Unbearably HoT

Let’s face it—not all bosses are created equally.

Although we arguably have different tanks best-suited for particular encounters (a paladin AOE tank for Felmyst, a bear mitigation tank for Brutallus or a warbot with a shield to take Illidan’s shears), you can get the most out of your toon by min/maxing different gear sets. “What!!!” you say, ready to sucker punch me and shake your lack-of-inventory in my face, “I already have a resto set, a cat set, a PVP set, a bear set, and a super awful boomkin set! Between all that, my potions, my tokens, and my pets, I don’t have room for anything else!”

While I’d firstly point you to this post, suck it up, get a mod like Outfitter to manage your accessories, and start planning—being prepared for any and all scenarios will make you a better bear. Since I just recently wrote about the importance of hit-rating and expertise rating for tanking, I’m leap-frogging into a discussion on how to incorporate gear pieces and accessories that lend themselves to more TPS (threat-per-second) generation into your standard tank set.

Nocturneus writes:

I am one of the few Bear tanks I know that actually went the route of Defense over Resilience. I like the fact that Defense gives you avoidance as well as makes you uncrittable (provided you hit the magic number.) Being able to get enough Defense at end-game Raid level was rather difficult, which is why most take the easier route of Resilience.

I am currently uncrittable, have just under 40k Armor, 42% dodge and 20k health. The problem I have is trying to squeeze Hit Rating in there somewhere. Any suggestions? Most of my gems are Agility and Stam, Agility or Stam, along with a few epic Defense gems in there from Heroics.

Firstly, the use of a program such as Rawr or a few Post-It Notes can help you keep track of how any major gear changes affect your overall mitigation stats. I can make recommendations, but it’s up to you to check up on your math. Secondly, since I don’t have any sort of armory link for Nocturneus, I’m making suggestions based on my own experience; not all items are easily attainable.

Fortunately, gearing up as a low-level druid is ridiculously easy, and there are plenty of other great bloggers out there who’ve outlined how to do that. The Heavy Clefthoof set takes care of nearly all your chance-to-be-crit issues, allowing you to socket almost anything you please, and the Earthwarden, a great entry-level tanking weapon, is the only druid weapon to date that has expertise rating on it.

Back to the question—I’m sure Nocturneus knows his numbers, but for the rest of us out there, here are some basics:

2.6% = The chance-to-crit reduction necessary to avoid being critically hit by boss mobs; you can achieve this with 415 DEF or 267.8 Resilence, assuming all points in Survival of the Fittest and base DEF of 350, or you can use a mixture of RES and DEF to reach it.
2.36 = The defense rating necessary to achieve 1 DEF skill.
39.4 = The amount of RES rating necessary to yield 1% RES.
35,880 = The amount of armor necessary to reach 75% mitigation; any more armor beyond this point does not offer substantial protection.

Quick Math:
~176 defense rating = 415 Defense Skill
~103 RES rating = 267.8 Resilence

As Nocturneus mentioned, stacking Resilence is easier, especially at high levels when DEF rating isn’t present on our regular armor pieces anymore. Generally speaking, druids tend to pick up the lion’s share of their DEF rating from accessories like necklaces, rings and trinkets or from enchantments. RES rating, however, is present on just about any piece of PVP gear you pick up—and can be fairly easy to get your paws on. Why use DEF then? Each point of DEF skill gives you 0.04% to be missed, to block, to dodge and to parry—but for the purpose of our furry selves, the Miss and Dodge are the important parts. Basically, you’ll probably have to end up using a little bit of both. Here’s why.

Because you need less RES rating than DEF rating to reach crit immunity, a little RES goes a long way and allows for a little more socket/enchant play. Nocturneus clearly has a classic mitigation tanking set—great for repelling enemy attacks and for all-around-mob-bashing, but (as he says), lacking in the hit/expertise department. More than likely, this means that even though his attacks hit for quite a bit, they’re getting dodged, parried or missed more often than they should, potentially wrecking a normal tank rotation and diminishing the amount of TPS he could be generating. Nocturneus doesn’t need to get rid of his sweet mitigation set—he just needs to build other pieces to switch in for maximum threat generation when he needs it.

First thing’s first—eliminate all DEF or RES gems. I know we often rely on that one Seaspray Emerald to throw us over the cap, but in my opinion, you’re better off modifying your gear with RES or DEF enchants. Why? You can’t enchant for melee +hit, but you can socket for it. Putting 12 DEF on your bracers, 15 RES on your chest or 12 DEF on your cloak can give you the edge you need while still allowing for a reasonable amount of STA and dodge.

Next, evaluate how much more DEF or RES you need to reach crit immunity, and bring in one or two pieces of PVP gear or a RES based cloak. The notion that you need to PVP to PVE may not be a palatable one, but it’ll help round out your armor sets. Think about it like this: even if you despise PVP, you can dick around in arena every week, take home some welfare points, and still find yourself able to pick up a T6 comparable chestpiece in a few weeks. What pieces of PVP gear will you get the most out of?

Nearly every piece of Vengeful Dragonhide armor (S3) has hit rating on it. The pieces with the highest resilience on them, however, are the legguards and chestpiece. As you can easily make the socket bonus on the chestpiece and add another +4 Critical Strike rating to your gear (nevermind enchanting the chestpiece), I consider that the best piece to incorporate into your arsenal. Previously, bracers were also an easy addition, but the new rating requirement (while still an easy grab at 1575) may be prohibitive to some players. Still, the RES rating on the bracers virtually eliminates the need for enchanting with DEF, and with another Glinting Pyrestone in the socket, you pick up the 4 RES socket bonus. I’ve offered up S3 comparisons here because they’re now cheap pick-ups free of rating requirements, but if you have the opportunity to pick up the Brutal Dragonhide Tunic (at 1600, also a fairly easy grab), go for it. Let’s quickly compare the Vengeful Gladiator’s Dragonhide Tunic and the Thunderheart Chestguard.

Ultimately, our biggest losses switching chestpieces are in the STR and AC categories—and we stand to gain an awful lot more: hit rating, armor ignore, and critical strike rating, all stats that will help increase your TPS against an enemy target. I chose Glinting Pyrestones for every socket, but I’ve also seen folks stack straight AGI, hit, or a mixture of both. Remember: the point of adding this piece of gear is to enhance your threat generation. While AGI does nothing for hit or expertise rating, it offers a buffer to your critical strike rating, your armor, and your dodge—nothing to sneeze at. With one piece of gear, you can pick up an extra 25 hit rating, the TPS stats previously mentioned, make up the AGI difference (36-31) in gems, and pick up 25 RES rating, all for the price of 23 STR and 252 AC.

Make sure you’re watching that 35,880 armor cap though, keeping in mind that raid buffs such as MotW will also affect your final tally. PVP gear can offer similar stats to tier gear but is often lower in armor and STR. If you’re someone like Nocturneus who is already above and beyond the armor cap, supplementing your gear set with one or two PVP pieces will not drop you below your cap (in Noc’s case, 40k-252 = 39,748, still way above cap) . If you do, remember that you can set up a potion macro and take Ironshield Potions whenever the cooldown comes up—when wearing my TPS gear on Brutallus, I used that particular strat.

Other useful hit rating items include:

Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Pendant of Titans = 20 hit rating; drops off the Reliquary of Souls
Thunderheart Waistguard = 23 hit rating and 1 red socket (potential for 5-10 hit rating); token drops off Brutallus

Now, expertise. As I mentioned in “I want you to Hit me as hard as you can,” the only expertise we druids gain from set pieces is on the Thunderheart Treads. If we want any more than that, we have to look toward items such as trinkets, necklaces, and cloaks. I pointedly exclude rings from that list, because rings are usually items that carry a significant portion of our armor and DEF rating—generally, substituting one of those puts us at a much bigger loss than substituting say, a trinket. The three most easily attainable items that can net you expertise rating for tanking (there are other leather expertise items that are suitable for DPS) are:

Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve = 18 expertise rating; SSO rep item
Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Shard of Contempt = 44 expertise rating; drops in heroic MgT

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Collar of the Pit Lord = 29 expertise rating; drops off Brutallus
Thunderheart Treads = 20 expertise rating; token drop from Felmyst
Crimson Paragon’s Cover = 28 expertise rating; drop off the Eredar Twins

If you mouseover the tooltips for each of the necklaces (a gear slot where expertise seems to be stacked), there are reasonably clear trade-offs for each one: some have defense rating (a bonus to be sure), high STA, or dodge rating—I happen to have all four for different occasions, but I generally default to the Collar of the Pit Lord for the DEF rating, expertise and 68 STA. Additionally, the proc on the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve is reportedly more useful (for tanking) if you’re a Scryer; an expertise capped warrior, for example, can apparently become “unparriable” for the buff’s duration.
Recap
To allow for getting the most out of your gear’s sockets while remaining crit immune, utilize PVE and PVP gear that combine DEF rating and RES rating—without gemming for it. The sockets you free up can be used for AGI/HIT gems, and the addition of one or two pieces of arena gear will net you itemized hit rating and a plethora of other TPS boosting equip stats. Finally, keeping a myriad array of accessories such as different necklaces, trinkets, rings, and cloaks can allow you to customize your gear on the fly and better equip yourself for different encounters. Keep track of all your new armor-sets using an equip mod such as Outfitter, and make sure you remain crit immune and at your armor cap with a good ol’ pen and paper or a program such as Rawr.

Before I start making any frenzied posts detailing why I worry about feral tanks in WotLK, let’s take a step back and address the now.

Just about any melee DPS class fully invested in damage will explain that +hit and expertise is invaluable—or at least important. Four thousand spell damage or eight million attack power can be rendered useless in a raiding environment unless you can actually connect with the mob you’re targeting. The same situation can apply to a PVP scenario as well: pesky cyclone or root resists can cost you an arena match. A simple armory search can pull up gear-listings for many high-end Restoration druids, and if you take a good look, many of them stack those lovely +10 spell-hit gems, along with Spell Penetration on their cloaks.

But +hit and expertise rating isn’t just for damage classes—the more you connect with the target(s) you’re tanking, the more TPS (threat-per-second) you’re generating. I might even add that it’s even more important for bears than our cat counterparts. I can sit around in front of Brutallus wearing every piece of my super don’t-die-gear, but I guarantee that I’ll miss maybe 2 out of every 3 mangles or have my Lacerates dodged or parried—you get the idea. If the specials with the highest threat multipliers aren’t landing, DPS will be perilously riding your ass.

Let’s clearly outline what we’re talking about here:

According to WoWWiki, “hit” can be defined as “the physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with a melee or ranged weapon. The chance to hit increases by 1% per 15.77 hit rating points at level 70.”

For druids (single-wielding, mind you), you need approximately 142 hit rating to increase your chance to hit a level 73 mob by 9%—this is your “hit cap”. When I reference a “cap”, it’s the generally accepted limit at which adding any more of a certain stat doesn’t actually help you. Exceeding 9% to hit won’t help counter dodges or parries (that’s expertise) or even misses; in my opinion, you’re actually better sitting just below the hit cap and chewing on some Spicy Talbuk Steak to bring you up to par rather than over-gearing or over-socketing (when you could be stacking more AGI or AP, etc.). Additionally, you can plan to take off a piece of gear with lots of hit on it and exchange it for a piece with more AGI if you know you’re going to have a Draenei in your party (passively increasing your chance to hit by 1%). While there never seem to be “absolutes” with Blizzard, a 9% chance to hit virtually guarantees zero misses against a target of level 73 or below.

Do you need 9% to hit for trash mobs? No. It rather goes without saying that you need less chance to hit when the level of the mob decreases and the gap between your weapon skill and its defense skill closes. Therefore, if you want to be a super dr00d (or rogue, or whatever), you can actually itemize two different DPS gear-sets: one hit-capped set (9%) for the boss, and one set (~5% for level 70s) that stacks more AGI for trash mobs.

What about expertise?

Expertise is a combat rating that decreases the chance your attack will be parried or dodged. Because druids don’t have any special racial talents (human sword/mace specialization, for example) or class talents (i.e. rogues) that increases expertise (this is changing in the expansion, however), we can calculate the amount of expertise needed to negate dodge as follows:

Boss mob’s base dodge = 6.5%
1% Expertise = 15.77 Expertise Rating
6.5 * 15.77 = 102.505

So realistically, you’d want approximately 103 Expertise Rating to completely negate a boss mob’s ability to dodge your attacks. If you’re melee DPS, you should theoretically be standing behind a target anyway, which theoretically eliminates parries.

Capping hit and expertise sounds like it makes a lot of sense, right? Connecting with your target generates more damage and more threat. The problem is getting there. It’s hard to bitch about getting hit capped when a dual wielder like a rogue needs twice as much as we do, but Blizzard doesn’t itemize hit and expertise for druids. Not specifically, anyway. If you look at the entire Thunderheart Harness, Sunwell items included, we net 50 hit rating (3.17% to hit) and 20 expertise rating. For the record, that’s pretty miserable, especially since 23 of that hit rating is on the belt, which is arguably inferior for tanking to the Belt of Natural Power, a T5 crafted item. Thus, if I’m wearing my “TPS” set for tanking (which is, by the way, beneath the armor cap), I have approximately 4.5% chance to hit and 4.62% dodge/parry reduction.

Lycentia, in his tanking gear picked up from similar raid instances, has approximately 6.34% to hit and can reduce the boss’s chance to dodge or parry an attack by 15.75%. We have to remember that Lycentia is a human wielding a sword and is also receiving the human sword specialization bonus, but that’s considerably more chances to connect with the boss and thus generate more threat per second. Even though druid threat is largely generated by high damage, if you’re not able to cause that damage, you might have a problem. Add Windfury to that equation, and now you’re looking at a chance to proc an additional attack that will, more than likely, connect as well. I’m a little jealous, and I’m looking forward to receiving the bonus from Windfury Totems (so long as I don’t have to give up Gift of Air).

My point is that druid tanking itemization is currently flawed, and that it should be a little bit easier to maximize your chance to hit and chance to reduce parry and dodge without sacrificing our bread and butter stats of AGI and STA. It’s that important. The more damage you, as a tank, put out, the more damage your raid can produce without worrying about pulling aggro. By not pulling your own weight, you’re threat capping your raid’s DPS and severely limiting the speed at which you can destroy a boss. If you can afford to wear a Shard of Contempt and a necklace such as the Brooch of Deftness, Pendant of Titans, Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, or Collar of the Pit Lord, I recommend it. To remain above your DEF cap, you can supplement your armor with the S3 chestpiece and socket with the AGI/HIT gems. This will likely drop you below the 35,880 armor cap, but if you set up a clever potion macro, you can join the ranks of warbots and slam down Ironshields with the best of them.

But those are (mostly) set pieces. As a cat, you’re probably wearing two pieces of T4 at least, and if you’re lucky, two pieces of T6 as well. Since most of the DPS gear we pick up is rogueish in nature, climbing to 142 hit rating isn’t too difficult at all. This is important because a successful cat DPS rotation relies on heavy crit for combo points and bleed debuffs; if one doesn’t “stick” or “hit”, you’re essentially blowing your whole cycle. A simplified DPS rotation (assuming high crit and ignoring powershifting for the moment) might go as follows:

1. Mangle
2. Shred
3. Shred
4. Shred
5. Rip

Because Mangle amplifies Shred damage and bleed effects, you will not want to Shred or Rip unless your Mangle debuff is up on your target. If you miss your Mangle or your Mangle is dodged, you’re a step behind in your rotation. If you miss it twice, you’re two steps behind and now you’re just wasting energy.

In Cat Form, I’m hit capped but not expertise capped. Some of this is based on the item slots I’ve chosen to use for my two piece T4 and T6 bonuses, but it’s also not quite as easy to get without sacrificing a lot of high-end stats. Often, I only run with the Shard of Contempt, which reduces a mob’s chance to dodge my attacks by 2.79%—not too stellar, but nearly 3% is much better than 0. If you’re not quite as worried about set bonuses or exchanging a high level item without expertise for a lower level item with, here are some easy expertise grabs:

Shard of Contempt (Heroic MgT): 44 expertise rating
Shapeshifter’s Signet (Lower City Reputation): 20 expertise rating
Grips of Deftness (Karazhan Trash): 15 expertise rating
Total: 5.00% dodge reduction

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Shoulderpads of the Stranger (Hydross): 10 expertise rating
Belt of One Hundred Deaths (Lady Vashj): 25 expertise rating
Gloves of the Searing Grip (A’lar): 18 expertise rating
Total: 3.36% dodge reduction

Total with the best items combined: 7.41% dodge reduction, effectively negating a boss mob’s chance to dodge (6.5%) your attacks. You could even take a piece or two off.

Playing any hybrid class requires a veritable balancing act of trying to make the best of subpar itemization, but while you’re min/maxing for DPS and TPS, remember that you’re gimping yourself if you’re ignoring your hit and expertise ratings.

For a discussion about spell hit and spell damage for moonkin, visit Gray Matter.

As many of you may know by now, the NDA on WotLK information has been lifted and the beta will be going live shortly. Official patch notes for the beta are available, and I’ve listed the druid changes below, highlighting anything I was particularly excited about. Basically, stuff I thought was even cooler than the other stuff. Even the boomkin shit looks fantastic.

I opted in for the beta, but it’ll be anyone’s guess if I get in. Expect to hear more—a lot more. Oh, and Phae? Pretty sure the developers heard the leaves rustling:

New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)

Druid

• Brambles (Balance): Now increases the damage done by your Treants, and also damage caused from your Treants and Barkskin has a 5/10/15% chance to Daze the target for 3 sec.
• Celestial Focus (Balance): The stun proc now works with Starfall.
• Entangling Roots: Can now be used indoors.
• Faerie Fire (Feral): Now an 11-point talent, down from being a 21-point talent.
• Feral Charge (Feral) is now a 21-point talent, up from being a 11-point talent.
• Feral Charge (Feral): Can now be used in Cat form.
• Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.
• Focused Starlight (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
• Force of Nature (Balance): Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes, down from 3.
• Hurricane: No longer has a cooldown (was 1 minute).
• Improved Faerie Fire (Feral): Now also works with spell hit, in addition to ranged and melee hit %.
• Improved Mark of the Wild (Restoration): Now a 2-point talent, down from a 5-point talent.
• Improved Tranquility (Restoration): Now also reduces the cooldown of your Tranquility spell by 25/50%.
• Mangle (Feral): Now increases the damage done by Maul in addition to Shred.
• Moonglow (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.
• Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.

• Nature’s Focus (Restoration): Now a 3 point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 1, up from Tier 2. Now also includes Nourish.
• Nature’s Grace (Balance): Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Wrath spell by 50% while in effect.
• Nature’s Grasp (Balance): Can now be used and can proc indoors.
• Nature’s Reach (Balance): Now also reduces threat generated by Balance spells by 15/30%.
• New Spell: Revive - Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. (Ranks 1-7 added)
• Omen of Clarity (Restoration): Now a passive spell. Now also works for spells (healing and damage). Proc rate is roughly 6% with a 10 second internal cooldown.
• Primal Tenacity (Feral) now reduces damage while stunned by 5/10/15%, and reduces the duration of fear effects by 5/10/15%.
• Remove Curse can now be used in Tree of Life form.
• Soothe Animal can now be used on Dragonkin as well as Beasts.
• Soothe Animal is now instant cast.
• Subtlety (Restoration): Now a 3-point talent, down from a 5-point talent. Also moved to Tier 2, up from Tier 3. Also now only reduced threat for Restoration spells, and reduces the chance that your healing over time spells (Lifebloom, Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will be dispelled, rather than all Druid spells. Threat management for Balance can now be found in the Balance tree, within Nature’s Reach.
• Survival of the Fittest (Feral): Increased to 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.
• The mana regeneration penalty when in Bear Form, Dire Bear Form and Cat Form has been removed.
• Tranquil Spirit (Restoration) now also includes Nourish.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): 30% snare penalty has been removed.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): Can now cast Dispel Curse.
• Tree of Life (Restoration): You can now cast all Restoration spells (Healing Touch) in the form, but Tree of Life now only reduces the mana cost of your healing over time spells (Rejuvenation, Lifebloom, Regrowth and Flourish) by 20%.
• Vengeance (Balance): Now also works with Starfall.

I didn’t accomplish anything I set out to do last night except for running Lycentia’s alt through all the Scarlet Monastery questlines. Instead of going to Sunwell last night to keep getting destroyed by the Twins, we decided to head to Black Temple and farm up a few pieces folks still need, kit out the new people, etc. Of course, I ducked out just before Supremus last night to let in some folks who, you know, actually needed gear. No sooner did I teleport back outside did I put my head down on my desk and promptly pass out on my keyboard. The next thing I know, Lycentia is telling me to go back to sleep, and at some point I remember fuzzily transferring from computer to bed. Oops, my b. Did I mention we raid from 10 PM to 1:30 AM EST?


We have so many tanks right now that I’m actually being pulled in more and more just to DPS. Generally that doesn’t happen, because whether or not I have 4k AP raid buffed, a rogue or DPS warrior with 2k will almost always beat me on meters. Usually, this works out—when I’m tanking, I can be happily shuffled into the melee group, give them my crit buff and continue doing my job. I’m an optimizer, obviously, but I don’t often do it while DPSing. Regardless, it’s a new avenue for improvement, and I’ve been working to tighten up my rotation, resocket my gear again (since I took a HIT loss on my new necklace and ring) and possibly pick up Nurturing Instincts for the extra 26% heals to me while I’m in cat form.


So let’s take a look at my current spec. I’m giving the general disclaimer here that I’m trying to optimize for raiding and only raiding, and that my spec is currently tailored to allow for specializations in other people’s specs. WTF does that mean? I’ll explain in a sec. As mentioned in an earlier post, I went resto the other evening for Sunwell. The next night, I had to spec back for tanking, and with 50 gold from the guild bank clinking in my metaphorical pockets, I decided to stop being lazy and realign a few Talent Points. The changes are staggeringly minor. 0/47/14 is the cookie cutter feral spec for dr00ds everywhere, but some people stack points in different places.

NEW




Thus far, I’ve had Feral Aggression maxed out, increasing the AP reduction of my Demoralizing Roar by 40%. It also gave me a bonus to Ferocious Bite, but as the Eviscerate of the cat-world, we all know that’s useless when you’re raiding anyway. With the Improved Demo Roar, I was making sure I was keeping debuffs up on mobs, overwriting the un-talented version of our warriors’ Demoralizing Shout. A quick look:


Untalented
Rank 6 Demoralizing Roar = -240 AP
Rank 7 Demoralizing Shout = -300 AP


240 * .40 = 96; 240 + 96 = total of -336 AP


Taking 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout, however, also offers a 40% boost to AP reduction, giving us:


300 * .40 = 120; 300 + 120 = total of -420 AP


My point, here, is that there’s absolutely no reason to have 5/5 in Feral Aggression if you have a warrior who’s always in to keep up Improved Demoralizing Shout. Since our DPS warrior specced 5/5 for Brutallus, talenting my roar (-336 AP) is pointless in comparison (-420 AP).


The other talent I didn’t have maxed out previously was Primal Tenacity for the sole reason that maxing it out would prevent me from picking up points in Natural Shapeshifter (due to having maxed out Feral Aggression). While Natural Shapeshifter definitely spares the mana pool on fights where I’m powershifting excessively, it’s otherwise a vanity talent—I’m not PvPing, and I’m usually not worried about running out of mana, ever. Taking 3/3 in Primal Tenacity, however, offers me a 15% resistance to Stuns and Fears. With that talented and the addition of my Powerful Earthstorm Diamond, I have a passive 20% stun resistance (when I’m tanking). Any time I can resist a stun or a fear means that some pissed off mob isn’t running after a squishie and that I’m generating more TPS rather than letting the DPS come perilously close to aggro pulling range as the mob beats the shit out of me while I’m doing nothing. Additionally, it even helps my DPS during fights where a boss or mob AOE stuns and I’m able to resist and keep on trucking (Kaz’rogal, for example).


So now, I’ve gone from 5/5 Feral Aggression to 0/0 Feral Aggression, and from 1/3 Primal Tenacity to 3/3 Primal Tenacity. I was still able to pick up 3/3 Natural Shapeshifter, although I’m already considering moving two of those points over to Nurturing Instincts instead to make it easier for healers to keep me up when the raid’s taking AOE damage. Most of the rest of the talents are self-explanatory—there’s no reason to pick up Brutal Impact unless you’re PvPing, and the obligatory talents in the Restoration tree allow for Rage/Energy clearcasting, STR bonuses and optimized powershifting capabilities.


Questions and comments are, of course, welcome.

Unbearably HoT is currently having moderate formatting problems. Please bear (HAHA GET IT) with me while I attempt to fix the issue. Sorry for any folks who read the RSS! EDIT: Big thank-you to Phaelia from Resto4life for helping me troubleshoot. And by troubleshoot, I mean totally fixing my mess.

While my new job has foisted some necessary scheduling changes on me, I am still raiding—although admittedly, I pass out almost as soon as we call it. Leveling alts has ground to a halt, farming is a trial and it’s been an effort to log on for anything beyond normal raid time. In the meantime, I’ve been staring at an ever-growing backlog of posts that I haven’t had the proper time to fine tune, and (more exciting) I’m making inexperienced forays into the world of video editing.

To capture video, I use Fraps and then import the massive video clips into Adobe Premier for further editing. I have no idea how to utilize the veritable toolshed of capabilities Premier presents, and I’m still just trying to figure out how to render my workspace in the proper aspect ratio. Regardless, I wanted to include one of my trial videos with a discussion of the Brutallus encounter and thus present the following:

The above was not rendered properly (as you can see that the sides were cut off), and the picture quality didn’t end up being as crisp as it should have. Additionally, there isn’t an intro like I wanted, and the end screen disappears more quickly than it should. My UI is another issue altogether, and I’m attempting to maximize the viewing area for videos while still including all the information I need to use for tanking. The video is taken from my (a feral druid’s) perspective and showcases an ill-fated 1% wipe on Brutallus. The encounter is approximately six minutes long (that’s the time before his enrage) and has been sped up by 280% for ease of viewing. The enrage is clearly visible as that’s when he beats the shit out of me and one-shots Lycentia through Shield Wall.  Premier advice is greatly appreciated (and anticipated). Music is “See the World” by The Kooks, and was chosen purely on a basis of tempo and duration. Discussion of the encounter to follow.