The Lich King has fallen
It has taken us probably, what, 2-3 months of hard work, sweat, blood and tears. Mostly tears. And a lot of gold. Also, we spent a lot of hours that we could have used on putting our genetals into other peoples genetals. But it ...
Soloing Molten Core
I went into Molten Core with my usual PvE gear and spec, armed with a bunch of reagents and 4 stacks of water. I figured I would write down a guide for soloing the bosses as moonkin, and maybe we can tweak it a bit.
Graphics galore
Many moons ago, I asked a few people what they thought my site needed in terms of layout. And the most concerning bit of feedback I got was that the site wasn't very moonkin-y. It wasn't really immediately obvious that this was a ...
How to find a guild
Whether you are just starting out at level 80, have been on a break from raiding or simply want to find a new home foryourself, getting yourself into a comfortable place in a PvE guild can be difficult to swing. I've been in a lot of guilds ...
Draw a Druid winner!
The Draw a Druid competition got a good amount of submissions, but now it's time to find a winner. It's nice to see people joining in on the fun, despite lack of skill or time. It wasn't easy to pick a winner, it truly wasn't. And as I
Why bring a mage?
Putting together raid groups can be troublesome. You need to make sure your group gets as many raid buffs as possible, that you have enough healers to keep the raid alive, and that you have enough tanks to fit the encounter ...
PvE professions
Which profession is best? Well, when it comes to professions, there is a short answer, and a long answer. The short answer is, they all are. All of the crafting professions will give you roughly the same bonus, and ...
Draw a Druid competition
To celebrate the blog nearly almost reaching its "10.000 visitors per month" mark, I thought it would be funny to make up a competition. And because I am getting an artist to make over the site with some cool drawings, I thought it ...
Tiny talent trees
The new talent trees are out. Yay. Not much to say about them though, but before I do say anything, there is one single word that I wish to embed in your brain with a ten ton sledgehammer: CHILL!
Talent tree specializations
Blizzard plans to scrap the current talent trees, and trim the new ones down considerably. We will be going from 51 point talent trees, down to 31 point talent trees. I was a bit unsure if I would make a blog post on this now, or wait ...
Real ID or Really Bad ID(ea)?
The other day, Blizzard released a press statement regarding some of their plans for Real ID in the future. If you have been living under a rock, the Real ID is the new system in World of Warcraft and in upcoming game releases, which ...
A raidleader’s guide to moonkins
If you are a raid leader or class leader of a guild, chances are that you have been given this link by someone who thinks you would benefit to get up to speed when it comes to moonkins. Or maybe you are out searcing for info ...
Trinket Talk
Trinkets seems to be a big deal for everyone. Probably because they are so hard to come by. For each tier of raids, there are only a few trinkets to choose from, and there are a lot of people gunning for the upgrade, where as with ...
Ruby Sanctum Best In Slot
Patch 3.5 and The Ruby Sanctum is just about to hit, and it is probably a good time to take a look at te new items coming, and how they fit into our gear. Before we do that, I want to try and make an important point. Best in slot ...
Cataclysm reforging
Come Cataclysm, our gear troubles are finally over. Not only will our caps become higher, we will also not be promted to look for pretty dresses to wear. We no longer have to battle the priests, mages and warlocks for their gear. First ...
Blizzard hates druids!
Forums and blogs have been buzzing with talk for months now, ever since we saw the first alpha leaks, and with the official information released by Blizzard. And there are mixed feelings about all of these changes. Some people ...
Druid talents released
Glee, Blizzard officially announced the druid Cataclysm talents - well, as much of them as they have finished, that is. What we see on the talent trees below is probably still not the finished version - a lot of things can change, the ...
Hard mode is hard
Icecrown Citadel has been very enjoyable thus far, and the fights are varied enough that it can keep me entertained, even back when we did normal. But I must admit, once you start getting comfortable with hard modes, the normal ...
Cataclysm Glyphs
First off, I think its fairly reasonable to think that we wont be rolling with the same glyphs at level 85. Even something as strong as Glyph of Starfall is probably going to be outdated. Anything else would be pretty poor. So far, our ...
Activision’s Greed
The CEO of Activision (Activision is the major shareholder of Blizzard Entertainment) Robert A. Kotick plans to drain gamers from every penny they have, and he doesn't seem to connect with the customers of their product at all ...
Before the end of the world
In Vanilla, I was a priest. In The Burning Crusade, I played a hunter. In Wrath of the Lich King, I've been a druid. If there is any sort of pattern to my choice of playstyle, this pattern dictates that I should find a new class to play ...
Gearscore Grumbles
The Gearscore debate has been going on for a long, long time. It didn't take long after the addon really took hold until there was massive outcrys against it. And yet, with all the hate towards the addon, and all of the negative ...
PUGs from Hell
I love pugging. Or at least, I love the idea of pugging. Especially since the LFG tool was updated (read: Made useful) a few patches ago, I saw the chance for me to really do something that I enjoy so much in this game: Having a quickie.
The Moonkin Guide
It's here. It's finally here! I saw down and wrote until my fingers bled, and the end result is this - The Moonkin Guide!
A peek at Cataclysm talents
There is a lot of stuff out there, ripped from the Cataclysm alpha client. I am not excactly sure how Blizzard feel about people stealing info from the client, but since nobody in the alpha really said anything, I suppose it might be alright.
The Moonkin Manifesto
And what about your, Mr. Warlock? Oh, you can create fire too? Newsflash, mage is already doing it! Oh, you have curses? What are you going to do to me, give me a cold? Don't bother me with your voodoo mumbo jumbo!
On alts and offspecs
I have a bit of a lo.. hate/hate relationship to offspecs and alts. It is not that I don't appreciate the fun that can be had by playing them, but I am already playing what I like to play. If I liked to play something else more, I would play that.
Blizzard concept art
Do you remember that old Starcraft wallpaper? The one with the protoss underwater, grapping his shoulder as his glowing eyes gaze towards the surface? I sure do! It was my desktop wallpaper for a long, long time. It was very ...
Toying with Typhoon
A lot of debates have sprung up recently across druid forums, and I think it would be beneficial to take a look at the spell - there seem to be a lot of people who are unsure of how to best benefit from Typhoon. Previously, this talent ...
Progression, achievements and hard modes
With the completion of Glory of the Icecrown Raider 25, I thought I would make another vlog, talking a bit about my guilds progress in ICC, and the hard modes we have encountered. I hope you will enjoy this little commentary ...
Thoughts on druid changes
It took a good day of waiting since my post yesterday, but the much anticipated druid changes are finally here! But what to make of them? Surely, these seem like rather interesting and creative changes. We can only muse about ...
Cataclysm druid changes
It is the 9th of April, and today Blizzard plans to announce the changes to moonkins in their upcoming expansion. Obviously, we are all very excited about what is going to happen, and obviously, at the time of writing, there is ...
The secrets of DPS
I have been wanting to rub my hind quarters on this subject for quite a while, but at the same time I have been somewhat hesitant about it. It is not because I hold some grand thoughts that I have the holy grail of DPS, or ...
Just another raid night
I've been in a lot of guilds for the past five years, and each of them have been different. The way the guild is managed, the people, the general skill of those you play with, and the social activities outside of raids ...
Goodbye WoW, Hello…
I have been playing World of Warcraft for over five years now. I have seen the game through three major releases, countless of dungeons and raids, and I have traveled across Azeroth more times that I can count. Yes, it ...
Aug 10
29
How to be useful on Lich King heroic
I consider myself an expert on Lich King heroic. Sure, I’ve only killed him once, but I have wiped on this fight more than any other in the game. After 200+ wipes, you pick up a few things here and there, and I’d like to share that with you guys.
This is not an easy encounter, and as you wipe and try again over and over, you’ll tweak your rotation, your movement and your general style on the fight.
I am going to assume that you know the general tactics for this fight – there is no need for me to go through them cause, after all, the main way to be useful on Lich King is to know what the hell you’re doing!
Posted in Raiding by .
Aug 10
25
The Lich King has fallen
It has taken us probably, what, 2-3 months of hard work, sweat, blood and tears. Mostly tears. And a lot of gold. Also, we spent a lot of hours that we could have used on putting our genetals into other peoples genetals. But it wasn’t all for nothing!
Tonight, after another four hours of wiping, on our very last try for the night, Arthas Menethil, The Lich King, died on heroic 25 man. This week, we finally had several phase three wipes, and after some agonising 20% wipes to the enrage timers, he fell down and took a mouthful of ice to the face!
If you want to see the log from the fight, you can find it here! It should go to show that moonkins aren’t really that useless *wink*
Our guild is the 424th guild to kill him, and our world rank is now 397! That’s not bad, considering we were around rank 398 when we were at 11/12 HC. In any case, we are all very happy about getting him down.
Oh, by the way, regarding Invincible’s Reins…
Posted in Raiding by .
Aug 10
21
Quick Quip: Spell changes
A new build is on the beta, and with it, a few changes to our spells:
- Wild Mushroom changed, only 3 mushrooms can be placed at one time (Down from 5).
- Cyclone cast time increased to 2 sec. Up from 1.5 sec.
- Faerie Fire now has a 35 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Insect Swarm now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Starfire now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Entangling Roots now has a 35 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Thorns now lasts 20 sec, down from 10 minutes. Damage increased by 1400% (Deals 447 damage instead of 32)
- Moonfire now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Wrath now has a 40 yards range, up from 30 yards.
- Moonkin Form now increases Nature and Arcane spell damage by 10%.
- Starlight Wrath now reduces cast time by 0.15/0.25/0.5 sec. (Up from 0.1/0.2/0.3 sec)
First off, props to the creative way to make us want to stay in moonkin form. Ah well, we don’t really need anything fancy to do that, the “you get more damage here” sign will do the trick.
A lot of our spells have gotten increased range. In our case, it seems like a generic 40 yard range, but this is not the case for all classes! It would seem like some spells, for all classes, are capped at 30 yards where others have a 40 yard range. This is interesting because it means I can nuke a warlock from 40 yards range, but he would have to walk 10 yards to be close enough to cast a fear. Not a bad way to force people to make the decision between nuking, healing or CCing.
Starligth Wrath was buffed, which makes sense, while Wild Mushroom was nerfed to 3 shrooms at any one time. Lets take a moment to write up a long blog post about Shrooms being nerfed, so that we.. wait, nevermind. We don’t know the amount of damage it does, how it plays into our rotation, what glyphs it will have and so on. I guess we’ll just wait and see instead.
Lastly, a very interesting change to thorns: It is now a defensive spell. Defensive in the way of saying “If you touch me, you’re going to hurt!”. It is a fine way to do some extra damage, especially if you are either AOE grinding, tanking a bunch of mobs, or if you are being ganked by a rogue. It is no longer a weak retribution aura, but an offensive defense spell, which should give us a bit of fun.
Posted in Talents by .
There hasn’t really been a whole lot of moonkin info in the expansion. At least, not compared to what we see for other classes. Sure, there has been a ton of changes, and most of them are very good changes. A lot of our issues have been addressed, but we are still at a point where I feel that moonkins definitely needs a wee bit more of love.
For a while now, I have had this nagging worry that Blizzard would somehow swing around and pull “a resto” on us, and remove moonkin form from our spellbooks. Or make it a use ability like they are doing with restoration druids. Thankfully, Ghostcrawler mentioned the other day that they stand firm in the belief that balance druids are defined by their moonkin form.
There is a lot of grapejuice going around these days about moonkin form being useless in its current state. One argument is about the buffs it brings. We are already sharing all of our buffs with several other classes. So is everyone else. That it continues in Cataclysm is just fine, that’s really how it should be. Every buff should be covered by many classes – it has been Blizzard’s philosophy since Wrath of the Lich King came out, and people seem to think themselves useless if other people can provide the same buffs as them. For the rest of us, we are brought as another buff insurance and the damage we bring.
Sure, 5% haste is provided by other classes in Cataclysm, and there is merit to that argument. In its current state, it would actually allow us to do whatever we like when it comes to being in moonkin form. It would seem really pointless to have a form if we could simply decide to ditch it when were in a raid group. But that is probably going to change. We will get something that buffs us, like moonkin form buffs our intellect and mana regeneration on the live servers.
What would be fun could be further modifiers to our abilities, or if it had a chance to empower us with “Spirit of the Owlbeast”. How about SotO being a proc that empowers the next ability to increase the damage of the next spell by x% or which will automaticly cast the next spell on every enemy within 15 yards of your target. Imagine the AOE we could whip up with that?
I don’t know what Blizzard will do about moonkin form. I am confident that they will make us something spiffy, something that will keep us in moonkin form. And as for the talents, I’m hoping that they will give us some focus soon, much like the lines of the focus we’ve seen them give paladins and the like.
It’s still beta. Everything will be fine.
Posted in Cataclysm by .
Qieth’s personal blog
Copyright
Qieth's Quips by Dan Poulsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.