When the announcement of the Recruit A Friend program was made, I was just starting to look around for a new in-game challenges. I have been reading Razors blog pretty much since he started and I loosely following his adventures as a new multiboxer. Inspired by his experiences, I even did a little Multiboxing of my own, to expedite the gold grind for my epic mount.

My set-up was not complete or even close to ideal but I did manage to get three toons moving together and casting spells on the same target. While I enjoyed the challenges inherent to Multi-Boxing the toons I was playing (2 Resto Druids and a Shadow Priest) lacked the synergy that a powerful multi-box team needs.

Multi-Boxing is not new to my server (Magetheridon, US) I’m proud to say that I died to the Zins more than once back in the Pre-Cross Realm Battleground Days. In fact the biggest, as far as I know, Multi-Boxing Guild in the game “The Zerg” is on the Horde side of Magtheridon. Having so many Multi-Boxers on the Horde Side makes world PvP out on the Isle particularly dangerous. When I was tooling around with my mismatched team I was an easy target for Savvy players who know just how easy it is to cut the head off a multibox team.

My short experience with multi-boxing taught me one thing the importance of Synergy. In a multi-boxing set-up the ways that abilities, match up and fit together is everything. Complementary abilities are multiplied when the control of them is simultaneous. Have you ever been hit by 5 chain lightnings simultaneously? Did you have a chance to react? I didn’t think so.

While 5 Shamans is a power house team my Hardware is probably not up to 5 Boxing. Since I can’t do a five box I went with the best two box I could think of Mages. The crowd control abilities of a mage just seem like they would be great when multiplied together, and with 3X the experience per kill I might even try a little AOE Grinding.

I’m not setting any leveling records, but so far the girls, Ahsee and Ahcee, are level 42. I’ve played about an hour a day with them bringing me to about 20 hours played. At first I quested them through the Dranei starting quests. At level 14 I switched to boosting (One upper level character grouped with lower level characters kills aggros and kills mobs which are close enough in level to the lower character(s) to provide them with XP) I boosted them through Stockades level 14-24, Scarlet Monastery level 24-40 and now I am in Zul’Farrack.

I must admit that Boosting with triple XP is insane. With a Lvl 70 Mage running my two lowbie mages through Stockades I was getting a level every run, or approximately every eight minutes. I just hope that I can get to level 60 before Blizzard hands out the nerf which I am sure must be coming.

I have heard the clamoring from bloggers about how OP the program is and how it will ruin the game for new players. I have to agree. If they were to get boosted through instances never touching a mob and leveling at an astronomical rate, they would miss many of the most important aspects of the game, they would never develop the interest required to make them long term players and I believe they would end up quitting the game shortly after their RAF expires.

For gamers like me who have leveled a toon in the Pre XP buff, pre-RAF World, of Warcraft the RAF is a golden opportunity. I am able to experience the play style of characters I would not normally have the pateince to level. Because of the RAF when the next expansion comes out I will finally have real alts to play.

Yes the RAF is essentially a way for players with extra money to buy a new game experience, but isn’t that what The Burning Crusade was, isn’t that what Wrath of the Lich King will be. If you don’t want to spend the money to “BUY” a new gaming experience you don’t have to. WoW still works. I equate it buying a SpeedPad. You can play without it and you can have a good experience, you can even be successful, but if you pony up the cash for an enhancement, you might, MIGHT, enjoy the game a little more. Is anyone going to begrudge me my enjoyment?

Grid (and its configuration) differs from other add-ons and that makes it hard getting used to it. But investing maybe 1h of your time trying to understand it will pay off many, many times over.

I use Grid in combination with Clique. Almost everything I do in a raid is done with click-casting. The big advantage of click-casting is the tremendous speed increase while healing. This might not be obvious at the first glance but not having to manually change the target to cast a spell on it will save a lot of time and makes you react much quicker.

First of all I would like to point you to a very good Grid introduction at wowinsider.com where they explained pretty much the main concepts of Grid and its configuration. See: http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/22/raid-rx-unkicking-butt-a-grid-story/

With all those basics in mind you should make a list what you would like to see in Grid. Imho, this step is very important because otherwise you will be overwhelmed with all the features and information it has to offer. My List looks like this, in a raid I want to see for each group/raid member:

• which class is it
• how much HP it has lost
• has it aggro
• is it low on mana
• is it dead
• is MotW missing
• is it poisoned
• is it cursed
• is it innervated
• is it in range
• is my regrowth on it
• what is the duration of my regrowth
• is my rejuvenation on it
• what is the duration of my rejuvenation
• is my lifebloom on it
• how many lifeblooms are on my stack
• what is the duration of my lifebloom stack
• how many hots in total are on it

To achieve that I had to install several Grid-plugins which added some desired status and indicators. These are:

• GridIndicatorText3 (adds a third text row to a unitframe)
• GridSideIndicators
• GridStatusHots
• GridStatusHotstack
• GridStatusLifebloom
• GridStatusMissingBuffs

The following are some examples of my configuration in fancy action screenshots. Note that every indicator, color, whatever you will see is customized. That’s the way it works. The out-of-the-box default configuration of Grid is only usable to a certain extend. You have to know want you want and how it should look for your particular needs

(remember the list).

“out of combat.jpg”- shows raidmembers missing MotW with a green border

“low mana.jpg”-shows players with low mana (below 1k) with a blue border

“combat1.jpg”-shows:

• aggro as red border and red dot on the left side
• shows *my* lifebloom stacks as dot in the upper left corner (blue dot means one, yellow dot means two, green dot means three lifeblooms)
• shows *my* regrowth as white dot in the upper right corner
• upper text “4-8″ means: duration of my lifebloomstack on that
• raidmember lasts for 4 seconds, there are 8 hots in total on that player
• lower text “6-8″ means the same for regrowth

There is so much more in my Grid config which isn’t shown in the screenshots but I think this gives you a first impression. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Related Links

Download Grid and Plug-ins
The Grid Wiki

Based on Shakespeare’s classic tragedy Romulo and Julianne is a three phase two boss couples fight, similair to the Scarlet Monastery Armory’s, High Inquisitor Whitemane and Scarlet Commander Mograine.

For this fight you will kill one boss, then the other boss, and then both bosses together. To add to the complexity of the situation in the last phase you have to kill them within 10 seconds of each other otherwise they will respawn with full health and in all likelihood you will die.

Phase the first: Julianne

During this first phase you may want to have your off tank pick up Julianne and drag her to stage right. This is for the sake of repetition because in phase three the off tank will be on Julianne and he will, wait for it, have to pull her to the right.

Julianne is a priest type with a strong buff (Devotion: Holy damage dealt is increased by 50% Spell casting speed is increased by 50% for 10 sec) that must be removed quickly and heals (Eternal Affection: Calls upon Holy magic to heal an ally Cast Time 2 seconds) which need to be interrupted.

Besides making sure your DPS is awake Julianne has a two other abilities that everyone should be aware of Powerful Attraction is a 6 second stun which can affect even the tank, and Blinding Passion is a ranged Damage spell with and upfront direct damage and a tailing damage over time component.

For the sake of consistency have a dedicated interrupter and a dedicated debuffer who will take care of both phases one and three. The interrupter should focus on the Healing Spell. For phase one if you have a second interrupt available have that person break up whatever other spells they can to ease the strain on the healers.

Drop Julianne on the Right side of the room so that it is easier to pick her up and position her when she resurrects after phase two.

Phase the second: Romulo

Romulo is your typical Venetian Sword Fighter, dealing out a fair amount of physical damage with a wide angle cleave (Deadly Swathe: Strikes at nearby enemies in front of the caster, inflicting weapon damage plus 300) which will hit everyone in an arch in front of him, and nasty weapon posion (Poisoned Thrust: All statistics reduced by 10%) which if allowed would stack up to 8 times on your tank (ouchy) and a self buff( Daring: Increases the Physical damage dealt by the caster by 50% and the caster’s attack speed by 50% for 8 sec) which signifacantly increases his damage output and a backwards stab (Backwards Lunge: Strikes at an enemy behind the caster, inflicting weapon damage plus 300) which will tag the occasional melee DPSer for a fair amount of damage.

Similarly to phase one you should assign roles for this phase and phase three as all the same functions will need to be carried out a second time and repletion makes the world go ’round (or something). You’ll want to have your Main Tank on Romulo as his physical damage is much higher you will also need a second debuff player to remove Romulo’s self buff. If you do not have a Resto Druid in your group (and you should) make sure someone is assigned to remove poison from the tank. Kill Romulo on the left side of the stage and be ready to repeat the same thing in phase 3.

Phase the third: Together they fall

In the third phase have your tanks standing on the star crossed lovers corpses to pick them up quickly. The players you assigned roles in the previous two phases will perform their jobs as before removing buffs and interrupting spells. Your raid DPS will need to be split between the two bosses so that they die within ten seconds of each other. It is generally easier to have your ranged DPS focus on Romulo so that their is no one in range of his cleave and backwards stab. If one half of the group is significantly ahead you may call for the DPS to focus on the higher life target.

Strategy wise this fight is all in the first two phases. You can practice for the real fight and make sure that everyone knows what is going on. In the third phase the greatest challenge comes from the depths of your groups mana pools. If your dps is low your healers will be taxed out before the phase is done and chances are that under geared casters will be at risk of going OOM as well.

Druid Healing Strategies

This fight is perfect for dual tank healing using lifebloom stacks while still granting you the time to throw a raid healing regrowth every third cast. In phases two and three be ready to cast abolish poison so that your tank is not stacked up. If you are on the lesser geared end of the spectrum plan to use your innervate going into the third phase.

Druid Loot:

As with the other two opera events this event can drop the Earthsoul Leggings, and the Ribbon of Sacrafice, and although it is not leather some druids may benefit from the Masquerade Gown.

Blizzard is still struggling with the best way to handle expanding their biggest game. While the flood of “leaked” shiny new abilities and items may create buzz for their product, it has the (I hope) unintended effect of robbing player motivation for the game in it’s current state. Player burnout is on the rise again. The motivating effects of the Sunwell Content patch are no longer being felt by Mid-Level Raiding Guilds, the guilds working on the first in Mount Hyjal or Black Temple who are not likely to see the inside of Sunwell. These guilds whose players have experienced all of the Sunwell content they are likely to are facing serious problems with player motivation. Their Raiders have done their Dailies, earned their Exalted Reputation, and have farmed out Magister’s Terrace for their Pheonix drop, and now all they have to look forward to when they sit down for an evening is hard work and an uphill grind and all for what?

Before the release of The Burning Crusade, and after the last content patch many guilds faced a similar situation. There were shining new items on the horizon, and the greens players would be picking up on solo quests at level 61 were going to be better than anything the average Mid-Level Raider (AQ20, ZG, Onyxia) would see without putting in serious effort. Guilds who could have made it through AQ40 before the expansion stopped raiding altogether. Vanilla WoW was a lame duck. During this time the Buzz for The Burning Crusade was great, people were truly excited for it and in anticipation they walked away from the game…

Blizzard promises us that this time things will be different. Blue posters say that current end-game gear will be relevant for at least a few levels in Wrath. This may help to keep people working for gear, but that is work. The problem is that most people see the new, seemingly godly, abilities coming in Wrath and they are, understandingly, excited about them. Players are not excited about that next Boss in Black Temple, not buzzing about the recent opening of the last gate in Sunwell, it seems that nothing in BC WoW can hold most players enthusiasm like the possibility of Druids have a Group HoT, or Warlocks finally getting some loving (again). So in a way BC WoW is as already as dead as Vanilla WoW.

This lack of enthusiasm is manifesting itself as player burnout, lots of people are taking a break from the game all at once. With so many people leaving the game I find myself searching for my own motivation. With my guild progressing at an all slow pace I find myself reevaluating my WoW Goals. Until very recently my goals were to;

1. Improve my gear to make me a better healer
2. See all the BC Endgame Content.

Now that my goal of seeing all the expansion seems unlikely to happen and with the upcoming expansion my goals have changed, my focus is shifting away from endgame raiding and BC Content.

1. Improve my gear to make leveling to 80 easier
2. See as much Endgame content as I can before the expansion.

Looking ahead to the Wrath expansion I have a decision to make; Do I suffer myself and try to level Restoration specialized; Do I compromise and level Balance/Resto; -Or- Do I take the historically easiest route and level feral?

I haven’t actually decided yet but the question has changed my gear selection choices already, instead of thinking about the gear that will help me to heal better I am thinking about the gear that will make leveling the easiest when the cap goes up.

In the next expansion I would like to be on the leading edge of progression instead of the receding edge which is where I feel like I am now. In order to do that I feel that the key is to make it to the level cap as quickly as possible. If I’m going to sprint to 80 then it would probably be best to go it feral.

I’m conflicted about this decision becuase of the implication it has on my game play in the mean time if I decide that I’m going to level feral then why would I stay resto and pass up drops for my feral set which will give me an edge moving forward.

The fact is that my two current goals are at odds with each other. My best chance for seeing some more of BT and MH is to stay Resto. If you put any stock in be.imba.hu then I’m already geared enough to see some of Sunwell before the next big thing drops. If on the other hand I want to try and ensure that I will see all of the Wrath Content then I should throw in the towel on this whole resto thing and focus on getting the best feral gear I can.

Until I commit to one goal or the other I guess I’ll continue grabbing up badges and maybe start Grinding the BGs to invest in some decent feral gear.

How about you? What are your goals between now and the Wrath of the Lich King expansion? Does anyone else plan on respeccing to level from 70-80?

I switched from X-Perl Unit Frames to Pitbull. I highly recommend it and should be pulling together a post on why I think Pitbull is superior for late next week.

Do you have a favorite add-on that you could not live without? Tell us all about post a comment here.

Last night I was running ZA (my favorite instance, NOT) and I started noticing that although there were three healers I was the only one casting heals on anyone besides the tanks, funny that doesn’t seem right. Druids aren’t exactly efficient raid healers. So nonchalantly and surprisingly friendly(for me) I ask the Paladin which add-ons he uses. “None, I don’t need them to heal.” WHAT!?!

“Really?” I say “I find that they help me quite a bit.” To which he replies “That’s cause you’re a N00b!” hmmm. At this point (third boss in ZA) in the raid I am doubling his healing done with 44% to his 22%, and doing it with less over-healing and less gear and I’m the noob. The Priest chimes in at this point to say that he doesn’t use any add-ons besides the guild required, Omen, and DBM. I’m befuddled. I’m out healing the Priest by 12% (he’s at 32% if you’re not good at math). Curious I check the Priest’s gear to see what he’s wearing to try to determine if he’s working to his potential or not and he’s in a mix of T5 and T6 and being out-healed by a Druid in T4 and welfare epics. So healing to his potential? No!

It’s sad to me that there are still people out there who WASTE their gear by not providing themselves with all the information that Blizzard has made available to them. They are at least as gimped as a raider who decides not to enchant, and sockets with green gems because they want to save money, Or who doesn’t use consumables because they don’t see a difference in their damage.

I’m not exactly sure what their thinking is. The comments I heard last night were, “I don’t need mods, I do alright without them,” “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” and “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Each of these arguments is deeply flawed let’s examine each one-

• “I don’t need Mods I do fine without them” While you may show up on the meters and you may not be the bottom healer on any given night , if your geared to heal say 1.5 Million a night but you’re healing is gimped because you can’t easily see the health everyone in the raid, then you are making another healer work harder to pick up your slack. This means that you’re group will have to drink more frequently and your raids will take longer. Not being able to see everyone at a glance means that some poor Mage sits at half health for longer than necessary then any sort of incidental damage will kill that Mage and your raid will be down a DPS.
• “I ALWAYS keep my assignment up even if I don’t top the meters.” Let me get this straight you managed to make sure that just the one tank didn’t die during the course of the fight. That’s GREAT… but if the rest of the raid dies why you heal just your one target you did no one any favors. All the other healers that have an “assignment” are also throwing heals around the raid to try to ensure that everyone stays up. They are exceeding their assignment and that is the expectation for you as well.
• “Add-ons seem like cheating to me” Blizzard recognized after Diablo II that their audience knew best how they wanted to play a game. In fact Blizzard changed the model of their programming to allow players to customize their inetrface with the game. The Default UI is just a basic get you started level 0 UI so that you can play the game out of the box. If Blizzard didn’t expect you to use add-ons why would they have made all the information that you can’t see in the default UI in the combat log available to you.

As a Druid I find the default UI lacking in several areas. Of course there are other things I use add-ons for but these are the functions I don’t think I could live without.

1. Buff Timers- at a glance I need to know how much time is left on my stacks of Lifebloom. I also have to know which players have a HoT that I could Swiftmend instead of casting a direct heal. Aside from combat situation the raid never has to stop for rebuffs on my account. I know when any players MOTW or Thorns expires and the next time we are out of combat I can refresh it.
2. Aggro Indication- while I’m rolling my HoTs on the Groups Tanks I am constantly watching to see if anyone else is grabbing aggro. On AoE Pulls I start casting Regrowth on a the Mage who is creeping up the meters as soon as I see that an aggro shift is likely. If I waited until the Mage’s health started to drop to start healing him he’d be dead before my spell was half cast. I also like to know when a Tank is no longer taking damage. During trash pulls for example it is common to have four tanks and after a few second only one or two of them are still tanking. To keep casting heals on them would be wasteful, even if I canceled the spell before it landed I’ve wasted the casting time on a target that doesn’t need heals.
3. Button Management- The Default UI has twelve buttons. If you used all the bars that Blizzard would provide you with you’d have six bars with twelve buttons. Seventy-Two buttons not to shabby but how are they laid out? do they look like your keyboard? Are they intuitive? Do they react to your changes in stance? Do they allow you keep keep your hand in one position and still do everything you need to do?
4. Inventory Management- Before I found Bagnon, back in my Rogue days, I would spend a few minutes every session maintaining my inventory. I had a bag for skinning and cloth, a bag for vendor trash, a bag for potions and consumables, a bag for poisons. While this system worked alright, I would spend a few minutes everyday to keep things in some semblance of order or I ran the risk of missing something important. Those few minutes today are enough time to do a daily or two which would go a longs ways towards paying for consumables for the night. On my druid I have 4 complete sets of gear, I carry more consumables to a raid than I care to try to count, and with the addition of daily quests I have more quest items in my bag than ever before. I could not hope to know which feral drops are an upgrade for me if it wasn’t for the fact that I could click a few buttons and see what I have in the bank even from the depths of SSC.

For a raider the most import thing add-ons has to be the increased output that they facilitate. If you are not using add-ons and you miss just one heal in the course of the night you are doing yourseld a disservice. If that one missed heal starts a chain reaction that leads to a wipe you just did 4, 9, 24, 39 other people a disservice as well.

If you want raids to go faster so that OUR guild can farm more than two bosses in three hours, then you should be doing everything in your power to increase you efficiency and your output.

It is not about meters or “epeen” stroking (fun as that can be), it is about my time, your time and the groups collective time. It is not about using a crutch or being a “n00b”, it is about doing your absolute best. It is not about doing well enough to keep your raid spot, it is about the work of all the people in the guild who in return for their effort are relying on you to do give it your all.

Ultimately it is about playing a game, and like any game it is more fun when our team is winning.

Do you wanna see the inside of Black Temple? Me too. So let’s get our heads out of our asses and kill this thing.

The Opera House is the last area of Karazhan that you will reach via the front door. The Opera House is unique in that the boss fight is a random selection from one of three fights, Romulo and Julianne, Wizard of Oz, and The Big Bad Wolf. Adding to the fun is the fact that you don’t know which fight you’ll be doing until it is too late to fully explain the strategy.
For the first installment of The Opera House sub series we’ll look at the simplest fight strategy wise, The Big Bad Wolf. Big Bad Wolf is a single Mob Tank and spank with one twist, periodically he will turn one member of the raid into Little Red Riding Hood. Reducing their armor to zero and making them as cute as a damn button. He will then chase that player around trying to hit them if he catches them he will kill them into two hits.

Abilities:

The Wolf only has three abilities two of which should have very little impact on the raid.

• Little Red Riding Hood: Cast on a random player other than top threat, this debuff turns the victim into Little Red Riding Hood, reduces your armor to zero, increases your run speed and makes you the sole object of the BBWs desire. In order to live you must run around the room right against the wall.
  Do Not Cut Corners if your track is shorter the Wolf Catches up. In order to give yourself a snowballs chance in hell of getting a way it is important to position the boss and tank Upstage Left (bottom right corner) and everyone else Upstage Right (bottom left).
  There are only a few ways to escape the Wolf; Vanish, Ice Block, Blessing of Protection, and Feign Death in each case the target keeps the debuff. This means that the rogue must stay vanished or the hunter must stay feigned etc.
  Because of the limited escape options it is important for the group to be focused and disciplined. I recommend you keep your melee dps with the ranged until he Little Reds someone then have them chase the big guy around getting their licks in until the debuff wears off at which point they should stop dps and go back to the corner.
  When he stops chasing someone he wipes his aggro table so it important to stop all dps and let your tank pick it up again.
• Wide Swipe: Temporary stun of the player with the most threat. While the debuff may be short it is helpful to have your OT in place to keep BBW form running towards the raid and shortening your head start for the Little Red Riding Hood Kiting. The only problem with this is that the OT may be picked for LRRH so you must have a plan for how you are going to rescue heal, BoP or Resurrect him/her.
• Terrifying Howl: AoE Fear, Affects everyone in melee range (not used during LRRH) for the most part this effect is a non issue but you can take steps to eliminate the annoyance of it with a Fear Ward or Tremor Totem.

Druid Healing Tips:

As with most fights you should keep Lifebloom rolling on your Tank(s). Set your focus to the Boss so that you can watch who he targets and be ready to heal who ever he breifly targets before switching back to the tank as this person is about to become Little Red Riding Hood. This also puts you at the ready if it is you who is about to have to run away. A well timed Nature’s Swiftness & Healing Touch combination could save one player during the course of the fight. I recommend saving it for a tank or a healer as the fight is not terribly DPS dependent.
Fel Blossom and Limited Vulnerability Potions may be helpful but are certainly not necessary.

Tree-ish Drops:

Lots of decent Tree drops here:
Big Bad Wolf’s Head
Red Riding Hood’s Cloak
Ribbon of Sacrafice
Earthsoul Leggings

I was running Karazhan religiously because there were still a few gear upgrades available to me and I like it. Last night I strayed and healed for the regular Tuesday night ZA group who had lost their usual druid healer to WoW burnout.

I’ve been underwhelmed with ZA since it released for a three reasons-

1. Loot Table- There aren’t any real gear upgrades for Resto Druids. At release there were a few decent upgrades but with the changes to mana regeneration in 2.4 I’m no longer stacking MP5 and the ZA gear is riddled with MP5 and Spell Haste neither of which are priorities of mine.
2. Badges- Badge Count per Hour has aways been better in a Kara run. Before the announcement of 2.4 this wasn’t a priority for me as I’d already bought all the badge gear I wanted for Restoration and was buying gear for off-spec use. Now that 2.4 is here I find myself itching to pull in at least 20 badges per week. With only one night available Kara was an easy choice for this.
3. Encounters- I don’t enjoy the Boss encounters in ZA. The mechanics might be newish, but new does not mean better or more interesting for that matter.

Just today I went through the loot table and realized that there is exactly one Healing upgrade available for me in ZA the Life-Step Belt. It still has MP5 meaning that even if I get it I’ll be looking for an upgrade somewhere else.

This brings me to a quandary: Do I ran ZA because the group leadership is good and for the most part the people going are the core guildies who are upgrading gear even if I’m not? Or do I run Kara on Tuesday because it’s fun, I’ll get more badges, probably get to roll on loot for my Balance set, and it’s so easy that with a little practice I think I could heal it solo…?

Is there some great aspect of of this instance that I am missing? Are my leafy appendages blocking the light that is the splendor of ZA?

Zoning in to an instance for the first time is one of my favorite parts of this game, so I was pretty stoked to be in MH. Our first attempt of the initial event went very well. We made it through to the seventh of the eight waves before our healing broke down and we wiped. 7 out of 8 on a first attempt without having read the strats is very good and we know we’ll get it next time.

We’re cooking with gas on our next attempt. We are in the 8th wave the tanks are up, the healers have plenty of mana, none of the DPS is down, and the Friendly NPCs are all looking healthy. Then I spike some lag, “I’m lagging guys” goes out over vent and is met with a cacophony of “me too”-s.

Silent moments go by everyone else running in place. Finally, tentatively, I step out of my position. Wandering around fearful that at any moment the server could come back up and I’ll be right in the middle of a pack of mobs, and dead before I can say “oh shit.”

My fears go unfounded as moments turn to minutes. Then realization that the server will not be back anytime spreads through the raid. Once we all get bounced out of the game the crest fallen silence gives way to idle chatter and for some reason the whole group seems to come together on vent. The chat is positive and light and for the first time in recent memory we sound like a team. The raid leader makes a few announcements about cleaning up our kara raids so that they go well and people get their badges. Briefly we discuss who will be available tomorrow to raid.

As people start going their seperate ways I feel content with my guild for the first time in months we seem like a group. Not as important but also nice we seem motivated. Driven to kick the crap out of something new, and maybe get some nice loot for our efforts.

I’m not sure but it might this “server disaster” could be just what we needed to start progressing a boss a week again.

GG Blizz. GG Instance Server.

Recently the guilds lead (golden boy perfect attendance) resto druid has been busy with real life stuff and a broken computer so I have had the pleasure of being the “geared” Tree and as such have spent more of my time in a LB, LB, LB, LB, etc. cast sequence. I figure that since I’m HoTing all the time may as well spread some points over on to the Balance Tab.

In the Restoration Tab I took all the Talents that would

1. Increase the effectiveness of my Three Heal over Time Spells (Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, & Regrowth)
2. Increase my Over all Healing Spell Effectiveness
3. Add functionality to HoT healing
4. Preserve my Emergency Button

45 points in Restoration leaves me with 16 Points in hand. Looking at the Balance Talents I wanted to take talents that would make soloing a bit easier in my +Damage Gear and would in some way benefit my raiding.

In the first Tier I took Starlight Wrath because I don’t like the idea of spending 5 points on an ability I can only use once per fight.

By grabbing control of Nature in the second Tier I essentially give myself the same out, and I can reapply if Roots should break early. Seeing as I shortened the cast time of Wrath and Starfire Focused Starlight was an obvious choice. At the end of long single tank boss fights the DPS can start to slow down (a dead mage does no damage) and I find myself throwing the occasional Moonfire to do my small part to help eek out that last 3%, and since I’ve set myself up to Root and Burn Mobs the added damage to my DoTs is always a good idea.

This brings me to the third tier. Like Phaelia I am a big fan of Thorns. I have always kept Thorns up on Tanks and Pets as a way for them to generate a bit more aggro and to squeeze in a little damage too. Who knows how many 1% wipes could have been turned into wins with the addition of just that little bit of damage… For the soloing side I also like the synergy of Brambles and Force of Nature. With the two I can Root the mob down and do a little more damage while they sit there stewing.

Finally in the Balance Tree I picked Insect Swarm. Talking to a few Boomkins I learned that many of them skip this talent all together because adding another Instant Cast and Global Cool Down to their spell rotation seriously gimps their DPS. Since healing is not their job they don’t consider the benefit of the 2% chance to miss or they figure that the tanks are all set without it. Healing is my job and I know what a deal an additional 2% to miss is, and one the soling end I know I can throw three DoTs (Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Entangling Roots) onto a mob and have them half dead before I even start spamming Wrath. I also like that the HoTs slow the casting speed of all those nasty ranged attack mobs who still get me while they are rooted.

With this new spec I find the following cast sequence works very well:

• Starfire
• Entangling Roots
• Moonfire
• Insect Swarm
• Wrath
• Wrath
• Wrath

Most of the time I finish the mob off shortly after Moonfire expires so I don’t worry about reapplying my HoTs. I have found that if I cast Moonfire right on top of my Entangling Roots it seems to break the root effect less often. If roots breaks before the second Wrath I reapply it for melee mobs and just blast through for ranged.

Related Links

Talent Calculator of this build.
Phaelia’s discussion of Thorns and the benefits Insect Swarm