Less QQ, Moar BRAAAAAAAAIIIIIINSSSSS

I'm going to say this very seriously. Lighten up, all of you who complained about zombies and infections and quest killing. It was one weekend out of your lives. It's over now, and I for one am sad. There is nothing to break up the monotony like an army of the living dead coming to eat your flesh and make you one of them.

Now, I understand the frustration of finding your auctioneers, flight masters or quest givers dead. Perhaps I understand it all too well, as on my server, a PvP server, that can happen at any time. And perhaps that makes me more tolerant of being ganged up on, whether it's my own faction or not, and being turned into a zombie.

I do not understand the people who became upset about the zombie event for one simple reason: if it bothered you so much, you could have shut off the game. You could have read a book, you could have played a different game, you could have taken a nap, gone to the movies, began thinking about NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo, you could have written a song, volunteered at a hospital, watched some TV, daydreamed, called your Mom or Dad, gone out with friends, gone camping, done theorycrafting, taken up kickboxing, played with your children...the list is endless. If something you want to do becomes something you do not want to deal with, the answer is not to complain about it, especially when it is temporary.

Try enjoying it, instead of figuring out every way it is an inconvenience to you, next time. And if you still can't, you're wasting more time complaining when you could be doing something else.

WTF NERF?!

I am outraged. This is by far the worst, most hurtful nerf of the year, if not the worst in the game's entire run. I am so upset, I'm beyond words. Except not really, because then I wouldn't be able to post this breaking news about the most over-looked, hardest-hitting, game-breaking-est nerf ever.

I am, of course, talking about the DPS nerf to this year's Blue Stein.

There has been a 60% nerf in the DPS of this year's stein, bringing it from the intense 2 DPS of last year's model to the paltry 0.8 DPS of this year's. You can clearly see the lost benefit of the Blue Stein thanks to WoWhead's new Item Comparison.

Was it not enough that they must take away our gain-by-quest mounts and make us suffer through agonizing RNG for a Kodo or Ram? Must they take our dignity as well? It's already shameful to realize you forgot to replace your tankard with your staff of tentacle groping, must they make our DPS so paltry?

I tell you, I am outraged.

Two Things, and They're Bad

Two things right now I disagree with. Two things right now either aren't good enough or are just bad ideas. The first would be the cosmetic feral glyphs in WotLK, and the second would be the Recruit-A-Friend nonsense.

Yes, nonsense.

Anyway, I think I'll start with the first.

I'll admit, I'm not at the fore-front of WotLK knowledge. I don't really have the time right now to do an intense amount of research on druid changes and glyphs and DK's and all the other things coming out in the expansion. And I actually don't want to know too much about it. It's a roller coaster of changes and ups and downs with the beta, so I'm not too concerned with it until it becomes final.

However, I do read Bear's blog and he very recently talked about a red lynx glyph. I am actually not excited about this. My attitude is, basically, not impressed. If you have to use up a glyph spot for these polar bear or lynx glyphs, then you're not making your druid the best it can be, stat-, dps- and tanking-wise, if you use a cosmetic glyph. It would become the equivalent of leaving one of your sockets in your gear empty right now. I could not, in good conscience as a healer, sacrifice my utility to give myself green or blue leaves when I could be putting out a better HPS.

The other issue I have with this is it is doing almost nothing to deal with the deindividuation of druids. Except now, instead of the same purple bear and the same brown bear, you can be the same purple bear, the same brown bear or the same white bear. You can be the same purple cat, same brown cat or same red cat. It's not fixing it. It's not really doing anything but advertising that you're willing to sacrifice stats for cosmetics. It isn't really "unique"! Every single bear with the polar bear glyph will be the same polar bear.

It's like giving everyone at a Catholic school the choice between a blue uniform or a brown uniform. You have a choice in how you look, but blues are going to look like every other blue, and browns are going to be like every other brown.

Moving onto the other issue.

Recruit-A-Friend is what I like to call a Bad Idea. Not a Bad Idea in theory, but definitely in practice. Mostly because it only benefits the gifter and not the recipient in the long run.

If someone is just starting out in the game, allowing them to triple their experience right off the bat isn't good. If they decide they dislike their chosen character, they then need to pick another, and level three times as slowly. And in tripling experience, much of the old content is completely skippable. This sounds great to a veteran player, but in essence is very bad for a new player. Unless they only plan on ever levelling and playing one character, they're essentially lost.

Basically, any person brought to the game through Recruit-a-Friend will, on the non-tripled alt, be likely lost, confused, frustrated with the levelling speed, and unfamiliar with many zones, dungeons and quests (slowing them even further).

EDIT: I need to rewrite this post, but feel free to keep giving me information about glyphs and Recruit-A-Friend and such. It's obvious I need to do some more homework (damn the recruit-a-friend site being down while I was in first draft!), but I'm still not convinced these aren't "bad" or, at least, "not good enough" sorts of things. :)

Vanity Fair and You: The Untold Story.

Oh hi, fellas! I suppose it's time for a more formal introduction. I'm Surazal of Dark Iron, Bell's home realm! If you decided to click on my name, you probably noticed that I am not only geared up in disappointing blues, but that I have also haven't played since last year! With that being said, I'd like everyone to know that I am quite aware that things may have changed in that time, and that my lack of raiding experience makes me an unreliable source in the first place. That's all right, though. This rant really applies to the trip to level 70, not raids.

So... TheoryCrafting, amirite? I'm not very familiar with the subject, considering I never actually read one, but they still grind my gears. The people who follow them like some kind of holy scripture do, anyway. In my... travels, or as I like to call it, my sitting in my room playing this game for a year, I experienced many jerkfaces who decided that they are better than everyone else because they learned how to play from reading Vanity Fair, or whatever they read that tells them how to play.

Well I'm not so sure it's something to be proud of.

The most rewarding part of this game for me was being good at what I do and the learning process that led me there. To me, it seems like people who open up Seventeen Magazine and read the "HOW2WoW PLZ" guide are just cheating. The most upsetting part about this cheating is that it usually produces characters that really only care about their own damage. "Oh, I don't use Curse of Elements or Shadows because they're a waste." "Oh, I only spec Arcane/Fire because being useful doesn't exactly have the DPS output that I desire." "Oh, I like hitting things with maces because -insert good rogue skill here- is not a good skill." (actually i've never quite understood the mace rogue theory, since it seems like they don't do damage and they're not stealthy. but i felt i should mention them because... because they are lolz, i guess)

Don't do that :[!

Now I'm not saying that every Cosmopolitan entry on WoW is rife with misinformation, but in my experience, everyone who ever said, "Hey I read about this spec..." ended up being absolutely horrible at their job in every way. Therefore I made up these horrible stories in my head that all guides everywhere tell people to spam shadowbolts and arcane blast and completely ignore everything except the numbers on the damage meters. If I happen to ever start playing again, I can modify my opinion, but for now I'm sticking to it!

Anyways. It's just very frustrating to see people be completely selfish in a teamwork-based game after 30 days of playtime. Are teen girl magazines to blame? Possibly. It really depends on whether I want to think that the WoW population is easily brainwashed, or just stupid and selfish.

Circumstances have called for an edit:
I'd like to be quite clear that I am not being mean to all research everywhere, nor am I picking on everyone who has ever done research for their class. I am only criticizing those who like to take all of their knowledge of their class from the internet without putting any thought into it. And yes, I fully understand that mages who don't sheep and warlocks who... are idiots exist regardless of their reading habits.
You'd understand if you had met Rick. ;-;

A Rebuttal for Bear

Now, after reading, rereading, making some French toast, and reading once more Bear’s latest rant (and saving it into a Word document so I could refer to it again), I’ve taken a deep, calming breath, and have this to say:

Bear.

I disagree.

Respectfully.

Upon further deliberation, I decided perhaps I should give reasons behind why I disagree with his attack upon the PvP system. Well, not “attack,” per se, but rather him “calling it out,” as it were. And it's going to crit your face by way of length, so hold on.

The PvP system is not bullshit. I repeat, it is functioning. And is, dare I say it, a good idea.

Perhaps I have a different mindset. I started on a PvP server, and I actually love it. I have to wear PvP gear when I go to highly populated areas such as the Isle, and I do take dirt naps far more often than I help others get to sleep. When I play on my PvE servers, I do notice that whenever the conversation turns towards PvP, so many people view it as a chore rather than just a different way to play, a different and fun facet of the game, that I just say how I like it, give some tips, and then kind of excuse myself from the conversation quietly. However, this does not change the importance behind understanding the PvP system, as well as its lack of male cow fecal matter.

If you look at the disparity between Season 1 gear and the new Brutal’s set (hell, even the Vengeful set), you will see that there is an expansive gulf, just as there is between Heroics and Kara versus Sunwell epics. Already, people in S1 gear had a very difficult time in Arenas against Vengeful and Merciless players. With the advent of Brutal gear, S1 is virtually obsolete. Going into an Arena match with S1 will get you cut up like paper. If they had not added Merciless to the battlegrounds, a few things would happen:

• The gulf between the top end Arena players, the good, the bad, and the new would widen a great deal.
  
• A fresh level 70 would have little to no way to compete in arenas. Not with any prayer of advancement, anyway.
  
• PvE high-end raid gear would, as in pre-BC, begin to trump that gear gained by PvP
  

I absolutely hate the mindset that PvP gear are “welfare epics.” I cannot stand it. Especially not now, when you can turn in tier tokens for PvP gear, when you can purchase PvP gear with badges, when you can entirely skip a tier of raiding thanks to badge gear. If running through BGs is welfare, why isn’t badge gear?

That last item, the skipping of an entire tier of raiding, I know personally about. Without seeing any boss past Lurker in SSC and never setting foot in TK, I received a spot in my current guild, Sunder (which, at the time, was 4/5 Hyjal and 5/9 BT), and am currently their only regularly raiding Restoration Druid. I had been to Gruul’s maybe four times, and downed Magtheridon perhaps twice. But I farmed Kara for four or five months. That will do you a lot of good, in the long run.

For Restoration Druids, the new 100 badge pants are arguably better than the pants which drop off of Shade of Akama in Black Temple. The 60 badge shoulders are the best shoulders until Void Reaver in TK. Druids in Sunwell guilds are still using the 41 badge healing trinket. I know, I’ve seen it. I didn’t agree with her gemming choice, but I definitely took note of her trinket.

41 badges. That’s two weeks of full Kara clears with a badge leftover for kicks, and it functions through Sunwell.

Being in T6 with T6 gear does not automatically equate competency. Just about every single day in guild chat someone laments another raider’s gear choice and enchants, or their wasted talent points. I’ve seen druids better geared than me with straight +healing gems (that’s all; no spirit, no intellect, just straight plus healing) and a load of talents only partially filled.

Now. I do not agree with Amanda Dean. I actually am not too over-fond of her, especially regarding her somewhat snobby attitude in general. I do not believe PvP > PvE or vice-versa. I do disagree with another of your points, though, Bear.

Technically, I run raids with PvPers. My server is PvP. Our MS/Slam warrior had a 2k rating, we had, at one time, an excellent mage with the “Grand Marshall” title, our MT has the “Justicar” and “Duelist” title, and our best Paladin, Sharlet, has three pieces of the Brutal Gladiator set after the first week of Season 4, not to mention (if I recall correctly) the new belt, boots and bracers, only available through the BG honor grind. He also very recently explained to me why different ranks of Starfire were better than max rank (in PvP and PvE situations), he can tell you exactly what rank of Holy Light to use in certain situations, he can give you a proper DPS rotation for your rogue, tell you how to gem and enchant your Feral Tanking set, and give you the location and level requirements for almost every quest in the game. And he can, with a Holy, not Shockadin, but Holy spec, grab you by the scruff of your neck, slam your face into the dirt, rub your nose in the mess that is your skill and make you wish you had no idea that WoW existed, let alone PvP. With his raiding Holy spec and his Prot gear, he tanks Hyjal trash.

PvP does teach you a lot about what other classes are capable of, in a sense, as well. And that’s not helpful to face other players in a PvE setting, per se, but to work with them. This is to a limited extent, since PvP requires different rotations, more reaction/prediction than memorization and often different specs. However, though chain trapping is more difficult in PvP, I cannot see how a hunter so skilled at ice traps that a warrior is stuck powerless while they burn down the one healer at the node and then rip into their CC’d target cannot handle a distracting shot on a mob.

It most certainly does teach mana conservation. If you are out of mana in a BG, you are dead, unless you can find somewhere to hide and drink. You win nodes by your healer outlasting their healer (if people forget about the “kill the healer” rule, anyway). You have to know when to pot, when to run, to move out of the AoE, so on, and so on, and so forth. You know, “don’t stand in the fire”?

Fights like the Priestess fight in Magister’s Terrace and the Illidari Council are made immeasurably easier by people having been exposed to PvP and who can keep their cool in a chaotic, unpredictable situation.

And yes, Battlegrounds do let you “coast” to an extent, to get gear. However, the grind is eternally longer the worse you are at cooperation, just as getting your raid drop/badge gear will take inexorably longer (unless you’re extremely lucky, and in that case you can be terribad and very lucky) if you don’t work together or don’t know your class. But you can actually gain far better gear, in most cases, by farming badges than by farming Honor, if your goal is to be a PvE raider, and you don’t get looked at funny by your raiding guild.

Cooperation is actually paramount in BGs, and you can make the grind short and pleasurable the better you are at it, just as in raiding. In fact, the fastest, most efficient way to gain honor is to download Preform AV, make sure you have working Vent, and join a premade/org. Even trade-chat-formed premades can function together and take BGs by storm. In these you learn to take directives, often from a stranger, work with people you hardly know to take down an unpredictable enemy, and utterly decimate EotS in under eight minutes for an intense amount of honor. And, just like in PvE, you have to learn the strategies each BG requires and adjust it according to what players you have.

And, unlike in a raid, if someone isn’t pulling their weight, you can flag them afk or alert a GM, and they can lose all their PvP gear and their privilege to fight. You tell a GM someone is just wanding in a raid while gloating about their new epic shoulders of pwn and you’ll probably just get laughed at.

The nature of BGs themselves are changing as well. Throw someone into one with PvE gear, and you might as well lock them in a room by themselves with Nightbane. A PvE geared person stands little chance against someone in Vengeful or Brutal. Blue rep-PvP gear or S1? You’re still going to struggle. Without making Merciless available by honor grind, you’re ensuring many people’s times in both BGs and Arena are full of bloody, painful death and a slow, unrewarding grind.

That secret conversation you have regarding the PvP-geared members of your Kara Pug? I’m quite certain that when you stroll into a BG with PvE gear on, you get the same treatment. Because, let’s face it, PvE gear is not for PvP, except in certain cases (and it’s best to learn that there will always be exceptions that go both ways). I’ve had to gem and enchant PvP gear for PvE, and I’ve seen people gem and enchant PvE gear for PvP and do quite well. Bosses in Shattered Halls and Botanica and I’m sure others drop weapons with resilience on them; those are decidedly PvE instances.

A hunter I ran Kara with a lot back in my old guild was full PvP gear, both arena and that which you buy with honor, and he kicked ass on the meters and CC.

And, I cannot stress this enough: If your main hatred for BGs is the few asshats who spew profane and idiotic garbage, learn to use two tools: your profanity filter and “report spam.” If you put on your profanity filter, every word showcasing someone’s lack of vocabulary and ingenuity comes out in neat little symbols like this: !@#$%. And if you report someone for spam, they get ignored without filling up your ignore list. I play with my profanity filter on; it’s both functional and hilarious, especially when your guild finds out and wants to play the “is this censored?” game. Report spam is quick and easy; and if they’re filling up BG chat with caps and franticness and freak-outs, what else is it, really?

Merciless gear through honor not bullshit. It’s only bullshit to people who dislike Battlegrounds because you want something you can’t get without it or don’t want to raid for. It’s like how my feral friend hates raiding. He covets the gear from some of the bosses, but he finds raiding too monotonous and predictable. So, he only PvP’s, and mostly only BG’s, as he can only log in during odd, inconsistent times. He has done Heroics for badges. He’s complained that he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t call it bullshit. Yes, feral druids are in a unique position with their gear requirements, but I know Paladins like gladiator gloves, that rogues like the arena weapons, and hunters like the axes. And, perhaps the greatest practical joke of all: the +15 resilience to chest drops from doing PvE. A two minute trinket is required by my guild for Winterchill and Archimonde (and at only 8k honor, it’s hardly something horribly painful to grind out), but every applicant who wears other PvP gear gets questioned as to why they have it over better PvE gear or badge gear.

And, honestly, if you don’t want to do T5 level content, why do you feel you need the gear? In some cases, it will actually gimp your threat generation as well as making your rage bar slow to fill. I know plenty of tanks, of all classes, who take gear off just so they can tank better.

And, now that I have written this, painted a wall and a deck, reread it, taken a shower, reread Bear’s post and added more to mine, let me say, with confidence:

They’re two different grinds. The gear from each can be used interchangeably, to an extent. You can get gear for either-or through one of the grinds, to an extent. Some of one is needed for the other, to an extent. You can coast through both for good rewards, to an extent. They both teach valuable skills that can be utilized in the other, to an extent. Both require cooperation and teamwork to get done in a reasonable amount of time, to an extent.

Neither one is bullshit.

Lamaa, and a Reality Check

Blizzard has enacted its mass ban, and the blogosphere is all abuzz with the news. What news, specifically? Lamaa has been banned, an upstanding member of AC, with no botting practices to his name. For the full story, please go to TJ's blog or follow the link here.

I am not against the mass-bans. And I understand there is almost unavoidable collateral damage, but that doesn't mean I can't be supportive of how much it positively sucks. I do not know Lamaa personally, but he's the friend of a friend, of many friends. I have read some things by him on TJ's blog, just little things, but they were funny and I enjoyed them. That this has happened is shameful. And Blizz's customer service track record ain't that good.

What I don't get, and what seems to be a popular trend as the blogosphere grows and encompasses more people and more of the WoW community, is people trying to tell writers what they can and cannot do on their own personal blogs.

No one is forcing you to read this. No one is forcing you to "waste" your time on it. No one is forcing you to write comments, especially unhelpful and completely unconstructive or even accusatory comments on those blog posts you find offensive. Now, I'm not talking about people who disagree with posts. Oh, heck no, I love these people. You have no idea how much I enjoy an intelligent discussion with people who disagree with me. No insults, just a presentation of different sides of the argument. It's wonderful. As much as "hey, great post!" comments make me feel all warm inside, they're harder to respond to with anything other than a "thanks, and thanks for stopping by!" So, really, disagree with me all you want.

Understand what a blog is. It is a personal public journal. What people choose to do with their blog is their business. And yes, they put it on a public forum with public access and allow you to place your comments on it. But being a presumptuous asshole and telling a blogger what they are and are not allowed to do on their blog is like walking into someone's house and telling them how to decorate it. Unless they paid for your advice, all you are is a jerk, just like, unless you paid for an interior decorator or solicited an opinion, the person telling you how to set up your house is plain rude.

Let's get something straight really quick: we are not writing for you. We may be on a level writing for the collective you, but losing one reader because they got all huffy about something is just losing a bit of skin. Maybe it stings a bit, maybe it doesn't. But we slap a band-aid on it and we get back on the bike, and either we get a cool scar to tell a story about or it disappears forever into the back of our minds and we decide we don't care.

Oh, and if you have to do it anonymously, you're also spineless. I at least have a modicum of respect for someone who is willing to claim their shit and not hide on the internet, of all places. If you're too scared to use even a 'net handle, I can't believe you even have the nerve to think some of this stuff in public in case a telepath catches you.

Perhaps it's too much to hope this kind of thing will get through to people, because the people who this is directed at the most are rather presumptuous, AKA so full of themselves they can probably taste their lower intestine.

EDIT: I do want everyone to know this is not directed at one or even a few people in particular. It's a culmination of bad days, WoW forums, and rude people. This is directed at the troll community as a whole.

/DND

I have never had to use that little tag before, and I prefer not to. But lately, it seems almost a necessity. When I have logged on recently (if I have the time to), there has been some sort of recent phenomenon plaguing WoW.

People refuse to listen and understand simple communication and directives.

If I say “No, I do not wish to heal normal Blood Furnace because it is getting late and I want to sleep soon,” this does not mean:

• Comment “wtf it’s not even 2 yet”
  
• Beg me several times until I give up and go.
  

You know what the above does? It makes a healer, who does not want to go not want to go even more. And if this said healer goes? You’re going to die. Because I will spend half the instance chatting on Trillian while your under-geared bear butt runs over proximity mines and you blow yourself to smithereens, or your frontloading mage spam pulls aggro and you get one-shot. Because I have suddenly lacked the will to care, and instead harbor a sadistic desire to watch you die.

At that point, I am beyond caring if you think I am a good healer or not. I am beyond caring if you complain or trash me. I am simply there to keep you alive mostly and then let you die for stupid mistakes. I will only rez you because I got a new addon and I want to test it out.

Let me reiterate in very clear, concise terms:

If someone, especially a healer or a tank, says they do not want to go somewhere, do not beg them or badger them. If they give in and go, they are much, much more likely to not cover for your stupid mistakes. They are more likely not to give a !@#$. They are more likely to want you to die and allow it to happen.

On another note, if someone offers to run you through an instance, follow their instructions. Seriously. If they tell you to wait somewhere, wait there. If they tell you to follow, follow. If they tell you not to touch things, do not touch things. This goes doubly if the person running you through is a healer. They may not have the dps to burn things down in a second like a rogue or a hunter would. They are there out of the kindness of their heart so you don’t have to wait in LFG; respect that and be courteous.

Bring the Rain

In order to keep Bear from attacking my face with his Epic Staff of Japanese Pr0n like he threatened, I can no longer wait for screenshots from Button (who seems to have developed a computer virus sadface) to regale you with my latest tale of asshattery, and the sweet, delicious, in-your-face pwnage that followed.

So, doing Heroic Magister's with a feral druid tank, a warlock, a rogue and a PUG mage (I'm healing). The mage doesn't say much throughout it, other than that he's a disenchanter. We figure we'll do what we normally do and roll at the end. While we're doing this, he's disenchanting greens he picks up as he goes, as well as the other things. We can see him doing it.

We down everything (I got the healing trinket Vial of the Sunwell from the third boss /ecstatic) and we're at the end. I wanted the spell damage mace for moonkin set, but the mage rolled need (I assumed at the time accidentally) and won it. No big, accidents happen, and it was offspec anyway. Besides, I could use the shards; I need my staff enchanted for +81 healing.

Now here's the kicker. The little asshole says "bugged cant de" and begins to sit there while we express our disbelief. We saw him disenchant things earlier; he's a horrible liar. So we wait, and he goes afk. We mention his name in guild chat and we are treated to the knowledge that trade has been talking about the little ninja for a few days! No one in our group had any knowledge of it, so we were caught unaware. So we eventually leave the instance, all of us /ignoring the little peon and I introduced him to our blacklist.



For those of you who want to know, currently his name is Fuzy, he is a gnome mage, and he is in the guild Walmart Employees on the Dark Iron (US) server. He is a ninja; do not group with him. What a complete scrub.

Here's where it gets sweet, though.

You see, Dark Iron is a PvP server. Our guildmate and Warrior extraordinaire Button just so happens to know a couple people in Thrust, a high-end Horde guild. He contacts his friends and gets Fuzy and his whole guild (who we attempted to contact but were ignored) to the Kill-on-Sight list.

Not five minutes later, Button gives us this tasty tidbit over Vent: our little ninja friend had just been smeared into pasty gnome goo by several Thrust guildies, and they were now chilling out around his corpse, having a grand old time. If he somehow ever recovers those screenshots, I'll make a fun little tribute to my "friend."

So, to Hexnub and all his guildies, no matter how many times you shove my face into the dirt (or vice-versa; sorry about your little alt Hexnube nevermind!, but you and your cronies were killing Button...), I will always love you and think you're the best thing to happen to Horde since sliced bread and Ratshag.

Ninja My Own Boglords...?

Let me set the scene.

I'm farming away on some Boglords, trying to get myself some Primal Lives for my healing enchant on my staff. A warrior is AoE killing boglords left and right, which is awesome. I toss him a heal and help him bring them down. Surprise, he is not an Herbalist! I am. So, I herb the corpses and begin following him around. We stay ungrouped so he can loot and I can herb.

We get to talking, and it seems he's farming Primal Lives so that his guild can get Nature Resist gear. He normally only PvP's, but he wants to help his friends out. I think that's pretty nice of him, especially since he can't herb, so I sell him the ones I picked up at a discount. I'm going to be really busy this week and can't raid at the moment anyway, so I'm not hurting my guild by not being enchanted yet.

Well, anyway, we're doing this for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, when he pulls another AoE mob group. No big, I help him burn them down. After they're all down, a paladin runs into the center of the corpses and /says to me, "You better not herb my corpses, Bell." Now, I used proper sentence structure and grammar, but you get the gist. I checked; He's not in the warrior's guild, and the warrior said nothing to me about bringing a friend. Since he's been cordial and polite and friendly this entire time, as have I, I assume he would have told me if he'd brought in a friend to herb. So, I ignore him and start herbing.

The paladin sends me a tell, then. Apparantly, if I take "his" bog lord corpses again, I'll be reported. I explain to him that the warrior and I have been working together to do this, so there is nothing to report. I am told to "shut my mouth." I ignore him, and go on my merry way continuing what I have been doing and hear nothing else from the paladin.

I never received any GM notice or warning, so I can only assume the guy was blowing hot air. Still, I can't believe someone had the audacity to assume I wasn't working with the warrior and was just stealing corpses when I had helped him kill the mobs and had been healing and buffing him.

Say hello to the world, asshat.

Spitting Mad and Unapologetic

Blizz has lost its mind. And it has me seriously looking at Bellbell (Paladin, 38), Razira (Priest, 26), and Totemo (Shaman, 2) and wondering if I can get them to 70 before two of three of my guild's main healers suddenly drop in healing potential due to some weird, idiotic, convoluted thinking on Blizz's part.

If you want to know why I'm so angry, head on over to Phaelia's new posts. She can explain it much more coherently than I can or even care to at this point.

GG Blizz.

And for all of you who are thinking that's a "good reason" that Blizz put forth, you can go stick your heads out of a moving van because your brain is doing you no good as it is.

"Druids are low on the heal charts, so we'll decrease the healing coefficient of their main spell!" 

Thanks, Blizzard. My guild's gonna love this. For sure.

I just love it when the people in charge of keeping me alive lose their ability to do so. I wonder if next we'll nerf surgeons so they can no longer clean their scalpels. The scalpel is still there!
It's just not as effective. And potentially dangerous.

Ugh.

I'll let you guys know when I can raid SSC, okay? It'll be after Illidan's fallen and I beat out the other feral and boomkin druids for "lol offspec" items. I suppose this is why I've been building up so many different gear sets all these years, so when Blizz decides to make an asshat move I'm not completely useless to my guild.

At least warlocks got de-nerfed. Kudos guys, maybe us trees should start threatening to devour babies. Seems to get results.

Also, I love my warriors. Head on over to Button Mashing, a new blog by my absolute favorite warrior ever. His first post ever is a doozy.

Rant Alert: Lifebloom Nerf

A full-blown rant was bound to come from this blog eventually

If you don't know exactly what's going on for resto druids on the PTR, I humbly request you head on over to Phaelia's write-up about the Lifebloom nerf. Otherwise, this won't make any sense to you why I am so very, very...disappointed and even a tad angry about what's been happening.

Read it? Good.

This..."fix." Is it even a fix? What are they trying to "fix" with this? What is so broken? Nerfing our heals?! Not only our heals, but the one main heal which comprises upwards of 80% of our healing in end-game? Because of what? Because druids don't sit still long enough for you to hit them with your mace of inflated epeen? And their heals keep ticking while they run away?

Let me explain to you people who don't know.

I am frickin' squishy. If I stand still, I am dead. Five seconds, ten seconds. If I don't get the hell out of dodge, then I am dead and useless. Why else would resto druids be so horribly dead last in 5v5's? We can't mitigate that much damage and we cannot get away.

So, we're being nerfed in 2's and 3's, we're going to be completely wiped off the face of Azeroth in 5's, and, as Hokuto said in the comments on Phaelia's nerf post:

I’d have to pump my 1764 healing to around to 2000 to get my old LB back, source of 80% of my healing made. So I’d have to fly from my guild’s 5/6 3/4 straight to Illidan for that. How easy is that?

Oh, yes, that seems perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?

Some of you may be tempted to say "l2play." Learn to play what exactly? There's a difference between a new game mechanic and a painful, skill-breaking nerf. There is such a reduction in healing as to make resto druids almost unviable. Yes, we can still heal. But as our +healing goes up, the amount Lifebloom takes advantage of goes down. How does this even make sense?

It's probably because of arena. I, personally, love arena, win or lose. I only recently started playing with an arms warr; before I was playing with a prot pally in healing gear, or a feral druid, or an enh shammy. When I play with my arms warr, it's a bit more "serious." He's been patiently training me on what to do and when and how to survive without the costly respeccing out of tree-form pve healing (and no, I don't use tree form in arenas). I don't pretend to know what other healers have to do. I'm not here to make their jobs seem easier. But I know this:

To survive in arenas, I have to know when I can use my different CC's, who I have cycloned recently, who my teammate is hitting, who is healing. I have to be aware that if I cyclone someone right before my warr is going to get off a full-rage execute crit, I can effectively end the match in the other side's favor. I have to figure out if the hunter is BM before I use my nature's grasp, I have to keep both abolish poison and heals up, and I have to know when I can blow my Nature's Swiftness + Healing Touch macro. I have to make sure that while I'm kiting around pillars (something I am not good at yet) my partner is not dying at the same time. I have to know bear form is sometimes necessary but it eats a lot of mana that I don't have the spirit to make up for. I have to hit Shadowmeld (or kitty+prowl for tauren) as soon as I can get out of combat to detarget. Hibernate pets. Faerie Fire rogues. Moonfire and Insect Swarm if I can. Decurse the 'lock curses. Mana burn oshi-bear form. Judgement of Justice keeps me from running away; have to go bear. And in bear I can't heal.

I'm not saying anyone has less to do in arena. I'm not ever going to suggest a good lock will lol-dot-fear. No way. It takes time and patience to get good. I /cry every time before I duel Button, but I do it anyway and each time I live a little bit longer (Button is my GL and a very talented arms warrior). I still need a rogue to duel consistently. But what I'm suggestng is this:

Resto druid is good in 2v2's but it is not lol-hot-run. It requires skill and micro-management. And because some people have mastered this (I do not include myself in their number and I've fought enough resto druids to know it's not that easy for everyone, and that you can be really bad at it) it is now necessary for the QQ on the forums to be embraced? What happened to "less QQ more pewpew"? How about we all work on ways to kill me instead of whining you can't do it right away?

I duelled a rogue last night. I had my pvp gear on, waited for the kidney shot, activated my insignia and nature's grasped him in place, healing myself, keeping abolish poison up, avoiding mobs (this was easy, we were outside Onyxia's lair so my aggro range was small) and running back around to stay in the duel zone, bear bash (I have no feral charge or feral talents of any kind), heal, moonfire, insect swarm. Rinse, repeat. At the end of the match, he told me my tactic was "cheap." As if I was supposed to stand around and let him hit me. What? Why?! That's completely counter-productive to winning. And, you know, survival. At the end he had dealt about 3.5x my health. That's how long it had taken me to kill him. I can bet he would have had as much trouble with a discipline priest or for goodness sakes a resto shaman. He just got thrashed in the face by a holy paladin before we duelled. He wasn't a bad rogue, and he did admit to having trouble in duelling-pvp situations. But the fact that he called me "cheap" simply because I used my class to the best of my knowledge and abilities left a sour taste in my mouth. It was one step away from "QQ nurf dr00ds /whine."

The worst thing is other druids are supporting this! I don't understand it! It hurts them too. Feral druids embittered by their difficulty in arena standings are actually advocating the nerf. I don't understand it. A nerf for restos != a buff for ferals. It's a nerf for you too. Did you forget you were a hybrid? That being able to utilize all your abilities may be able to help you?

I have almost five full sets of gear. PvE healing, PvP healing, Tank, Cat and Boomkin. I'm missing pieces here and there, but I want to be able to fill any role I'm asked to. I don't want a nerf for ferals or boomkins or restos. I like my class and all aspects of this class. Why must we have all this in-fighting?

/deepbreath

I apologize. I had to get that off my chest. Please direct any and all of my misconceptions and fallacies and passion-induced idiocy into the comment box.