the melee pile.  (As additional incentive to cast it on melee, when druids use Swiftend to proc Efflorescence on a rogue with Quickening, a cat druid with Nurturing Instinct, or a warrior with Field Dressing, those talents will increase the healing done by our Swiftmend - and therefore our Efflorescence – by 20%/20%/or 6%, respectively.)  Efflorescence is easily one of my favorite changes to resto druids in Cataclysm, perhaps second only to …

Mastering Mastery

Resto mastery has been through a lot since its inception.  At the start of Cataclysm, our mastery was “Symbiosis,” and it was awful.  I imagine that the designers tried to mimic the mechanics of Nourish, in that they created a Mastery which made our direct heals stronger if we used them on targets which already had our HoTs on them.  Cool idea, but miserable in practice.  Symbiosis had decent applications for tank healing, but for any other targets it only encouraged overhealing.  We might put Wild Growth up on the raid and then chase it with Nourishes for the healing bonus, but WG alone could probably have been enough to top people off.  In 4.0.6, Symbiosis was buffed to make it more attractive, but the same problem was still true – good for tank healing, awful for everything else.

Finally, with the release of Firelands in 4.2, our Mastery became what it is today – Harmony.  Essentially, Harmony did the opposite of what Symbiosis had.  Rather than increasing direct heals on HoT targets, it provided us with a buff which increased our HoTs as long as we cast a direct heal once every 10 seconds.  I remember being cautiously optimistic when the change was announced, but now I can hardly imagine our healing rhythm without it.  Harmony is an extremely elegant solution to the long-standing problem of (not very good) resto druids casting only their HoTs while ignoring direct heals, particularly in 25 man raids.

I also especially enjoy our Mastery because it is one of the only Masteries in the game (aside from, of course, that of Arcane mages) which is completely interactive.  The vast majority of specs have a Mastery bonus which is passive – it increases their Fire damage, or bleed damage, or makes their shields stronger, or gives their heals an added HoT, etc.  In contrast, Resto druids are constantly aware of our Mastery since we need to make sure that we keep up the Harmony buff as close to 100% of the time as possible.  Many of us even use add-ons to track it, because the increased HoT healing we get from it is so worthwhile.  Personally, I’m thrilled to have such an interesting and fun mechanic for our Mastery and I’m glad that Blizzard’s developers chose to ditch Symbiosis and start over from scratch.  Harmony appeals to our versatility, and encourages us to multitask as we heal – and that’s something I already loved about our spec.

The Most Important Part of This Post

And now, we will all take a moment to mourn the loss of perma – Tree Form.  Please bow your heads, dear readers, as we observe a moment of silence for Grumpy Trees everywhere.

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I’ll admit to being, um, furious when I heard that Tree Form was going away.  I recognize that not everyone liked the form, but for me it was an essential aspect of what it meant to be a druid healer.  Tree Form hadn’t been around forever – it was introduced at the beginning of BC – and druids who healed in Vanilla were already used to running around in caster form.  While I’ve gotten used to my caster form over the last year or so, and while I have now grown even to appreciate it thanks to Transmogrification, I still can’t shake my love for the perma-Tree.

When I first downloaded WoW, I had a long conversation with the friend who convinced me to start playing regarding what class I should try.  I read the descriptions of each class on the forums and tried to decide what sounded the most fun to me.  When I came to druids, I liked that they were able to do a little of everything and that they had a connection to nature.  I asked my friend what he knew about druids and whether they were any fun to play, and he responded, “Druids are pretty much all about their forms.  They get to shapeshift.”

Exactly.

Threads crop up on the official forums now and again asking people why they play the class they do.  When druids respond to these threads, the response is overwhelming – they created a druid because they wanted to play as a cat, a bear, a moonkin … or a tree.  Shapeshifting is, by far, the thing which most defines us as a class and it is also the thing from which resto druids are now largely excluded.  I like my pretty Transmog sets, but I’d take ugly, grumpy, ol’ Tree Form back in a heartbeat.  Was it goofy?  Of course.  A pain in the ass for PvP?  Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it.  But an essential part of who we were/are?  Yup, you betcha.

Now, all that complaining aside … well, I completely love the application of Tree Form as a cooldown.  Tree of Life as it now functions is just such a fantastic idea – whoever worked on it really understood which spells it should affect, and how those spells should affect each other.  The unlimited number of targets for Lifebloom is an extremely cheap way to spread HoTs over a raid who are taking significant group damage, and the instant Regrowths provide us with an interesting choice.  In the event that someone is close to death, we can spam Regrowths on them in hopes that it will keep them alive at the cost of a good chuck of mana – Regrowth is an expensive spell and even in T13 gear we will burn through mana if we cast too many in a row.  Alternatively, we can use the additional Clearcasting procs we get from having Lifeblooms ticking all over the raid to cast free, instant Regrowths on anyone who needs it.  It’s just a really well-designed, synergistic cooldown, and one I certainly won’t want to live without come Mists.

Final Grade

The state of the Resto Druid is … strong!
(pause for applause)

Yes, there are things that we lack – most notably, a mitigation cooldown – and there are things that other classes can do better than us.  But by in large, resto druids have a more complete and significantly more interesting range of spells than we ever did in Wrath.  We use each of our healing spells in nearly every fight, and our throughput cooldowns are strong enough to help keep our raids standing through massive incoming damage.  We were, perhaps, the healing class which had the most to learn with the changes to the healing model and we’ve come out of the experience more versatile and adaptable than ever before.

Most importantly, we can no longer merely blanket a raid in Rejuvs and Wild Growth and then AFK through the rest of a fight.  While the majority of resto druid mains (myself included) will vehemently deny that we only used those two spells throughout much of ICC, the dirty truth is that we could have used only those two spells and gotten away with it.  Druid healing is more complex now, but hopefully not in an unnecessarily complicated way that would make it difficult to learn for a fresh 85.  The spells work well together and our healing style has a definite rhythm that it lacked before.  Being a resto druid is more challenging now than it was in Wrath, but it’s also infinitely more rewarding when we get it right.

Cataclysm Final Grades: The State of the Resto Shaman

The next in our series of posts of Cataclysm Final Grades covers the highs and lows of the Resto Shaman.  Today’s guest writer is Dyna, a good friend of mine who I first met in Wrath while she was an expert on all things Holy Paladin.  Dyna has maxed healers of every class, and has since spent time raiding heroic Firelands on her druid and is now conquering Dragon Soul on her shaman.

Two additional “final grades” posts have popped up elsewhere today.  The first is Squelchy’s Rogue Report Card, and the second Saz’s Final Grades for Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druids.  Please follow the links and take a look!

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Hello! I’m Dyna and I’m standing in as your average Joe Resto shaman for the purposes of these evaluations.

I am a jack-of-all trades healer and have every healing class and spec at max level, though I have not raided current content (past LFR!) with all of them. My main is presently my resto shaman, however, and having done the research, I feel sufficiently qualified to speak to their present state for entry-level heroic mode Tier 13 raiding.

 A Little History

Resto started out this expansion in a pretty tight spot. Our heals were slow, our mana was sapped, and, in the days of yore when heroics were actually hard again- at least for PuGging!- it was rough going. Our mastery saw some use, but before the changes that made it apply to non-direct heals, it was rather underwhelming.

The general homogenization of healing when Cata was released gave us a bit more stream-lining as far as spell selection went; the three basic healing spells were Healing Wave, which was slow, cheap, and hit like a feather against tank damage, then Greater Healing Wave, which was even slower, incredibly expensive, and made a dent in a health bar’s depletion, and then healing surge- fast, hit less hard than GHW, and would OOM you very quickly. Chain heal’s impact was, in a word, underwhelming. Healing rain was fun, but pricey to try to spam, and required good group positioning.

The six second cooldown on riptide made it equivalent to a paladin’s holy shock, but with the exception of Unleash Elements, it was our only mobile heal; this put us in a rough spot when it came to movement fights.

To compensate for this, we were given our shiny new level 85 spell- Spiritwalker’s Grace. However, the duration of it when combined with the long cooldown made this a rather underwhelming solution, and shaman healing, while adequate for normal content, was noticeably weaker than most healers. Exceptional shamans could compete with average players of other healing classes, but it was a rough time to be a shaman, for certain.

Firelands

Shamans remained powerful in some situations, but generally, throughout tier 12 content we lagged as healers when compared to paladins and druids. We did see some improvement when we gained an actual Real Live Raid Cooldown in Spirit Link Totem, and the improvement to our mastery and our Nature’s Blessing talent (improved to 6/12/18% bonus direct healing on Earth Shielded targets, up from 5/10/15%.) made us better tank healers than we had been before, a pleasant follow-up on Blizzard’s philosophy of allowing each healing class to be able to do both raid and tank heals.

Most of the fights in Firelands did not play to our advantages, however, and some of the heroic modes flat-out had a hard time accommodating a resto shaman at all due to our weakness as competitive healers.

 Enter Dragonsoul

Our abilities have not particularly changed, our strengths remain the same; we were not buffed in any largely significant way, but Resto Shaman is now a highly desirable healer to bring along to your content!

The reasoning behind this is that most fights are now ‘hurry up and stack’, which plays well with our toolkit of range-limited aoe healing. In addition, there is ample opportunity for our mastery to come into play, with hits that take players down to half or a third of their health in one blow.

I still find the shaman playstyle lacks cooldowns when compared to a paladin or a priest, and even druids have two raid cooldowns to a shaman’s one, but a clever resto shaman can do things no other healer can, much to the dismay of your resident holydin!

Our four-piece set bonus can be optimally utilized as a miniature raid cooldown in and of itself, and our Spirit Link Totem absolutely has saved more than a few raids. Healing rain and chain heal during heavy damage stack phases, of which this tier has plenty, distribute our earthliving buff like candy.

Mana problems are easily addressed by obtaining levels of spirit that were simply not possible at the expansion’s start, and, if that wasn’t enough, our haste helps us to cast Lightning Bolt between heals for enormous returns via Telluric Currents.

Conclusion

Quite frankly, the difference between Tier 13 and the rest of the expansion is not a real ‘fix’ created to address a resto shaman’s weaknesses. Movement and fights that involve the raid not being stacked together are always going to be a challenge for us when compared to other classes.

As it stands, for current content, shamans are competitive healers, even completely overpowered for some encounters.

However, not every encounter can or should be designed around the entire raid stacking close together, and unless the class is altered to address our general underwhelming status outside of stack-fights, it’s going to take a highly skilled player to remain competitive as a healer.

At least until Mists of Pandaren comes around to turn everything upside down- we know it is coming.

Cataclysm Final Grades: The State of the Bear Druid

Our next guest post in the Cataclysm Final Grades series comes from another of my guildmates.  Chrixus currently serves as our bear tank for both 25 man normal and 10 man normal/heroic content.  He is also (despite what he’ll try to make you believe in this article) a skilled boomkin, and spent a portion of the Firelands raid tier moonfiring things to death.  (We still cry fat chicken tears together any time we see Hurricane in use during a raid or heroic dungeon.)  Today, however, Chrixus will discuss the state of the bear druid throughout the Cataclysm expansion.

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Dancing through Cataclysm as a Bear

Every now and then I take a peek at Tzufit’s blog just to see what tidbits I can pick up about WoW and druids.  I view Tzufit as a fantastic WoW player and a helpful person, so any knowledge I can ninja from her I try to take advantage.  Once I was enlightened to our guilds “secret” druid chat channel, I’ve found her to be a great resource for not only druid stuff but a lot of other WoW-related stuff as well.  So when I read about this topic, and Lyshra’s post, I thought maybe I too can write something about my class/spec.  I say spec, because honestly, as much as I try to play kitty/boomkin, I’m just not that good at them. So I will try to keep the focus on the big fuzzy bear as much as I can. This is my first attempt at writing anything for a blog, so be gentle.

1.  Do you feel that your class is better (in that it is more fun to play, more effective, etc.) now than it was at the end of Wrath?  Do you feel that your class is better now than it was at the beginning of Cataclysm?

This is a tough one for me to answer since I didn’t tank or really play him much in Wrath. The only comparison I have is that the off tank in the 25m ICC group I was in was a druid. The warrior tank seemed superior to a druid in that expansion.  Now, and this is probably me being a bit biased, I feel as a tank a druid are a bit above warriors and DKs, but just below the paladin. But it seems that each has their place in Cataclysm. For someone who has tanked on all four of them at one point, this makes me happy. I like the balance that tanks seem to have now.

As far as it feeling better now than at the start, without a doubt I feel that it does.  A lot of it has to do with gear, but more so with the 2pc tier 13 that gives a druid 100% chance to trigger Savage Defense (SD) from Mangle crits when I have Pulverize active. Since this is something you should always have up, this is a fantastic set bonus. Prior to this, druid mastery was well below the other tanks in my opinion due to RNG. While our mastery isn’t as good as the others, I’ve found it to be much improved and/or reliable with this bonus. One place I noticed a difference is on the Fall of Deathwing encounter. On the third platform where I had to use Frenzied Regen/Barkskin to eat the impale, stacking SD more reliably made a huge difference.  Not only do I feel like a more effective tank, I am having a lot more fun playing the bear than the other tank classes I have. I just love the abilities that he brings to our raid group along with the flexibility I have in fights to easily switch between bear/cat to optimize my DPS.

2.  How much have you enjoyed or found uses for your class’ level 81, 83, and 85 abilities?  Given the chance, what would you have changed about them?

At first I loved the 81 and 85 talents, Thrash and Wild Mushrooms (which I still do), but the level 83 talent, Stampeding Roar, not so much.

Thrash gives a druid tank another AoE attack, but also puts a dot on everything it hits for more damage and threat.  I also use it while tanking bosses since the bleed damage gets increased by 30% from our Mangle debuff. Any bit of extra DPS helps and could make a difference in some fights. When I hit 81 I was very excited to get this talent. As far as changing it, the ideas that I had might make it a bit unbalanced such as sharing the GCD with maul, or shortening the CD on it.

Then my next new ability came at 83, stampeding roar. Why in the world would they give me a speed boost to the group? That’s a waste of an ability, I thought.  I didn’t start raid tanking on my druid until the Ragnaros fight, so I saw very little use for it prior. Our strategy on Rags called for us to move from one side of the platform to the center when then molten seeds came down. Oh, so that’s what you had in mind when you gave us that ability! It is a situational ability for sure, but one that has grown on me over time.  On the rare chance that I’m boomkin, I find myself switching to bear/cat to use it more often than not.  I wish the range on the ability was a bit wider, 10 yards seems a bit small.

Ah my good ol’ friends Wild Mushrooms.  An AoE that is efficient, deadly, I don’t have to channel it, and it puts the 8% spell damage debuff on everything it hits? What’s not to like? Every time I see a level 85 druid use hurricane, it makes me cry inside.  It was an adjustment to use them, but they are a great tool. Not only are they an AoE tool, but can be used on single targets as well.  One example is on Hagara. When her shield is up and you’re running around put those shrooms right under her and as soon as the shield falls, detonate them for some nice damage especially if you are in a solar eclipse.  As far as changes, I hate having to use a talent point to make them slow things and I wish they had maybe a 6 second CD instead of 10 seconds.  I know some people wish they auto exploded but I like placing them and blowing them up when I want.

3.  Did you switch mains during Cataclysm?  If so, why did you make that choice?

A little about my fuzzball druid Chrixus:  He started out as a cow druid back in WotLK. A bunch of friends started a guild on Horde-side (we were mainly Alliance) and I thought a druid would be fun since I had never played one before. He was an alt I liked to play around on for something to do while I wasn’t raiding on my Alliance warrior.  When worgen became a playable race, I had to switch him over. I think werewolves are cool, so I had to have one (even if they are more shape shifters than werewolves, but oh well).  Thus he went from cow to dog.  I leveled my warrior to 85 first and quickly realized that it wasn’t any different at 85 than it was at 80 and was becoming bored. It was a combination of that and my old guild falling apart that drove me to level my druid. For the sake of leveling I respec’d him to bear/boomkin, a very odd combination for me since I had never played either of those specs prior to cataclysm and neither of them were really optimal for leveling. This change was where I started to really fall for the druid class. I’m one of those players with quite a few alts but running around shifting to a different form, instant cast for flight form, stealth, ranged DPS, melee DPS, tanking, healing…the class had everything for me. The icing on the cake was how much my daughter loved to watch him shift forms.  Daddy look kitty! Daddy look bird! Bear ROAR! I’m a big softie when it comes to her. So I guess you could say from there I was hooked on druids.

The only time I really tanked in Cata was for dungeons so I could get a group faster – my main raid spec was balance for our 25 man. I picked up off set gear from raids when I could and got geared as any other off-spec would. Then one day, I was asked if I could fill in for a tank in Tzufit’s 10m group working on Ragnaros.  They had struggled on him for a while, but eventually we got him. After that they realized the awesomeness of having a bear tank (note sarcasm), so they decided to let me keep playing with them.  From there on out I really started taking tanking as a bear a bit more seriously. I read up on specs, strats, add-ons , and really tried to understand the class the way I did the warrior in WotLK.

4.  Is your class easier or harder for a fresh 85 to learn now than it was at the end of Wrath?  Is this a good or a bad thing?

While I had a tanking background, I never tanked on the druid prior to Cataclysm.  To be quite honest, none of the tanking classes are “hard” to learn or play. As far as the druid is concerned, it is definitely easier with the reduced CD on Swipe, the addition of Thrash, Vengeance, and the exponential threat percentage increases. I will admit I didn’t know that Swipe was like Thunderclap back in the day, only hitting 3 targets and they had to be in front of you.  I’m torn on whether making it easier to tank is a good or a bad thing.  It’s a good thing because there are more tanks for shorter queue times, and newer tanks will likely face less elitism from those special players since they shouldn’t have threat issues.  I’m the type of person that learns more by doing than reading, so for me practice makes perfect.  Tanking through Cata, I found that if I just mentioned prior to the first pull that I’m a bit new at druid tanking people were quite understanding.  Of course you ran into that special person sometimes, but that is what ignore is for.  Overall I like the changes because I like people to experience everything this game has to offer. They just made it easier to try something new.

 A few things I don’t like. The threat percentage increase. I liked having to work for threat, making sure I was doing my best to keep the mobs on me. Now the only thing I worry about is the other tank, which is not quite as fun to me.  The only reason the DPS pulls off me is because I miss or get parried. That leads me to my second complaint. I don’t like that you don’t have to be hit/expertise/defense capped, which I guess means I don’t like the talents that make you immune to crit.  I liked having to tweak my gear/stats to get it just right. Can I swap out this tank piece for a DPS piece and still be defensive capped? Things like that were really fun to me, and I may be in the minority on that.  I believe I am going back to the BC expansion on that, but it’s something I enjoyed and miss.

5.  As a druid tank do you stack agility or stamina?

Since I lack the creativity of most, I stuck with Tzufit’s basic questions but I had to add this one. You could ask a 100 people their opinion and you’ll probably get 50 votes for agility and 50 votes for stamina. To me, it all comes down to what content YOU run. With the increases in stamina on leather gear, and the stamina modifiers being roughly equal, I’m a big agility guy. At this point, I feel I get more bang for my buck with agility. Plus with the content we’ve been running I’ve never had a health issue, or at least it seemed that way to me.  I’ve mentioned to Tzufit that if we start going full on with the heroics I’ll probably have to switch some of the agility to stamina.   I’ve read quite a few forums where people point to main tank for Dream Paragon, Sejta – the old “well he stacks stamina, so I should as well.”  My response to them is:  Well are you going for world firsts? Do you run heroic 25 mans? If I ran 25m heroics I’d gem that way as well, but I don’t.  I can see both sides of the argument, I just go with what works best for me and that happens to be agility at this time.

Some Final Thoughts and Charging into Pandaria

While I have tanked the majority of the content this patch, I really started tanking when Firelands was current.  What I have found is that I don’t enjoy the content this expansion as I did the previous, but I truly enjoy playing my druid. I love the flexibility the feral spec brings. During a fight when I’m not tanking the boss, bam shift to cat and pump out some extra DPS. My druid has the ability to move the entire raid to a spot quickly, putting out solid DPS even as a tank, and not being a mana sponge. While we may not have the mitigation of a warrior, the CD’s of a paladin or the self-healing of a DK, I like the current state of druid tanks. We are unique in the versatility we bring to a raid. We can AoE tank with ease, boss tank like a beast, and survive almost anything.  We will see how I feel about the class come Mists of Pandaria. I am a bit leery of the changes to the feral tree making cat and bear separate, as it might take away from some of the uniqueness I’ve grown to love.  I’m in the “wait and see” camp.

While I am not the best resource for the current state of druid tanks, I immensely enjoy writing my thoughts and opinions on them. As I said near the beginning, this is my first attempt at writing on a blog. So please be nice. =)

Cataclysm Final Grades: The State of the Death Knight

Today’s post is from guest writer Lyshra who first suggested this topic.  Lyshra is a guildmate and friend who has an amazing breadth of knowledge on just about all things Warcraft.  She organizes our 10 man group and is our guild go-to for questions of strategy and DPS maximization, among many other topics.

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Hello! I’m Lyshra, and this topic is my fault.

I’m also primarily a DPSing Death Knight, though I’ve also been a Shaman during Cataclysm. The Death Knight, as it was a new class in Wrath, spent most of that expansion being rebuilt from the ground up every time a major content patch came along. We ended Wrath in decent shape, with the designers finally having settled on distinctions for the three talent trees they were happy with, rather than trying to struggle with allowing every tree to perform every role. I’ll warn you now, this is going to be more mechanics-intensive than your regularly scheduled Tree Heals Go Woosh.

The Rune System

Firstly and most importantly, our primary resource – runes – was completely overhauled, and tweaked at least twice during patches in Cataclysm. Previously in Wrath, all six of our runes had an individual ten second cooldown, triggered when they were activated. For Cataclysm, this was changed to a paired system, where only one of each type of rune (Blood, Frost and Unholy) cools down at a time. This had several effects, primarily freeing up a large number of GCDs. It allowed them to make Haste rating and effects increase the rate of rune recharge, and also allowed them to add abilities that mess around with rune cooldowns. For the most part this is a very positive change, and was part of a change made for nearly all DPS classes in Cataclysm – giving them abilities and talents that move them firmly away from rigid ability rotations and in to action priority systems, which are, by and large, more fun to play.

I mentioned abilities that mess around with rune cooldowns. We have two of these – Runic Empowerment, used by Blood and Frost DKs, and Runic Corruption, used by Unholy DKs. Runic Corruption has a 45% chance to increase your rune regeneration rate by 100% for 3 seconds when you cast Death Coil. Since an early Cataclysm patch, this buff stacks. Initially there was a quality of life issue with it – recasting Death Coil while Runic Corruption was active could cause a re-proc and a loss of DPS. Since this was changed, the ability is just about perfect. It provides the much-needed symbiosis between runes and runic power that was largely missing in Wrath. I would never want to go back to playing Unholy without Runic Corruption.

Runic Empowerment… is different. When you cast Death Coil, Frost Strike or Rune Strike, you have a 45% chance to activate a fully depleted rune. This means a rune that is not actively cooling down – which means both runes of that type must have been used. One is actively cooling down, and the other is a valid target to be activated by Runic Empowerment procs. This has a huge issue with back-to-back procs – there is a limit of three runes that can be fully deleted at any one time, and that’s a rare situation in itself unless you have very low Haste. Also, there is no way to choose which rune is activated from those available. This issue was lessened by a change to one of Frost’s passive abilities, Blood of the North. Throughout Wrath and early Cataclysm, it made your Blood Strikes transform the Blood rune used to cast it in to a Death rune. After the change, it permanently transforms your Blood runes in to Death runes – so there’s less likelihood of a “bad” proc from Runic Empowerment. This is still something of an issue, however, with Unholy runes – a lone Unholy rune is no good to Frost DKs whatsoever. In recent months a whole priority system for Frost has emerged which revolves around preventing Unholy rune pops from Runic Empowerment. Overall I would say this ability has failed, especially when compared to the wonderfully elegant solution that is Runic Corruption.

In conclusion, I would say that the changes to the rune system have been broadly positive. The initial overhaul to paired rune cooldowns is an excellent change, especially coupled with the ability to reduce their cooldown time through Haste. While Runic Empowerment is something of a disappointment, Runic Corruption is a truly inspired mechanic that makes the dual resource system sing in ways it never used to.

Mastery

Mastery is, of course, the new stat we get instead of Armour Penetration.

Blood Shield: I’m not fully qualified to comment on this but, as with most of the Cataclysm tanking masteries, Blood Shield is very strong. It’s also really very irritating in PvP. And makes soloing old raids quite straightforward. I am a fan of Blood Shield.

Frozen Heart: Flat percentage Frost damage increase? Sounds boring. In actual fact, is more interesting than it looks, due to it’s potential to change how you play during procs – with enough Mastery, Frost Strike and Howling Blast both do a lot of damage, with Howling Blast actually overtaking Obliterate per-rune. This opens up a different playstyle, focusing on Frost damage. Overall, this is a good mastery.

Dreadblade: Initially this was Blightcaller, which increased your disease damage by a flat percentage. Blightcaller was 1, very boring and 2, extremely weak, so was changed to Dreadblade, which increases all of your Shadow damage by a flat percentage. This ends up affecting an awful lot of your damage, especially with the rise of Gurthalak in Dragon Soul. Again, a good stat.

Is Mastery better than Armour Penetration? Debatable. From a DK’s point of view we probably could’ve kept ArP and not really noticed or complained. I’d say it’s a good change, simply because it helps reinforce the different flavour of the two DPS trees. This is particularly noticeable in the difference in the size of Frost Fever and Blood Plague ticks as a Frost or Unholy DK.

New and Changed Abilities

With the nuts and bolts overhaul out of the way, let’s examine the shiny stuff – new buttons, and old buttons that don’t do what they used to. Though the latter is rarely “shiny”. There’ll be some missing here, usually because the change wasn’t big or interesting enough to mention.

Howling Blast: Let’s get this one out of the way – it’s been a bumpy ol’ journey for Howling Blast. Formerly a powerful Frost damage AoE on a six second cooldown that also cost a Frost rune – effectively giving it two cooldowns, a fact that caused more than a few UI errors – at the start of Cataclysm several changes were made to it. Firstly, they removed the cooldown. Great! Secondly, they added a Prime Glyph which allows it to apply Frost Fever. Great! Thirdly, they didn’t reduce it’s damage. Great! It’s now fantastically overpowered. Anyone who raided when tier 11 was current content will know that, until it was nerfed, Howling Blast was the only show in town for high output burst AoE. Naturally, it couldn’t last, and it’s damage was reduced heavily for secondary targets. The glyph was retained though, and Icy Touch was consigned to the mists of time for Frost.

Dark Transformation: Oh boy. My ghoul can do /what/ now? I’m sure you’re all familiar with the transformed ghoul – you’ve probably had one eat your face in PvP. The fact it requires Death Coil casts to stack the buff it requires, and the fact it costs an Unholy rune to cast, helps reinforce the fantastic runes/runic power synergy Unholy has. This is a tremendous ability, and probably my favourite of the new buttons in Cataclysm.

Outbreak: A 1 minute cooldown, no cost ability that applies both of your diseases. The only real question here is why this wasn’t part of the Death Knight’s arsenal from day one. Excellent ability.

Festering Strike: Coupled with Outbreak, this ensures Unholy rarely has to cast Icy Touch and Plague Strike. Coupled with the Blood of the North change, it also ensures no Death Knight except a CC-conscious tank ever casts Blood Strike. RIP, Blood Strike.

Necrotic Strike: A very odd ability, only really useful in PvP, due to the lack of Faction Champions-esque raid encounters in Cataclysm. I don’t think any other class has this mechanic – a healing-preventing shield you place on your opponent – and it is tremendously good in PvP. People without red names may (and do) choose to use the word “overpowered”.

Dark Simulacrum: Ah. Yes. This one. Has an ability ever promised so much, and so drastically failed to deliver? I’m certain if PvP was my primary love I would have more respect for it – I’ve certainly had fun copying Paladin bubbles and the like, but … in PvE? Apart from Hagara (where you can copy her 100k Shattered Ice nuke) and a brief bug on Sinestra (Wrack!), it has more or less no uses in PvE content. Intensely disappointing.

A moment’s silence here for Wandering Plague, which I miss dearly despite the knowledge that, with diseases critting properly in Cataclysm, it would’ve been extremely silly to retain it. In fact it was extremely silly in tier 9 when we had critting diseases from the set bonus. Still – goodnight, sweet prince.

Summary and Other Stuff

For me, the Death Knight is a much better class now than it was in Wrath. It’s been much more stable, and the sweeping changes they did make have been on the whole very successful. My only major disappointments with the mechanics now are the continuing uselessness of Dark Simulacrum – one raid encounter in an entire expansion where it’s worth casting isn’t worth retaining the ability for – and the clunkyness of Runic Empowerment. Handily, the Mists of Pandaria talent trees look like they’ll allow you to pick Runic Corruption instead, regardless of spec, and I’ll certainly be doing that for the rest of time. The changes made over the Cataclysm patch cycle have also brought positive changes. I would go so far as to say that Death Knights are currently in the best place they’ve been since they were introduced. We may not be the highest theoretical DPS, but I no longer feel like my entire class is going to be ripped up every 6 months, and the core mechanics feel like they’re now in place, compared to the half-finished feel DKs had during Wrath. Because of that, I’m cautiously optimistic looking forward to the next expansion.

I was going to write a short note about DK lore in Cataclysm but, well, there is none. But as the entirety of Wrath was about the Scourge, the undead and, by extension, the renegade Death Knights that joined the Alliance and the Horde, I don’t feel in a position to complain about that. Maybe there’ll be something in Mists. Scourged Pandaren, anyone?

Cataclysm Final Grades

With Cataclysm (oh so) slowly winding down, a guildmate recently suggested that I write a post reviewing the state of Resto Druids throughout this expansion.  I loved the idea, but I hoped  it might make for some really interesting posts from around the blogosphere rather than just on my own blog.  So, if you’re interested, here are a few ideas that might get you started on a post determining what your “final grade” is for your class and spec.  The list certainly isn’t comprehensive, nor am I attempting to create a survey.  Feel free to answer or not answer as much as you like – these questions are just for brainstorming purposes:

Do you feel that your class is better (in that it is more fun to play, more effective, etc.) now than it was at the end of Wrath?  Do you feel that your class is better now than it was at the beginning of Cataclysm?

How much have you enjoyed or found uses for your class’ level 81, 83, and 85 abilities?  Given the chance, what would you have changed about them?

Did you switch mains during Cataclysm?  If so, why did you make that choice?

What were your class’/spec’s strengths throughout Cataclysm?  What were its weaknesses?

Did you enjoy the addition of the mastery stat?  What did you like about it, or, what would you change?

How, if at all, did Cataclysm’s revamp of the talent trees affect your class?  Did you feel that these were changes for the better or for worse?

Did your class experience any significant changes or additions to its lore during this expansion?  If so, how did you feel about those changes?

Is your class easier or harder for a fresh 85 to learn now than it was at the end of Wrath?  Is this a good or a bad thing?

What aspects of your class’ gameplay do you think the designers really got right in this expansion?  What aspects were clear misses?

Overall, do you enjoy the playstyle of your class more now, at the end of Cataclysm, than you did prior to patch 4.0 at the end of Wrath?  Why or why not?

I hope to have my post up this weekend, and my guildmate who suggested the idea may end up stopping by to write a post of her own on the class she plays most often.  If you choose to write a “final grade” post on your blog, please drop me a note here or on Twitter so that I can compile a list of links to all the write-ups.

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Cataclysm Final Grades posts:

The State of the Death Knight by Lyshra

The State of the Bear Druid by Chrixus

Rogue Report Card by Squelchy

Final Grades (Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druid) by Saz

The State of the Resto Shaman by Dyna

The State of the Resto Druid by Tzufit

Report Card (Priest and Rogue) by Amateur Azerothian

The State of the Protection Paladin by Children of Wrath

The State of the Retribution Paladin by Leit