And Now I Am a Cow

Well, I finally bit the bullet and moved Naturegrrl to Eitrigg, made her a Hordie and of course, since only Tauren can be druids, I felt Naturegrrl was just not gonna work as a name. A cow named Naturegrrl? Nah. So I used the name my deleted shammy had: Manamanah. Well, why not, it's always about mana when you're a healer.


Many upsides to the switch. For one, now I have an enchanter all my own. For another, she can wear heirloom gear and level faster. And finally, I can play with my doc students who are level 60 or lower.  It's also nice to be able to move stuff and money among my toons. She's not guilded yet. Not sure that's going to happen. I may look elsewhere for this toon since our guild has so many druids.


As you can see, it's Halloween Fest or whatever it's called, and I have been hit with a pumpkin head.

Patches and Wings

Greetings, lone reader. The new patch dropped and it's effect is much like that you see when you take a stick and swirl it around in the middle of a line of ants:CHAOS!! OMG the sky is falling!!

First of all, we all got our talent points back, and the talent trees have been overhauled in major ways. Partly the effect is to clarify the class roles (spec'ing for dummies), and partly it's to balance the game a bit. Needless to say, hunters got nerfed... /cry. I think this is why we roll alts. When the OP sauce moves to a new class and your fav. toon gets nerfed, you just activate the alt. So, of course, Tynaqua the hunter is geared almost to the max., but I may be playing my resto druid a helluvalot more.  (Yes, it's even more fun than disc. priest.) The resto talent changes seem to have made healing less of a keyboard faceroll. Yay! Although I am srsly bummed about the loss of tree form. And there has been talk here and there that the changes in the patch and in Cataclysm will mark a return to skill over mere strategy. That's right all you doofuses out there; you need to L2P your CC class skills. bwahahahahahah.

[see glossary at end]

Second of all, the glyph system took a hit, probably for the better if it's your profession. Now we have three levels of glyphs where once there were two. And we get 9 in total, instead of 6. OMG auction house. lol.

Third, the prices have come down on things like dual spec'ing (yay!) and for only 5K G (only) we can all now fly at 310% speed. Meh. There's more but read about it yourself.

The other interesting bit is the launching of the pre-Cataclysm events. We're now getting earthquakes everywhere that hint at the terraforming to come. I have to say that as a Southern Californian, these unpredictable shakes kinda spook me. Yah they really do. Weird. It's not like I dive under the desk, but I jump a little. LOL. Also we can start to see the change from Thrall to Garrosh in the storyline. And please don't start me on the coming demise of our beloved Cairne Bloodhoof... sob.

Adjusting to the new talent and spell changes has been weird. Tynaqua really has lost some dps and I've respec'd her as marksman, since survival is so focused on CC stuff that it seems PVP more than PVE. I will be dual spec'ing to see if BM is viable again, but mostly in endgame its about cranking the ranged dps. Haven't run with my disc. priest yet, in no small part because I'M IN LOVE WITH RESTO DRIUD HEALING. Yah, that was a shout. Naturegrrl is so awesome sauce that I've already been healing in dungeons on with the new spec tree and without GRID (addons aren't updated yet and probably won't be for a while, given all the spell and dps mechanics changes.). Takes gumption to heal with a plain vanilla UI. Or love.

Speaking of UI... One thing I find incredibly interesting and reminiscent of ye olde Apple DOS days (when Apple's landmark "system 7" rollout incorporated all the good stuff from the third party "inits"), is the obvious adoption of third party addon features into the new UI. For instance, power auras used to let you set up big colorful visual cues for particular kinds of fight or heal mechanics. The UI since the patch does this quite a bit, especially for procs. In fact, the visuals even look like a power auras image. I think it's wonderful that Blizz is realizing the value of these features and incorporating them into the official interface (where they'll work more seamlessly, take up less memory, and get updated regularly).

So in the last random dungeon run yesterday, the famous druid shoulders dropped. Yeah, I got a dead bird on each shoulder now. Oh joy. And yah, they give off a green gas, oh, excuse me, green aura.

Hey noobs:
OP = overpowered (too much of an advantage, e.g,. mages are OP)

UI = user interface
nerfed = reduced in power, usually cuz you were too OP
L2P = learn to play, intended to be snarky
PVP = player versus player (human to human combat)
PVE = mostly player versus game environment (NPCs, non-player characters)
proc = Programmed Random OCcurrence (a fight/heal/spell bonus that goes off randomly and should be used to your advantage)
CC = crowd control (stun, trap, root, banish or otherwise tie up an enemy)
GRID = an addon for healers that changes the UI a bit