Unbearably HoT

A week from now, I’ll be shouldering through my soul-crushing grind to 80—assuming the world doesn’t end, the realms actually function, and my computer fan manages to crank itself into high gear. Like many of you, I preordered a copy of Wrath via GameStop, and I aim to pick to pick it up during a midnight release event. Here’s the deal: I want to get in, get out, and start watching the never-ending load bar of doom featuring Arthas’ road to self destruction and rise to phenomenal cosmic powers. I don’t anticipate a massive clutch of feverish gamers lurking outside the GameStop doors, but it doesn’t hurt to get there early, right?

I decided that if I were going to early, I might as well find some place nearby to hangout and see if any local players or readers wanted to join me. I don’t have buttons, boners, cookies, stickers, tables or t-shirts to hand out—this is strictly a high five operation. So! If you live near the Lansing, Michigan area, Lycentia and I will be stopping by the GameStop at the Eastwood Towne Center to pick up our games at midnight—and for the hour before that, we’ll be having a pint at the Claddagh Irish Pub bar. You know, living up the Emerald Dream.

The Eastwood GameStop is located at:
Eastwood Towne Center
2958 Town Center Blvd.
Lansing, MI, 48912

The Claddagh Irish Pub is located at:
Eastwood Towne Center
2900 Towne center Blvd.
Lansing, MI 48912

The more the merrier, especially when there’s booze and bangers & mash to be had! Drop me a line if you think you’re going to be in the area so that I’ll know who to look for!

According to the blues:

PROTECTOR OF THE PACK
We are removing the group requirements from this talent. The new tooltip will say: “Increases your attack power by X and reduces the damage you take in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by Y.” The values of X and Y themselves are not changing.

Great news, in my opinion. It was a rather pointless talent specification, and I’m glad that Blizzard is holding true to its word in regards to streamlining tanks (if that’s what they’re really so determined to do). I recommend reading through the full post, because it details some dramatic armor Bear armor changes as well. Don’t freak out yet; I don’t think this will be a bad thing at all. Please note that these changes won’t be live when WotLK ships.

Edit: Kalon, from ThinkTank, has also posted about the same Blue thread, specifically regarding the armor changes. You can read it here.

Now that myself and many others are actually able to log into their respective realms, it’s time to go through the arduous process of updating add-ons.

In the past, WoWAce made it easy via their handy updater, but insane usage and server loads have since made their efforts impossible. This leaves us with the ever popular Curse and WoWInterface. But before you start downloading and installing your new toys, a few pro tips to keep in mind:

1. Update manually, at least the first time you clean out your old mods (see #2). Until the newer updaters such as WoWMatrix and the Curse Updater have been thoroughly vetted and verified, I’m going to pass on the lazy updates. Why? 
   • The Curse Updater is a little too intrusive for my tastes, and wants to run as soon as you start Windows (but that option can apparently be shut down now). Curse also requires a login ID that needs to be set up with their site, but feel free to use whatever bullshit info you want. Additionally, there have been multiple reports of Curse overwriting updated newer add-ons with older ones. Not cool.
   • WoWMatrix, on the other hand, totally ganks the latest files from Curse, but doesn’t want to run 24/7, doesn’t require a login, and doesn’t even require an installation. But just to make sure, Lycentia and I will each try to run a different auto-updater for a week and see what happens.
2. Delete everything that isn’t standard in your Add-Ons folder before updating (but leave the Blizzard UI shit). This is important for multiple reasons, number one being that simply copying a new add-on folder into an old one only means you overwrite files with the same names. Older files that may be broken, dated, or unnecessary will still be there. Additionally, if you used the WoWAce updater, getting rid of your old add-on folders basically guarantees that “nothing specific to the way that WoWAce did their mod packaging carries over and potentially causes problems” (Lycentia). 
3. Look before you leap. In all seriousness, if you’re downloading add-ons from Curse, do not click the massive orange DOWNLOAD button. Why? For some reason, it tends to load up old add-ons rather than the newest versions. Scroll down to the “Downloads” subheading, check the dates, and click on the newest version of your mod. You get the idea.

This is the perfect time to clean out your entire add-on folder and start from scratch. While the default Blizzard unit frames still make me grit my teeth, starting from the default UI and building on that can help you accurately assess what you really need—and what’s superfluous (yes, I still had StinkyQueue ). To help you out, here’s a list of the add-ons I’m currently using, and where to find them. Make sure to check your versions! These are current as of the morning of Thursday, October 16th:

• Bartender4: My go-to add-on for all my action bar needs. My favorite feature of the newest version allows you to select the “Keybinds” option and simply hover over any button to customize the binding. Super easy. 
• BigWigs: Boss Mod. I still prefer Deadly Boss Mods and might go back to that.
• Cartographer: Lightweight map mod that allows you to access your world map inside your regular interface and track profession specific nodes. Make sure you pick up the appropriate plug-ins you need for this (i.e. Fishing, Mining, Gas Clouds). As of last night, it was a little buggy.
• CastYeller: Potentially going the way of the buffalo. I used to use this mod to announce when I had a Growl resist, specifically on Brutallus, but now it mostly serves as an annoyance to everyone else. I’ll probably keep it and tailor it to very specific abilities. No one cares how many times my Mage uses Conjure Water.
• EQCompare: Pairs nicely with RatingBuster. This mod allows you to compare items you have equipped to linked items and items in your inventory. 
• Livestock: Definitely superfluous and basically allows you to organize all pets and mounts and summon them at random if you so choose. 
• NeedToKnow: This mod functions similarly to the old HoT Candy, except it monitors any other cooldowns/abilities you tell it to. It’s especially useful for rogues trying to keep track of Hunger for Blood, Rupture, and Slice and Dice, but will also be useful in timing Mangle, Rip, and Savage Roar. 
• Omen: My threat meter of choice now works in conjunction with the built in Blizzard threat monitor, ensuring incredibly accurate TPS reports. 
• oRA2: An unobtrusive raid assist mod that is compatible with and also replaces CTRaid. Allows you to monitor certain raid cooldowns, set MTs, and a ton of other things that I rarely do.
• Outfitter: The quintessential Druid add-on. I have so many different sets of gear that if I didn’t have this, I’d probably be fucked. The newest version is slicker than ever, but remember when you load it to go to the new “Options” menu and turn off the “Outfit Bar.” Otherwise, you have a parade of giant outfit icons marching across your UI. 
• PallyPower: As of last night, PallyPower wasn’t working, but nearly everyone who has a Paladin knows how easy this makes it to coordinate buffs with the rest of the raid. This may not be necessary anymore, although it does provide handy “time remaining on buffs” information. We Paladins don’t have all the Blessings we used to, and in a smaller environment (specifically 10 mans), I don’t imagine there will be a lot of overlap. 
• PerfectRaid: It’s a very lightweight set of unit frames that you can customize to your liking and place in a generally inconspicuous portion of your screen. When I’m tanking or DPSing, I have all the bars lined up neatly on the left side of my screen and have them set to display any sort of debuff I can dispel (think: horizontal bar graph).
• Quartz: Essentially, Quartz is a lightweight casting bar add-on that allows considerable customization. You can display target buffs, focus bars, see your casting time for spells, crafting, and gathering, and perhaps most importantly, displays your latency in such a fashion as to let you know exactly when you can start casting your next spell for maximum DPS—even when your first cast isn’t over.
• RatingBuster: Converts combat ratings into easy-to-read percentages and allows comparison between two pieces of gear (read: what does this piece have that the other doesn’t?). This is super handy for a quick gear assessment, but it’s important to remember that you the player are responsible for knowing what combat ratings are most important to your class. 
• SCT: Scrolling Combat Text. This goes with SCTD (the damage portion), and allows for incredible customization of all scrolling combat text. While the regular Blizzard SCT does a pretty decent job of displaying what you need, SCT and SCTD go above and beyond the call of duty. 
• SCTD: See above.
• simpleMinimap: A vanity add-on, but one that really allows you to clean up the look of your UI. This allows you to change what’s displayed on your minimap, how it’s displayed, and where you’d like to position it. 
• X-Perl: Unit and Raid frames. Highly customizable and easy to use, and easily my favorite for when I’m doing any sort of healing. Yes, I prefer this over both Grid and Pitbull.
• Violation: Violate me! Modular and lightweight damage meters. Displays a wealth of information quickly. 

As soon as I’m finished rearranging my UI (which tends to differ ever so slightly on each of my characters) I’ll post screenshots. Questions or comments? Go for it. I’m always looking to see what I can improve or replace. 

Penwiper, from Twisting Nether, recently sent me this e-mail:

Dear Runy,

I’d like to start out by saying I really enjoy reading your blog and the great articles that I can get here from time to time. I found out about your website from Phae’s site and the recent blogcast.

I wanted to get your opinion on the current state of Feral tanking and its uniqueness: a fairly coherent and clear post was written on the Beta forums (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/2/9956326946-snarfsnarf-speaks-help-save-feral-tanking.html) and the author made a list of points that the feral druid is not unique anymore and furthermore, brings less to the table than a warrior.

Being more of a pessimist and also having seen the ongoing continuous lessening of our talents and abilities during the last couple of weeks, I wholeheartedly agree with this studied criticism of Blizzard’s seeming determination to bring feral tank players to their metaphorical knees.

Do you think that there will be a further development of our abilities, which Ghostcrawler had mentioned that have not yet fully been looked at or should we grit our teeth and start looking at primarily the restoration or balance trees?

Sincerely,

Penwiper

Firstly, thanks for the compliment and I’m wholeheartedly glad that you enjoy reading my site (and occasionally get something out of it). Secondly, I apologize for how long it’s taken me to get back to you, but I just realized that my site’s e-mail account wasn’t properly forwarding (and thus I’m now backlogged in spam and various other commentary). 

Obviously, the tank homogenization controversy is something I’ve followed very closely and have detailed in the past. I find Snarfsnarf’s miniature dissertation a little grating and difficult to read, but it is essentially correct—while simultaneously disregarding the fact that playing a Protection Warrior in BC was a chore, and that Protection Paladins have been scrambling for appropriate gear and dying for main tankadin viability. 

I believe that Blizzard has made a series of misassumptions:

1. That Druids wanted to competitively DPS or MT.
2. That Druids were not capable of MTing nearly all content. 
3. That by making tanks the same they would encourage raid groups to take them based on ability rather than class.

Players pick their class (and race, in many cases) for specific reasons: appearance, racials, talents, spells, potential raidspot—whatever. I, for example, chose a Druid partially because I thought it was cool to change into things, but also because I knew that it meant I could perform a variety of roles. Ghostcrawler’s “master of none” statement is wildly incorrect—we are the masters of versatility, able to occupy multiple roles in one raid group. I absolutely loved the fact that I could off tank, main tank, and offer reasonable melee DPS when necessary. If I had wanted to be The Best at melee DPS, I would have rolled a Rogue or a DPS Warrior (and indeed, I have). 

Blizzard also seems to think that Druids were incapable of tanking certain content based on class restrictions. Is this true? Sort of. Certain encounters do tend to rely on abilities that Paladins and Warriors have (i.e. Shield Block, Shield Bash, some sort of Fear Break, etc.), but using a Druid to tank them doesn’t make them impossible—just more challenging. I’m reasonably certain that Druids have MT’d every boss in the game, including Illidan (by utilizing a Warrior Intervene rotation). Blizzard wants to eliminate those “challenges” in WotLK, and seeks to level the metaphorical playing field. This isn’t bad, just disappointing.

Finally, I still think that class will make raid groups pick up one tank over another—and perhaps not for the best reasons. With the new “dual spec” functionality, wouldn’t it be great to take a tank with you who could turn around and double as either: a healer, melee DPS, caster DPS? Paladins are the only other tanks who have a similar hybrid functionality that will be available in a few keystrokes. In my mind, this still relegates Paladins and Druids (and Death Knights) to OT positions. 

So yes, by improving Warriors in such a way that Protection is an incredibly desirable and potentiallymore fun talent spec (without a caster/healer offspec), I do believe that good Warriors will still be in incredibly high demand. That being said, remember that the recent Druid nerfs came as a result of Level 80 Druids being ridiculously kickass tanks—so much so that no one else could compare. Sounds pretty good to me. The changes, thus, have just been to normalize our abilities and put us more in line with the rest of the tanks—although whether this means we’re now below the line remains to be seen.

I cannot, however, believe that Blizzard would refuse to make changes if a distinct gap exists between Druids and the rest of the tanks at level 80 once Wrath goes live. They have made a strident, documented commitment to equalizing capabilities, and going back on that now doesn’t seem a likely path. Additionally, while I am frustrated with the course that Feral Druids are being pushed along, it’s important to remember that Blizzard’s developers are not looking to bring “us to our metaphorical knees.” 

As a Feral Druid blogger, I am naturally biased to my particular class and spec—but I try to keep some measure of perspective. We are losing our traditional niche and sharing some token abilities that previously colored our advantage, but we need to take a serious look at what we’re gaining. We need to rise to the occasion and make sure that our tanking skill outclasses everyone else. We need to stop bemoaning our losses and pick up that Mantle of Versatility, acknowledging that our new “niche” may include dependable tanking and switching specs at the drop of a hat. Maybe Warriors really will be the cat’s pajamas in terms of tanking—but can they take off their shield, turn around, DPS, heal, and do all of those things well? 

I sincerely doubt it. 

Make some Bank space and prepare to whore gear.