So burnt!

Kurn / / facepalm, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Thank God we have tomorrow off, thank God, thank God, thank God.

On the heels of a huge playoff game loss by the Montreal Canadiens, I had a raid tonight. I had a splitting headache.

In 3h37m (37m more than usual) we did:

– heroic Saurfang without the ever-elusive third holy paladin

– heroic BP Council and BQL

– heroic Dreamwalker

– heroic Rotface and Festergut

– regular Putricide

– regular Sindragosa

– regular Lich King

I am so freaking tired, my head is still pounding and I just wanna go to sleep. So I will. But good LORD, what a long night that was. It felt like we’d raided for something like 8 hours, I kid you not.

Burnt, burnt, burnt.

Heroic: Storming the Citadel

Kurn / / healing, icecrown citadel, raiding, ramblings

Wow, Lady Deathwhisper sucks. Wiped on her for five and a half hours this week, but she’s down and that gave most of us in the raid the Heroic: Storming the Citadel achievement.

Went up, did Airship on heroic. Easymode.

And then we faced Deathbringer Saurfang. Without a third holy paladin.

Never, ever, ever underestimate how difficult this encounter is without a third holy paladin for the extra two marks you’re bound to get.

Pop quiz, hotshots! I would love to know how you would have allocated the resources for a kill. Assume that one holy paladin can handle two Marks of the Fallen Champion and that any other healer can handle just one.

Here’s what the comp looked like:

2x Holy Paladin, 2x Priests (both can be holy or disc), 1x Resto Shaman, 1x Resto Druid

Take that composition, assume six Marks of the Fallen Champion and come up with a viable healing strategy without knowing anything else about the abilities of the healers involved.

I’ll post how I (almost!) did it later on. We probably would have won, had it not been for a hunter’s disconnection (and the RL’s subsequent “accidental” turning off of the 10% buff!).

It’s completely different to 3 holy paladins in the raid, though. Like, holy crap, man, SO much harder.

So there's this priest, see…

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel, priests, raiding, ramblings

There’s a priest applying to my guild at the moment. He’s currently part-time, due to school stuff, but he seems to be knowledgeable and enthusiastic and stuff.

Yes. There is an upcoming “but”.

But… he’s weird. Okay, that doesn’t help describe the situation. He’s full of ideas, he’s really enthusiastic, he’s really gung-ho, he loves to talk about healing. I really should like him a lot.

I don’t. In fact, I’m sort of having to just hold my tongue and not shoot him down at every opportunity.

The issues began about 10 days or so ago when we pulled him in for heroic Festergut attempts. He had been saying, in healer chat, before he got swapped in, that the key is to watch the goo from Putricide’s balcony or whatever. Dude comes in, gets smacked by Goo like, 12 times and also misses getting all his Innoculated stacks.

ALSO, when he came in, he automatically assumed he was going disc, so he’d done his spec change from holy already and we tried the first attempt with two discs, instead of the 2 holies and 1 disc I wanted. Then, I was like “okay, that’s not working” in healer chat, got distracted by a raid leader chat conversation and come back to healer chat to discover that he told the disc priest already in the raid that he could go holy.

I was like, wtf, dude. Let me handle requests. We had actually brought him in to be holy. So I had them both switch back.

I don’t think he’s trying to “take over” or anything, and he seems perfectly pleasant. I think that my concerns stem from the fact that he seems to overthink EVERYTHING. I thought I was bad, but no, no, this guy overthinks absolutely everything in the entire game.

What prompted this post was my irritation regarding his thoughts on our heroic Lady Deathwhisper encounter.

We’ve wiped to her for five hours this week. No joke. The big issue is people getting smacked in the face by Vengeful Shades, meaning they trigger Vengeful Blast which does a huge 20y AOE thing, basically killing people.

The raid leader and the MT commented about this on the forums and the raid leader broke down how many people got hits/misses/absorbed hits from the Shades. As it turns out, even a miss or an absorbed hit will trigged Vengeful Blast.

One healer took 5 total hits over 5 hours of wipes. I took 23. That shammy, who took 3 on Wednesday and 2 on Thursday, and I are the only healers who took LESS on the second night than we did on the first night. (My breakdown was 15-8.) So I wrote to all the other healers, asking them to please be aware, blah, blah, blah.

Priest app writes back with this post that goes on to say that he’s got a new holy spec just for this fight, that’s got Soul Warding and Body & Soul and I’m thinking, what are you DOING, man? I want him to be holy. I don’t want him to bubble spam people. Hell, we had two discs in the raid anyways on Thursday to help shield people to keep them alive through our Vengeful Shade failure. And now this app, who had 8 hits of his OWN, is saying “hey, let me watch for that stuff, I’ll shield them and they’ll get the speed boost” when he can’t even look out for Shades that are hitting him?

How to crush his suggestion without crushing his ego/enthusiasm? Hm.

I think part of what annoys me is he just goes out there and Does Stuff instead of talking it over with his healing lead, who would be me, in this case. No “do you think it would be beneficial”, no “hey, I was thinking”… it’s just “I’ve also devised a specific holy spec meant purely for just this fight.”

I don’t mind thinking outside the box, I really don’t. But the consistent thinking outside the box without even considering what’s INSIDE the box kind of makes me want to throttle the guy.

How does he not even CONSIDER the issue of Weakened Soul? Two discs AND him bubbling the raid? Not gonna work, man. Sigh.

Underwhelming.

Kurn / / cataclysm, facepalm, paladins, ramblings

Stupid paladins. Why did I roll a paladin? Why did rolling a paladin mean that I get lame skills and lamer talents? SIGH.

The Paladin Preview is out. Here’s the MMO-Champion direct link.

Let us examine it, bit by bit, shall we? WE SHALL! I haven’t read anyone else’s thoughts on things, this is just my initial impression. Can’t wait to see what others have to say.

New Spells:

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

What the hell are they doing? Giving me a freaking damage spell, complete with HOLY TALENTS that increase damage and crit chance? Sounds great for prot. Does not sound great for Holy. Unless you’re PVPing. In which case, hey. Nice. Grats to those of you who give a damn about PVP. But what about the PVE holy paladins? “Ooh, I get to have another damaging spell when I want to quest or farm or something!!!!” …really?

So level 81 – nothing of interest for me happens. Good to know. NEXT.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Uh. Please, please correct me if I’m wrong, but does this suck or what? How much does this heal for? Lasts six seconds — does it pulse every second? Every two seconds? Every three seconds? With a 15-second cooldown (like the vanilla/BC Holy Shock) will it be used regularly and frequently or will it be relegated to OH CRAP AOE! moments?

I do like that it’s an AOE thing. I do not like that it’s based on our position. I do not like that it’s likened to healing stream totem. My character is not a totem, thank you very much.

It really seems to me like they’ve taken a common suggestion over the years (make Consecration into something that damages enemies/heals friendly units) and just made it a new ability that doesn’t have the issue of causing damage to enemy units. And added a longer cooldown. But really, isn’t this just some healing version of Consecration? Think about it — we’re at the middle of it. It’s something we pop and we can get back to doing our regularly-scheduled healing. It’s short-range, so people need to be near us. Yep, I think that’s about the same as Consecration. Obviously, we’ll see how this works out ($10 says they patch it out in beta!) but I’m not thrilled. It’s weird that I’m not thrilled, because I really would have liked a decent AOE heal. If this ends up being decent, I will happily eat my words.

I’d also like to object to the name. If Blizzard doesn’t think that HAND of Reckoning doesn’t already confuse people when you have spells like Hand of Protection, Hand of Salvation and Hand of Freedom, then I guess I can understand why this thing is called Healing Hands. Why not something like Waves of Light? Or Light Flow? Or Wind of Light? Or, hey, how about Stream of Light? I actually like that.

Anyways. NEXT.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

So, hang on a second. We’re going to get a base ability that, depending on our spec, does different things? I actually might be able to get on board with that. Except that I think the holy one is lame. Seriously, we already have this in the game. It’s called Ancestral Awakening and it’s a resto shaman talent. And again, it’s single-target: “heals the most wounded ally in the area”. And what’s the area? Is it something I can target like Blizzard or Volley? Or is it something that just appears and heals anyone within 40y or so?

Blah to new skills.

Changes to stuff:

– Crusader Strike at Level 1. We already have an instant attack. It’s called Judgement. But okay. Another button to push. Hooray.

– Cleanse isn’t actually changing, so I guess I’m glad about that, unlike shammies, who must be pissed to lose things like Cleansing Totem.

– BOM/BOW… Well. They’ve streamlined it. I think that’s a positive. But will either be improved? Will both be improved? Will there be an imp BOM talent? An imp BOW talent? Will these affect which BOM is on someone? Also, possibly more importantly, are we going to be stuck with the fist icon? I like my icon for Blessing of Wisdom. :P

– Holy Shock available to all paladins. Wow. I am… not impressed. Holy Shock has been THE holy ability for years. And now it’s just available for everyone? So rets are going to be able to toss a Holy Shock in arenas while on the run? Prots will be able to cast it on themselves or others? That’s MY SPELL, Blizzard. MINE. What the hell are you doing, giving it away all willy-nilly?

– Possible duration changes on Divine Shield. When my brother asked about paladin changes the other day, he was like “well, what kind of things would they change?” and I said “I don’t know, but they got rid of Tree of Life, so anything’s possible.” And his reply was “Are they going to change bubble?!” and he was all concerned. “They could do anything,” I told him, “maybe even get rid of it.” He was properly horrified at that thought. And properly horrified about this potential change as well.

What horrifies ME more than anything is this: “Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.” I’m sorry, either I’m going to have 80,000 health or I’m going to heal for 3k per big cast. 12 seconds won’t be enough time spent casting to heal myself???

– Ret rotation. Well, whatever.

– Sacred Shield/improving the Holy Paladin toolbox. Okay, I can handle a 30 minute buff on my main healing target. That’s fine. I’m not sure I LIKE the change, but I can certainly live with it. I feel like I spend raids juggling ability cooldowns as it is. Removing one from the rotation is fine. But I don’t trust them to adequately improve our toolbox. The last time they did, we got Beacon of Light. Which is hax on some fights and stupidly useless on others.

– New, bigger, healing spell. Okay, here we go. FoL, HL and then unknown bigger spell. I’m fine with that. Interesting that our current “bomb” spell is the middle one, though. Also, if this is going to be the same as the other classes, they’re changing FoL from being fast and efficient to being fast, but inefficient. Not sure I like that too much.

– Beacon of Light change. “Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.” Screw you, Blizzard. You give us Beacon of Light and it sucks. Then you change it to include overhealing and it’s still halfway useless sometimes, but other times, it is the reason for getting the encounter done (hi, heroic Deathbringer Saurfang, how are you doing?). And now you’re going to change it to… well, as I understand it, only work with Flash of Light? SERIOUSLY? Take the ability away. Just get rid of it. I want a 51-point holy talent that is worth a damn and a talent that is an ability that mirrors only the SMALLEST of our heals? That’s not a talent worth a damn.

– Spirit. Blah, blah, I knew this, but it still sucks. Stupid spirit.

– Prot rotations. Sounds neat. The prot pally tanking method is way too good for both single-target threat and AOE threat.

– Holy Shield, no more charges. So what, this will last 8 seconds with no charges? That sounds boring and predictable. Bind Holy Shield to all your abilities and it’ll be cast when it’s off cooldown.

Mastery thoughts:

– Holy. Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more. Oh, gee whiz, CAN I have more overhealing? Please?! :P I understand that they’re changing things so that we can go back to healing reactively instead of mindlessly and this will change some of the overhealing issues (as well as mana becoming an issue again) but I don’t know that we really need super crit on our heals. I imagine we’re still going to overheal a ton.

– Prot. Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks. Sounds reasonable, although odd. Are they trying to make tanks more niche-specific again? You have the prot pallies who are The Blocking Tanks versus the bears who can’t block or parry at all. Sounds to me like, given the choice to AOE tank things, a prot pally now has even more reason to tank, whereas a bear or DK don’t.

– Ret. Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased. Uh. Okay?

On the one hand, some nerfage. On the other hand, some lame skills. On a third hand, a couple of perhaps interesting changes.

Lots of things will change, of this I’m certain. I’m being overly critical and cranky, I know. We all need to wait to see what beta brings with it. But those are my initial impressions.

Kurn's Q&A #14

Kurn / / general, icecrown citadel, paladins, q&a, raiding, ramblings

Gotta love Tuesdays. I spent some time doing 3v3 arenas tonight and we got our little team up to 1400. Which is where we’re stopping as we go nuts trying to get honor. This means I’m going to have to actually battleground. :(

“deathbringer saurfang” +heroic heal assignments

On our 25-man Deathbringer Saurfang heroic kill, here’s what we had:

3x Holy Paladin
1x Disc Priest
1x Holy Priest
1x Resto Druid
1x Ret Pally (judging light)
1x Shadow Priest (vampiric embrace)

Paladins were on the tanks and then given the following assignments:

Mark of the Fallen Champion 1: Holy Pally 1’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 2: Holy Pally 2’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 3: Holy Pally 3’s Beacon
Mark of the Fallen Champion 4: Holy Pally 1 (direct heals)
Mark of the Fallen Champion 5: Holy Pally 2 (direct heals)
Mark of the Fallen Champion 6: Holy Pally 3 (direct heals)

Naturally, the tank would require more healing as we shifted the pallies from the tanks to their marks. The disc priest was key for this and our normally Rejuvenation-happy resto druid was happily using Regrowth and Nourish on tanks while maintaining hots on the raid along with the holy priest’s renews and some shields from the disc.

One-shotted.

It should be noted that we also cast Hand of Protection on the first three casters to get Boiling Blood to delay the first mark’s cast — and if it was on us, we bubbled ourselves.

best 3.3pally holy shield drops from heroics

Sadly, there is no good healing shield from heroics. The best healing shield you can get outside of raid content is from REGULAR Pit of Saron, off Tyrannus. It’s called the Protector of Frigid Souls and is ilvl 219. That puts it on par with the Pulsing Spellshield from 10-man XT-002 Deconstructor in Ulduar, except I rate the PS higher, due to the haste.

The next step up is the Voice of Reason from Naxx 25, off Kel’Thuzad. For anything else, you’re looking at Trial of the Crusader and ICC. Or, if you have 1800+ team and personal ratings, you can get an arena shield.

More shield choices here at WoWHead.

blessing of protection work on magic buffett

Nope. That’s physical damage only. Magic Buffet is a magical effect that increases magical damage taken. Also not removable with Divine Shield.

curse of tongues putricide

Good question! I’m really not sure. Anyone have an idea?

getting flasks to proc on creation

There’s no rhyme or reason for it. It happens sometimes. It doesn’t happen most of the time. You need to be an Elixir Master alchemist for it to even have a chance, though.

hand of salvation marrowgar bone spike

Hm. Not really going to have much of an effect. Hand of Sacrifice, on the other hand (ha, ha, see what I did there?) would likely transfer 30% of that person’s incoming damage to you. ;)

haste cap holy paladin 3.3.3 patch

676 for Flash of Light paladins with Swift Retribution/Imp Moonkin auras and Wrath of Air totem. And the sky’s the limit for Holy Light bombers!

vile gas on rot

It sucks, doesn’t it? Same general rule as on Fester, 8 people out at range to prevent Vile Gas from being dropped on melee.

what buffs should i have up on my holy pally / what buffs does a druid give a paladin

A holy paladin is at their maximum healing potential with the following buffs (and their greater/raid-wide versions):

Blessing of Kings
Improved Blessing of Wisdom/Improved Mana Spring Totem
Arcane Intellect
Mark of the Wild
Moonkin Aura/Elemental Oath (5% spell crit)
Improved Moonkin Aura/Swift Retribution (3% spell/melee haste)
Wrath of Air Totem (5% spell haste)
Demonic Pact/Totem of Wrath/Flametongue Totem (additional spellpower)
Improved Devotion Aura/Tree of Life (increased healing done)

So druids, depending on which spec, can help out pallies a lot — Mark of the Wild from any of them, plus Moonkin/Imp Moonkin Aura or Tree of Life. Good stuff.

If you want to talk consumables:

Holy Light paladin: Flask of Distilled Wisdom (65 intellect) or Guru’s Elixir (20 to all stats) AND Elixir of Mighty Thoughts (45 intellect) & Imperial Manta Steak or Very Burnt Worg (40 haste).

Flash of Light paladin with proper raid buffs and 676 haste: Flask of the Frost Wyrm & any food that gives 46 spellpower.

when to call for cleanse on rotface

We generally cleanse (on heroic mode) at about 3 seconds. The person gets the infection. They get a disc shield. They run towards the OT. As they are running, they get cleansed. We do NOT tend to cleanse on normal.

Stupid Pally Tricks

Kurn / / icecrown citadel, paladins, raiding, ramblings

No, this isn’t a post filled with macros to bubble/hearth. :P

I had an interesting night. We only had the Lich King up in ICC, so we could spend all three hours wiping on him, if need be. This is the story of Attempt Number Six.

[00:29:07.149] Awesome Resto Druid Regrowth  MT +0 (O: 1926)
[00:29:07.305] Resto Shammy Earthliving MT +0 (O: 1223)
[00:29:07.492] The Lich King hits MT 67046 (O: 3669)

Wha? Yes, the tank was one-shotted for 70k damage. He had been at full health. BAM, dead. WTF?

[00:29:08.569] Disc Priest Flash Heal  OT +0 (O: 7110)
[00:29:08.991] Other Holy Pally Holy Light OT +0 (O: 16059)
[00:29:09.458] Awesome Resto Druid Nourish OT +0 (O: 8147)
[00:29:09.458] The Lich King hits OT 66012 (O: 1957)

OT grabs him. BAM, dead.

WTF?

[00:29:10.830] Kitty DPS Druid hits The Lich King 1192
[00:29:11.136] The Lich King hits Kitty DPS Druid 36489 (O: 124121)
[00:29:11.706] Kitty DPS Druid dies

Kitty DPS Druid grabs him, BAM, super dead!

What had happened? Someone inside Frostmourne (I’ve never been) either didn’t heal the friendly NPC and cleanse or interrupt the bad NPC or just didn’t manage to kill the bad NPC. Looking over it, it SEEMS that this was the regular elemental shaman or the mage app. Not sure which.

So the Lich King is merrily one-shotting raid members.

[00:29:46.335] The Lich King hits Enhancement Shammy App 32356  (O: 26396, A: 2955)

He’s at 13%.

I do what any paladin would do.

[00:29:48.249] Madrana gains Divine Shield  from Madrana

I bubbled.

But instead of hearthing, I cast Divine Sacrifice.

[00:29:49.895] Madrana gains Divine Sacrifice from Madrana
[00:29:49.895] Madrana gains Divine Guardian from Madrana

Still, people are being one-shotted.

[00:29:50.583] Veteran Warlock Soul Fire  The Lich King 8941  (R: 879)
[00:29:50.583] Rogue App hits The Lich King 656
[00:29:50.700] The Lich King hits Veteran Warlock 21151 (O: 32799, A: 13487)

Seeya, Veteran Warlock.

Then a rogue grabs aggro.

[00:29:52.317] The Lich King hits Rogue 1 Dodge

And is evasion-tanking.

Then I get a whisper from the ret pally app.

“bubble taunt”

I was already bubbled from casting Divine Shield/Divine Sacrifice. Couldn’t hurt, right? But would he come to attack me if I was bubbled? One way to find out.

[00:29:53.732] Madrana casts Hand of Reckoning on The Lich King
[00:29:53.995] Madrana Hand of Reckoning The Lich King 492
[00:29:53.995] The Lich King afflicted by Hand of Reckoning from Madrana

O. M. F. G. I just taunted the freaking LICH KING. I KNEW there was a reason I kept Hand of Reckoning on my holy bars!!! Hot damn!

[00:29:55.877] The Lich King’s Hand of Reckoning fades
[00:29:55.883] Awesome Hunter’s Divine Guardian fades

Crap. Divine Guardian is wearing off. If anyone steals aggro, they’re gonna die.

[00:29:55.883] Madrana casts Hammer of Wrath on The Lich King
[00:29:56.224] Madrana Hammer of Wrath The Lich King 1098
[00:29:58.086] Madrana casts Holy Shock  on The Lich King

There’s a lot of other stuff going on here, people still healing, still attacking, for another 5 seconds after I taunted him. He was still coming after me. And then…

[00:29:58.308] The Lich King begins to cast Fury of Frostmourne

I won’t ruin the surprise for anyone, but, at 10%, he casts Fury of Frostmourne and that’s a win.

[00:29:58.317] Madrana Holy Shock The Lich King *2427* (R: 180)
[00:30:00.201] Madrana casts Judgement of Wisdom on The Lich King
[00:30:00.207] Madrana’s Divine Shield fades
[00:30:00.737] The Lich King afflicted by Judgement of Wisdom from Madrana
[00:30:00.737] Madrana Judgement The Lich King 1429 (R: 159)
[00:30:01.138] Madrana afflicted by Fury of Frostmourne from The Lich King

Yep. I totally bought the raid the few seconds they needed to bring him down to 10%. Maybe we could have done it without my taunt, without the ret pally’s suggestion, but by golly, we did it and I have taunted the Lich King, something very few people who aren’t tanks will live to do. ;)

No loot for me, but that’s cool. LK down again, on normal. 8 hard modes down. Drama aside, it was a good week.

Oof.

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, icecrown citadel

Heroic Sindragosa is ugly.

How ugly?

Check this out.

[00:08:11.512] Other Holy Pally Beacon of Light MT +0 (O: 21191)
[00:08:11.526] Sindragosa Frost Breath MT 48509 (A: 510)
[00:08:11.781] Madrana Flash of Light MT +998
[00:08:12.041] Sindragosa hits MT 19535 (O: 11934)
[00:08:12.680] MT dies

Two hits in .529 seconds killed my main tank. who has somewhere around 63k health when raid buffed.

Ow.

All kinds of other guild crap going on. I move ever closer to gquitting. It would be more of a ragequit, though. And I like to think I’m above that. I’ll get into it or whatever later.

Priest is 59 and a half, healing through Hellfire Ramparts for the second time. Penance is almost within my grasp!

Sad.

Kurn / / facepalm, healing, priests, pvp

I find it extremely sad that a level 56 discipline priest can consistently top healing in Alterac Valley.

Like, seriously sad. I dinged 57 in the middle of the Drek fight as we destroyed Tower Point, so I was 56 for the vast majority of that BG.

Why do people NOT heal in battlegrounds? Every BG I ever find myself doing (and sadly, it’s much more frequent than “never”) I end up near the top of the list, if not at the top. At stupid levels, too. On alts. Not even just on Madrana, but on my PRIEST?

Hell, this is me at 54 topping Alliance healing done.

What is WRONG with people?

Of course, I’ve known for a long, long time that people don’t heal in BGs. But the absurdity of it all came crashing down on me this weekend while levelling through some AVs. I just don’t get it.

Thoughts about Tree of Life.

Kurn / / cataclysm, druids, general, ramblings

Disclaimer: Though I have a level 80 druid who is specced as both bear and tree, this is my most recent level 80. I have done exceedingly little raid content with the tree. I do heal a lot of heroics with it and I do tank a lot of heroics on the druid, but this is all in the last few months. Having said that, I remember when Tree of Life was introduced and I remember druids in caster form healing in their Cenarion gear (T1) in MC. (My brother’s shoulders always looked like they could use a good trimming.)

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way… Honestly, people, make up your minds. Druids hated tree form when it first came out. My brother reluctantly specced into it at level 60 (he was one of our guild’s best healers) and we promptly called him a Tree of Lawl.

He hated it. Not only could he not see his actual character any longer, nor could he see his armor, he had this stupid slow mechanic attached to being in tree form. But the Tree of Life buff was just THAT GOOD back then. Plus there were things like reduced healing cost on your HoTs when you were in tree form. Something like that. Right?

My good RL friend the resto druid (with whom I am currently guilded) has told me, on several occasions, that she HATES Tree form. Loathes it. In fact, now that all ToL does is add the 6% healing buff, she will rarely be in tree form if we run heroics. Hell, when she was decked out in Sunwell gear, she never switched to tree form for heroics in BC, even though the mana cost was so much greater in caster form. I haven’t actually asked her opinion of the potential upcoming change, but I can only presume she will be thrilled.

For me, I’m not a huge fan of it. ToL is fine as it is, though — now that druids can decurse in tree form and don’t have that stupid slow on them. Did you know that once upon a time in Apotheosis, a resto druid was locked out of Netherspite’s room because he hadn’t managed to run all the way into the room yet before someone aggroed? Yeah. /facepalm.

It’s not that I mind being in a form and I do think that forms are a key part of the druid class. It’s that tree form visually sucks. Until recently, I think all the forms sucked. Every single freaking druid looked identical in all their forms until they updated the bear and cat models. You ever notice that, at a quick glance, a resto druid in tree is almost identical to a balance druid’s treants? The treants are smaller and there are more of them, of course, but still!

If I took the time and energy to pick a face/skin colour/etc for my druid, I should not look like another spec’s cooldown.

Seriously:

Treant

Tree of Life

Okay, my bad. The treants have green leaves.

That is still not cool with me.

When I was levelling Kurn, my brother was levelling his druid. It was the COOLEST THING EVER that he could be a bear or a cat! It was awesome! I was in awe of moonkins, who had to SPEC into their form. I was even amazed by aquatic form! When druids got flight forms, I was in awe. I even thought that tree of life at least had cool benefits.

But in WotLK, they’ve changed ToL. The talent itself, not the form, has all that mana saving stuff baked into it. Hell, with a paladin with improved devotion aura around, you don’t actually HAVE to shift into tree form.

This is why I think they feel that Tree of Life form is expendable. There ARE a lot of people out there who hate that they can’t see their toons or their armor that they’ve worked hard for and I’m sure that they look at the WotLK version of ToL and go “well, really, what good is this?”. And it’s not that good, unless you’re in an arena and have improved ToL to help out your armor.

Bear and cat forms are already very nichey. You HAVE to be in bear to get all the modifiers and abilities to tank properly. You HAVE to be in cat to get all the modifiers and abilities to melee DPS properly.

Moonkin… it’s like they don’t want to screw with the moonkins because they have such a cult following. People love moonkins for the dance alone. And possibly because moonkins are SO ludicrous looking. My resto druid friend? LOVES moonkin form and because of that, balance is her offspec.

Besides, all those forms have been in the game since the beginning (or close to it).

Tree form has not.

I think that resto druids should be able to shift into something — it’s what druids do, after all — but it has to be meaningful. Tree of Life, as it is, is not meaningful. It’s fancy artwork. And not even that fancy. It’s just artwork.

What really irks me about all of this discussion, though, is the idea that resto druids are “giving up utility” by being in Tree form.

Sorry, they’re DOING THEIR JOBS. Sure, as a holy paladin, in holy gear, in about 50% Ulduar gear and 50% Naxx gear, I could pull 2k DPS on the burn phase to launch us into XT hard mode.

But I am under no delusion that, in normal circumstances, I am supposed to DPS. What other utility could the druids bring? Moonfire or Wrath spam? Really? What else are they going to do if not cast balance spells, being all decked out in spellpower (sorry, intellect) gear?

So it seems to me that there are three issues at hand:

1) Tree of Life form, as it stands, is useless. The devs also believe that druids should not be locked out of utility the way they are by being restricted to that form.

2) Some people hate Tree of Life form, dating back to its introduction.

3) Some people feel that the shapeshifting act is a core part of being a druid and for restoration to NOT have one is a giant step backwards in the life of a resto druid.

I’ll wait to see what beta brings on this “cooldown” form. For all we know, mana cost could be reduced by 75% on all spells for one minute. For all we know, it could contain a group innervate. For all we know, it could boost the strength of tranquility by 500%. We DON’T know what the plans are.

But I do know that I hate looking like a treant and that ToL is basically useless in PVE at this point in time. So I’ll wait to see what the deal is before I start freaking out.