***

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.

… … … … … … …

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.

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!

***

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.

***

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. =)

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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?

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 original post on the topic came from Gnomeaggedon, who stated the rules as follows:

• Go into your image folder
• Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
• Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
• Challenge six new bloggers.
• Link to them.

So, here’s the thing – my screenshots aren’t organized in any fashion, they’re just all lumped together in the big WoW screenshots folder.  They’re organized by whatever names Windows and/or WoW decides to give them when I take them, since I rarely go through the trouble of renaming them.   All very fascinating, I know.  Luckily, the sixth one in the giant folder o’ screenshots was actually one I really like:

This image is what you see if you walk into the Inscription trainer’s building in Dalaran and turn your camera to look straight up.  I love the design of this room because I adore the idea of a tower filled with a library’s worth of books.  I don’t think you can see it in this screenshot, but occasionally the books will fly around as well.  It’s sort of a when-WoW-meets-Harry-Potter kind of moment.

I’ve completely lost track of who’s been tagged and who hasn’t, who’s posted and who hasn’t, but I do like linking to other blogs, so “TAG!” to the following writers:

• Blame Squelchy
• Mace and Staff
• Precious and Soft
• Bravetank
• Boozekin
• Manalicious

Have fun, and happy early Friday to all of you!

Now is probably a good time to mention that I absolutely hated healing Valithria.

It was a fun concept – the “swimming” around in another dimension and gathering up the orbs that would make your healing powerful enough to revive a green dragon – but it was something of a nightmare for a druid in Wrath.  Back then, Nourish was the only direct heal (outside of Swiftmend) that we used with any frequency, and its power was entirely dependent upon having a full stack of HoTs on the target before we started to spam Nourish on her.  If I was assigned to be one of the portal healers, my rotation once I got out and began to heal Valithria went something like this: Rejuv, Swiftmend, Regrowth, 3 stacks of Lifebloom, Nature’s Swiftness + Healing Touch, spam Nourish, and hopefully one more Swiftmend before I hopped into the next portal.  The alternative to this was to just cast Healing Touch, but in those days it had a much longer cast time than Nourish and actually healed for less than a Nourish cast on a target with full HoTs.

The point of this trip down Resto Druid memory lane is that Valithria was simply a fight that wasn’t designed with us in mind.  It was beyond frustrating to watch the non-druid healers in my raid group have a blast while they spammed their huge, powerful heals and knowing that this was how the Valithria fight was supposed to feel for healers, while the closest I ever came to feeling epic on that fight was when I got the chance to solo-heal outside of the portals.  Whenever Blizzard’s designers get it into their heads that they’re going to make a “healing fight” in a raid instance, those fights invariably favor a particular style of healing, and that style isn’t one that’s intuitive to players who are used to druid healing.  Worse still, in order for us to not only be competitive, but often merely to be able to function, druid healers usually have to heal in ways that both work against our strengths and often even exemplify things that we usually would never do.

 As each tier of raiding has been released, I find myself looking forward less and less to the healer fight, to the point that I find myself dreading them now.  In Cataclysm, we’ve fought Chimaeron, Baleroc, and now Yor’sahj, none of which has been an ideal fight for a druid.  The common themes we’ve seen in this expansion have been healing fights which punish overhealing and reward a healer who can pump their largest heals into one (or possibly two) targets as quickly as possible.  Sound like druids?  Not really.

 Speaking as someone who was nearly always assigned to raid healing duty on Chimaeron, I can attest that the fight was as close to impossible to heal for a druid as anything I’ve encountered thus far.  At the release of tier 11, we lacked a spell that could quickly heal someone up to 10k health in order to save them from dying to Massacre.  Nourish was too slow and too weak; Healing Touch was powerful enough, but also too slow.  Regrowth was fast enough, but wasn’t always capable of hitting for 10k in 346-359 iLv gear.  Swiftmend would do the trick, but it didn’t help if you were responsible for healing more than one person at a time.  Most of the time I resorted to spamming Regrowth and praying I’d have enough mana to make it through to the end of the fight.  It wasn’t fun by any of my definitions of the word, and it was the first fight I ever experienced that made me feel as if my class didn’t have the tools to do what the job required.  Learning to heal Chimaeron was, in a word, frustrating.

Baleroc posed some similar, though less extreme, problems.  The fastest way for a druid healer to build stacks of Vital Spark was to shift to Tree of Life and spam instant Regrowths on the current shard target, which was also a quick way to OOM yourself.  Our HoTs were neither helpful nor harmful – they didn’t allow us to build stacks of Vital Spark but (fortunately), they also didn’t trigger Vital Flame if we kept them on the tank.  Baleroc posed much fewer class-specific problems, but managed to perfectly highlight something I particularly can’t stand about these types of encounters.  Healing Baleroc meant standing still for the duration of the fight, except perhaps on Heroic if you had to soak a shard in the event of an emergency.  There was nothing to Baleroc BUT healing, and honestly that just doesn’t appeal to me.

“So Tzufit,” you’re probably thinking, “if you’re a healer and you don’t like fights that require you to focus completely on healing, what kind of fights DO you like?” 

I’m so glad you asked.

Recently, my 10 man team has returned to Bastion of Twilight to complete the heroic versions of the fights there and tackle Sinestra.  Last week we downed Heroic Ascendant Council – a fight which was still a good challenge even though we were running in T13 gear – and I quickly realized that I had found my favorite fight of the entire expansion.  Heroic Ascendant Council has all my favorite elements of an encounter.  There are debuffs to pay attention to, abilities that require precise movement and situational awareness, and a healthy chunk of healing throughput to last until the end.  It reminded me a lot of one of my favorite fights from Wrath, Heroic Professor Putricide.

Putricide and Ascendant Council are both execution fights; they ask for more precision and focus than they do raw DPS or HPS.  What I loved about each of these encounters was that they require you to do your own job (whether that’s healing, tanking or DPSing) flawlessly, but also force you to pay attention to every ability in the fight.  You don’t get to stand back and stare at healing bars for 5 minutes – you’re in the thick of things.  You have as much responsibility to keep yourself alive and not do things that will result in a raid wipe as anyone else does, and you need be an exceptional healer to boot.  That’s the kind of healing challenge I enjoy – a fight that asks me to think on my feet, always be aware of my surroundings, and is unpredictable at every turn.

Returning to current content, some of those elements are present in the Yor’sahj fight, which is what my 10 man group has gotten to in our heroic progression.   What could be fun in that fight, however, often leads to temper tantrums on my part because I am so annoyed by the seemingly arbitrary way that the encounter’s designers chose to determine which healing abilities provide stacks, and which don’t.  I feel powerless during much of the Yor’sahj fight in a way that is painfully reminiscent of my experiences with Chimaeron.  It’s not fun, it’s frustrating.  Having an entire spellbook full of things that I shouldn’t cast because I’m probably going to blow up the raid isn’t a cool mechanic to me – it’s a nightmare.

I play a druid healer because I love the style of druid healing.  I enjoy the flexibility of it, and that it allows me to multitask in a way that isn’t possible for any other healing class.  I love that I can easily go between tank healing and raid healing, or pull off both at the same time, and I don’t mind at all when a fight asks me to do both of these things.  I do mind, though, when a fight essentially tells me, “No.  You cannot heal like a druid.  You will heal like a paladin now.”   Here’s the thing – my main isn’t a paladin.  She isn’t a shaman or a priest, either.  Yet fights like Yor’sahj and Chimaeron have taught me that if I want to be able to heal them successfully, I can’t heal like a druid.  In an era when we are supposed to be able to “bring the player, not the class” (and not the player on an alt of a different class, either), I don’t understand how these sorts of fights can possibly coexist with that message.

If I could have just one wish for the boss encounters in Mists, it would be that Blizzard’s designers forever lay to rest the idea of a “healer fight.”  If the goal is to make your raid’s healers feel epic, it’s certainly not working  for me.  I feel epic when I can conquer a challenging fight – like Heroic Putricide or Ascendant Council – which doesn’t ask me to relearn everything I know about healing, but instead requires me to apply everything that makes me an exceptional healer to the specific mechanics of that fight.

What are your feelings about “healer fights” in raid instances?  Do you love them, hate them, or can you think of a way to make them better?

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

Akabeko’s question struck a chord with me for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that I found myself “coming out” (if you’ll excuse the callous analogy) as a gamer to a coworker this past week.  I think it’s important for me to explain, however, why I think there’s a huge difference between telling someone you’re a “geek” and telling them you’re a “gamer.”

And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Born in the early eighties, I am a card-carrying member of “Generation Y.”  During my freshman year of college, I attended a series of lectures about Gen. Y kids, who are also often referred to as Millennials.  The lectures offered a lot of sweeping generalizations regarding the overall personality traits of people who were born during the eighties, and what I basically gleaned was this:  We were called Gen. Y to differentiate us from Generation Xers, who pretty much seemed to be associated with things like Nirvana, MTV, and anything that ever happened on My So-Called Life.  Supposedly in contrast to Gen. X, the lecture series classified Generation Y as over-achievers, the sort of kids who were likely to develop back problems by age 10 because they carried every single textbook home with them in their backpacks every night.  We were the last generation to be born before everyone had the internet in their homes, and yet we also grew up with technology as a constantly growing part of our lives.  By the time we hit college, we documented our exploits on LiveJournal, and desperately tried to learn enough HTML to make our blog’s theme look cool.

Silly lecture series aside, one of the broad generalizations I feel comfortable making about people in my age group is that, at least since around the year 2000, we’ve not had to fight against much of a social stigma when it comes to self-identifying as “geeks.”  The vast majority of my classmates in every level of schooling were overachievers – we did our homework, were fiercely competitive with each other over grades and school successes, and we spent all of our after-school hours on sports teams, clubs, bands, choirs, or a mix of all these things.  We are the people who had two pages of extracurricular activities to attach to our college applications.  So with all this pressure and desire to be smart and to do our very best, it’s not all that surprising that the now grown-up Millenials have embraced Geek culture as a defining part of ourselves.

Diablo II came out near the end of my time in high school, and it was a huge deal for the majority of the guys in my class.  (I use the word “guys” intentionally here – I know of no female students who played at that time.)  There was one group in particular – the guys who took the advanced computer class – who were really into the game.  They had LAN parties every weekend, and they are the only reason my 17-year-old self knew what the hell a LAN party was.  They bypassed whatever crap security system our high school had on its computers in those days so that they could use the school’s network to play Diablo during lunch, and sometimes even during classes if they could get away with it.  The most amazing part, to me anyway, was that the school was fully aware that there was a group of students who had found a way around their security settings to do this – and they didn’t care.  I don’t know whether the one teacher who worked IT for the school was just happy that these guys had taken it upon themselves to circumvent the system, or if perhaps he didn’t have the slightest clue how to reinforce the firewall so that he could stop them.

These guys probably don’t look like what your immediate mental image of them would suggest.  Sure, some of them might fit the stereotypical notion of a “geek,” but the advanced computer class also had our star quarterback, our class president, and several other “non-geeks.”  But all of these guys were close friends, even before they started playing Diablo together.  They were a part of the “popular” crowd, and yet they were also – undeniably – geeks.

Now, just try to be accepted by a 30 year old if you can’t get a Star Wars reference in a conversation.  Note the painful silence if they ask you the meaning of “life, the universe, and everything,” and you don’t know to respond “42.”  Of course, the really cool thing is that if you, for some reason, aren’t in the know about an aspect of geek culture, most geeks are only too happy to explain it to you.  Getting someone up to speed with Star Wars or Hitchhiker’s is a long process and it takes a lot of buy-in.  But if you’re willing to listen, most geeks are happy to point you in the right direction.  Though certainly not true in every case and with every person, geek culture is often very inclusive.  We want more people to get addicted to Doctor Who with us, and we want to show off our knowledge about the newest smart phone that’s about to be released.  In any current setting, I never feel uncomfortable displaying myself as a geek.  I crack T.A.R.D.I.S. jokes at work, I say “BRB” when I’m leaving a room, and I never worry that this will negatively change anyone’s impression of who I am.

But what about defining myself as a gamer?

The Price of Entry to Gamer Culture

I don’t tell people I’m a gamer.

For the most part, I couldn’t really even think of myself as such until relatively recently.  Sure, I had been playing computer games for as long as there had been a computer in my house (Apple IIGS, represent).  I got one of the original Game Boys for Christmas the first year it came out, and could hardly play the thing unless I sat it in my lap because it was so heavy.  But I never thought of myself as a gamer until I started playing WoW.

There are probably people out there who would tell me that I really don’t fit the definition of gamer.  I am awful at anything that requires me to aim, so all FPS games are out.  The only consoles I’ve ever purchased for myself have been made by Nintendo.  I consider completing all of Super Mario Sunshine one of the more difficult things I’ve done in the last 15 years.  I like silly things like Roller Coaster Tycoon and The Sims, and I taught my younger sister how to play MarioKart so that should could be my passenger for Double Dash.  I’m not serious enough, or skilled enough to be a gamer – or at least that was what I used to tell myself.  WoW changed that because endgame raiding meant that I needed to be skilled enough and I needed to take the game a little more seriously.  But should it have required a shift like that for me to really self-identify as a gamer?  What is it about gamer culture that asks for a prerequisite of a certain skill level (or skill level in a few specific types of games) when entry to geekdom generally only asks for a desire to learn?

Noob hazing.

Gaming is different than geek culture because gaming has clear objectives.  You can’t win or lose at being a geek – but you absolutely can lose when you’re a gamer.  To become a skilled gamer, you need coordination, a desire to learn a lot about the inner-workings of any game you play, and – most of all – a lot of time devoted to playing those games.  It’s a level of commitment that isn’t for everyone, and it’s not a passive experience like watching old episodes of Star Trek: TNG or reading some Phillip K. Dick stories would be.  Gaming requires focus and just a huge investment of time to develop skill, and it means that there is a long and mandatory apprenticeship period for anyone who wants to become a part of this culture.  Every newly-minted “gamer” looks back, just as Jonah Hill’s character does in the Call of Duty commercial, and recognizes how far he has come based upon how much better he is than the freshest noob.

Because what we do is such an investment, we don’t like to allow the title “gamer” to be granted to just anyone.  A grandmother who loves to play Farmville on her Facebook account can’t be allowed to self-identify as a gamer.  A middle school kid who loves throwing pies at cogs on Toontown is obviously not serious enough to be on our level.  And while I can understand that we jealously guard our title because we went through so much to get to where we are, I just can’t agree with being so exclusionary – particularly when we’re shooting ourselves in the foot by doing so.  If that same Farmville -loving grandma happens to be my boss at work, then I want to be able to say to her “Oh, I’m going to get ready for a big raid on World of Warcraft tonight,” when she asks me if I have any plans after work.  If she already sees herself as a part of gamer culture, then she’s not going to immediately assume that I’m some irresponsible, immature slob who lives in my parents’ basement.  She’ll know that I’m the same, intelligent person she already knew who happens to have a hobby similar to her own.  Is raiding more difficult than playing Farmville?  Of course it is.  But why does that matter?

“Geek” lost its negative connotation when it became so broad as to be nearly all-encompassing.  Read Harry Potter?  You’re a geek.  Did you watch every episode of Lost with baited breath?  Geek.  It’s nearly impossible to even define geek anymore because geek culture is so vast; geek culture is nearly indiscernible from pop culture.  At the same point that geek came to have a broader definition, it also started to lose a lot of its value as a category – in the most positive kind of way.  Now, we don’t necessarily think of someone as a geek because they love Star Trek or Asimov or video games.  Geek has become so much a part of our normal culture that we are finally at a point where we can think of someone as an individual first and a geek later.

The concept of “gamer” isn’t to this point.  There are near constant fights in the gaming community of what it means to be a gamer and what it doesn’t mean.  Does the Farmville-playing grandma get to be in the club?  Do so-called “bro gamers” who stick primarily to FPS and sport games get the title in anything more than a derogatory way?  When we seek to define something, we include some things and exclude others in order to narrow down exactly what we’re talking about.  This is what’s at stake for the gamers out there – all of us who self-identify as gamers want to make sure that we are included in whatever definition we choose.  The problem is that in all of our efforts to define who we are as a community, we’re making ourselves appear even more exclusionary.

Gamers and Social Stigmas

As I said above, I don’t tell people that I’m a gamer.  I’m uncomfortable with the vocabularic baggage that comes with the term, and because I am so uncomfortable with it I suspect that a part of me – however small or subconscious – must subscribe to some of the stereotypes.

Hear the tone in Barney’s voice?  ”You met on World of Warcraft?”  That’s the tone I never want to hear.  That’s the fear that keeps me from telling people that I even play WoW, let alone that I met my partner through the game.  There’s an immediate judgement, a sense that they have found the nice little box you fit into, and a belief that they know everything about you because they know this one thing about you.  I don’t want to be a gamer first and me second, and I don’t want to see my identity become lost in anyone’s mind because they can’t realize that it should be the other way around.

So I have a vested interest in seeing the gaming community become more diverse and inclusive.  I also realize (rather painfully) that it’s people like me who really have the ability to demonstrate how diverse the gaming community already is.  When I do finally identify myself as a gamer to people who have known me for a long time but were unaware of that part of my life, they are always surprised.  They tell me things like they would “never have expected” it, or that I don’t “seem like the type.”  And because I don’t fit that type, I know that I need to speak up.

WoW is a significant part of my life.  I’ve met many friends through the game, I write about it constantly, I research it daily, and I spend many hours a week playing.  It’s a gaping hole to leave out of my introductions and my social interactions with non-gamers, and it means that they aren’t getting the full story of who I am.  But until I can believe that self-identifying as a gamer will not immediately define ALL of who I am, I simply won’t do it.  Call me a geek and I know that you can still see me beneath the definition.  Call me a gamer and I’ll wind up adrift on a sea of stereotypes.

Tzufit, the main

Tzufit has been enjoying revisiting old content with her pocket tank in search of transmogrification fodder and general good times.  We like to see just how many fights we can pull off with just the two of us, and have spent some time in both Wrath and BC raids.

In terms of current content, my druid is slowly making her way through Dragon Soul heroic fights, though our 10 man raiding team looks unlikely to down much besides Morchok until the nerfs.  We’re also poking our heads back into Bastion of Twilight to see if we might get a chance to see the Sinestra fight.

As tends to be the case towards the end of an expansion, I will probably be spending less time on my main than on the rest of the alts.  She has the gear I want and I’m happy with her raiding progress.  Not much to wrap up here.  The one possible exception is that I’ve recently gotten it into my head that I’d like to go for Loremaster on one of my toons someday.  I’d like to excuse to see a bunch of content I haven’t yet (I’m constantly finding quests in BC I’ve never done before, and I know I still haven’t completed Icecrown on anyone), and the sad truth is that I wouldn’t even consider doing this on any toon but a druid.  Flight form for the win!

Maden, the newly promoted Number One Alt

Two big (and probably time-consuming) goals for the gnome warlock.  First, I want to finish off her Professor title.  Given that I just got her to Associate Professor over the weekend, it’s safe to say there’s still a lot of work left to do.  Second, I’d really like to get Maden all the way through normal Dragon Soul.  She’s done all the fights on Dungeon Finder, but I rarely have an opportunity to bring any non-healing toons to our guild’s raids.  This might not happen until quite near the end of Cataclysm, but I’m still hoping to get her a chance to smack Deathwing around.

Beyond this, I’ve been spending a lot of time PvPing on her again.  Affliction PvP was one of the things that really got me interested in the gameplay when I first started playing WoW, and it’s been a blast to come back to it after a long hiatus.

The Alt Healers

My priest and shaman are always on call for guild heroics and raids.  They have enough gear to make it through every fight in normal Dragon Soul, so I don’t really have much in the way of goals for either of them.  My shaman recently got an Elemental offspec after being Enhancement for the last two years, so I wouldn’t mind spending some time getting to know that spec a little better.  My priest needs a helm from Naxxramas to complete her look, and that’s about it!

The Mini-priest reached 70 a few months ago.  I’ve locked her XP there and have had lots of fun running at-level BC heroics on her (the queue times are often surprisingly reasonable).  Sadly, the Mini-priest is on a bit of a hiatus until the Battle Tag system is implemented.  Though both the Pink Kitty and I now have level 70 twinks, the extremely long queue times for battlegrounds in our locked bracket have kept us from doing much with them yet.  Once Battle Tags are up and running, I can’t wait to join up with several Twitter friends who also have toons in this bracket.

The accident-prone mage

My mage began as an experiment on another RP server.  The experiment was both to see whether I could commit to actually making an RP-focused toon, and whether I could actually level without heirlooms.  She easily cruised to 85 in quest greens, and made a pile of gold along the way thanks to the server’s awesomely skewed economy that totally overvalued low level materials for just about everything.  But I just didn’t quite commit to the RP thing … again.  After she hit 85 I didn’t play her much at all, and I recently transfered her and her mountain of gold over to my home server.  My only goals for her would be to get her some iLv 378 gear and maybe stick her into Raid Finder once or twice.  Oh, and to pick a damn spec.  I leveled as Arcane and have since totally forgotten how to play it, so I guess I’m at a decent starting point to learn any of the three mage specs.

The Other Druid

The Other Druid (the tanky one) has been spending most weekends in Firelands, helping guildies fill out gear and  gather legendary mats.  I should probably finish a full healing set on her, since I originally created her to have a second resto druid to help deal with the oddities of scheduling raids around the shared lockout system.  I have a lot of fun tanking on her, though, so I’m more likely to fill in as a tank for Dragon Soul alt runs when the time comes.

The Rest

There are a few more alts on my home server who haven’t yet reached 85.  Of those, I have a hunter who is about 75% of a level away from hitting 85, where she’s been for the better part of a year.  I suppose I should take care of that eventually, though I can’t really imagine playing her.  I also have a warrior in the mid 70s who just might be able to make a final push to 80 now that  the Northrend leveling requirements have been lowered.  My warrior got less attention as tank queues slowed down and instance runs began to give less XP – I’m really only interested in him as a tank, so questing hasn’t been all that fun for me.  Finally, I have a lowbie rogue.  I’ve rolled a lowbie rogue about a dozen times now and only made it as high as level 50 on any of them.  I’m trying again because I love the idea of a rogue – I love sneaking around in stealth and I wouldn’t mind attempting to PvP with one.  But the problem is that I just don’t find them very interesting to level.  I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll change my mind this time around.

What’s on your Cataclysm bucket list for your characters?  What achievements, gear, titles, or more are you hoping to acquire before this expansion is over?

Navimie, the wordsmith behind The Daily Frostwolf recently celebrated her blog’s second birthday.  As you may have seen elsewhere around the blogging community, Navimie graciously offered to make presents for all the well-wishers who commented on her anniversary post.  Given how much thought and creativity go into all of Navimie’s posts and screenshots, this was a truly wonderful offer, and I have to wonder if Navi realized just how many comments she would get!

But true to her word, Navi has sent along gifts for each and every one of us.  I mentioned that one of my favorite posts on The Daily Frostwolf was Navi’s Horde Alphabet book that she created for her daughter.  So, Navi created a second alphabet – this time the ABCs of Cataclysm for me!  I’ve already told Navi that I’m planning to fly around and get corresponding screenshots for each letter, and here is the alphabet she created:

Cataclysm ABC

A is for Alysrazor, who was reborn in fire
B is for Beth’tilac, who hides in the spire
C is for Cata, druid nerfs make us sad
D is for Deathwing, he’s crazy and bad
E is for Elune, whom Tyrande reveres
F is for Firelands (now bores me to tears)
G is for Gnomes, could they all go get nicked =/
H is for Hagara, whose pockets are picked
I is for Illidan, we now fight by his side
J is for Julak-doom, in the Highland resides
K is for Kalecgos, the new head of the blues
L is for Leyara, whose locket we use
M is for Molten Front, those dailies, oh chore!
N is for Nefarian, he’s defeated once more!
O is for Onyxia, who has lightning from flanks
P is for Priests, Divine Hymn now beats Tranqs
Q is for Queen, that Azshara, she’s hot
R is for Ragnaros, who seems stuck in one spot
S is for Staghelm, cool flame kitty staff!
T is for Tol Barad, for PVP and a laugh
U is for Ultraxion, misclick and you’re dead
V is for Varian, in Stormwind, he’s head
W is for Wild growth, so sad that it’s nerfed
X is for Xi’ri, that snowflake who’s earthed
Y is for Ysera, so sexy and wise
Z is for Zon’ozz, bounce balls till he dies!

Ah, Ysera.  She is sexy and wise!  Thank you so much, Navimie, and congratulations once again on your blog’s birthday!

My second gift was completely unexpected.  Last night when I checked Twitter, I found that the incredibly talented Vidyala of Manalicious (and now of the webcomic From Draenor With Love) had done a sketch of my character.  I have always, always wanted artwork of Tzufit and I was so excited to see that Vidyala had put her unique spin on my druid.  I just love Vid’s artwork style and I am beyond tickled that she decided to do this for me.  You may have already seen Vid’s drawing, since I’ve made it my avatar for WordPress, Twitter, my guild’s webpage, and just about everywhere else I can.  (It’s my desktop background, too.)  Thank you once again, Vidyala, and here’s the beautiful full-sized version: