The Bear and the Lock....

Once upon a time in a universe far away, there was a handsome bear who liked to help rid the world of evil and would get right up in their face doing it. Well, Ylee was really a druid who shapeshifts, but really, he thought of himself mainly as a bear. And on this day, he choose to go to free slaves and kill evil undead in a place called Pit of Saron......

He chose some of his best friends who had seen him through many dark and dangerous places.

Two warriors, Gargle and Vagrant; his wife who is also a druid in the form of a tree, Splinter; and a warlock, Zanex.

So the group meets up at the opening of the cave to defeat this new evil. Ylee checks to make sure that everyone is ready and they proceed in.

"Wow there are a lot of undead here" Ylee mutters. "I guess it is a good thing they are all mindless or we could be in trouble".

Gargle and Vagrant are looking the undead over and discussing how to kill them the best. Splinter is making sure her leaves are in place so her healing spells are most powerful in case they need them. Zanex is cackling quietly to his imp minion while straightening his robes.

The group starts forward to the first group of undead and Ylee says "Well, you all know the drill, give me a couple of seconds to round them all up so they don't hurt you guys." Ylee prides himself on keeping his friends safe from harm while they do most of the damage and kill the undead minions of the Lich King. And so Ylee roars and charges ahead to get the monsters in the first pack to attack him so his friends would be safe when they started damaging the undead. All goes as planned and the first group dies quickly.

The next group is tricky because if Ylee and his friends aren't careful, they could accidentlly attract the attention of another two groups of nearby undead and drakes and their riders.

"Let me try and grab these guys and bring them back to y'all" Ylee says. Gargle and Vagrant think that this sounds like the best idea. So Ylee runs up and attacks the main guy on the drake and begins to run back to the group but somehow, the rider starts running directly for Zanex. Ylee notices this and starts running toward the rider with all the other evils trailing behind him but before he can growl menacingly at the rider, Zanex gives a howl of fear and creatures start running around in different directions.

Ylee angrily growls and then the worst thing happens, several of the scattering creatures run into the other two groups, so now instead of 2 creatures to try and kill, the group has over 10. Ylee frantically runs around trying to gather up the evil creatures to save his friends. Splinter is casting healing spells so fast you can barely see her branches move and Gargle and Vagrant are running behind Ylee trying to kill the creatures as quick as they can. During this time Zanex recovers and is also casting spells killing things.

Miraculously, the group survives but none quite know how.

As soon as all the creatures are dead again, Ylee runs over to Zanex and pushes him over and stands on top of him pinning him to the ground.

"I told you never to cast that spell in a place like this" Ylee yells at Zanex with saliva dripping onto Zanex's face. "You almost killed us! If you have a death wish, let us know now cause Splinter and I don't want to die and I don't want to have to tell Moppy that Gargle died or Mayhem that you died. You can just go home if that is the case!"

Ylee is continuing to stand over Zanex huffing into his face when Zanex whines "But it was coming after me!"

Angrily Ylee responds, "That is because you didn't wait for me to get them into position and truly command their attention. I know you like to brag about your number of kills after a run like this, but I've told you before if you get any of us killed, what good is your number of kills?"

Ylee steps off of Zanex and allows him to stand while saying "The most important thing is that we do our part to rid the world of these undead minions. The number of kills we each get is meaningless if we die in the process only to be resurrected by the Lich King. We work as a team, remember! Try to remember that next time instead of worrying about how many you kill."

Both Gargle and Vagrant stare angrily at Zanex while Splinter is tending to Ylee's wounds.

"Sorry" says Zanex, "I will wait longer next time. I don't want us all to die."

And with this the group continues to kill the undead minions in this place so that hopefully soon, they can make their way to the Lich King and kill him once and for all.

Lord Marrowgar and Lady Deathwhisper

Lord Marrowgar went down in one shot last night. I have heard thru the grapevine that he was dealing 25 man damage in 10 man mode. That would sort of explain why he was hitting so damn hard.

We also made a couple of attempts at Lady Deathwhisper (LD) but since it was late and none of us had actually read up on the fight too much in advance, it didn't go that smoothly. We only got to phase 2 once out of like 3 tries.

But I have since researched it and I'm going to put down what I know and what we found out in easy terms that I hope I can remember and might help someone else. Everything is for 10 man normal mode. Note: LD has a 10 minute hard enrage timer.

Phase 1

LD has a mana shield up with 3.3 million mana. You have to burn thru that to get to the point where you can damage her. She has no aggro table at this phase so no tank needed. She does cast shadowbolts and death and decay. Everyone should know the main rule of raiding by this point, which is "Don't Stand in Shit" so when you see the green area on the ground, run out of it.

First adds spawn at 15 seconds into the fight and every 40 seconds thereafter from either the right or the left side of the room. Right side group will have 2 adherents and 1 fanatic. Left side group will have 1 adherent and 2 fanatics. Adherents are casters and fanatics are melee. Only one side pops at at time so tanks pick up and melee burn them down. Sometimes LD will reanimate the adds and then they do a lot more damage.

Adherents are casters and when LD reanimates them, they become immune to magical damage, so make sure to have your physical damage tank (bears, warriors, blood DKs) pick them up and kite them around. Melee burn them down.

Fanatics are melee and when LD reanimates them, they become immune to physical damage, so make sure to have your spell damage tank (pallys, Frost DKs, Undead DKs) pick them up and kite them around. Ranged burn them down.

During most of phase 1, have your ranged dps wail on LD and only dps on the adds if you have a reanimated fanatic. Another job that needs to be done during this phase is when LD empowers the adds, someone needs to dispel it.

An adherent that is empowered will cast Shroud of the Occult so melee needs to burn that as quickly as possible to get the shroud down. Run away from everyone if you get the deathchill blast or you damage everyone around you.

A fanatic that is empowered will get Vampiric Might which will heal them to full and he will do more damage. Kite him around if you can't CC him while you wait for the debuff to go away. Tanks can taunt him back and forth while melee kills him. But remember to beware of his cleave as it really hurts.

If you have time between when you take down the groups of adds and the next wave, everyone should be on the boss doing as much dps as you can. Hopefully you will have her mana shield down in at most 6 minutes, to do this, you need at least 9,167 dps on her shield to get it done.

Phase 2

No more adds will spawn during this phase but she will keep casting her D&D. At the beginning of this phase is an aggro wipe so make sure someone announces she is about to start phase 2.

Have your MT pick her up and keep her until the MT gets 2-3 stacks of Touch of Insignificance then have the OT taunt her. Rinse repeat. Also you need to make sure that you have several people who can interrupt her Frostbolts cause they hit like a mac truck.

LD will also raise ghosts during this phase, and the shades will pick a random target and move towards them. If they get in melee range of the target KABOOM. So make sure to keep an eye out for the shades and move away from them until they despawn in a few seconds. Wowhead says that it is melee range of its target, but I can't confirm yet if it is any target in melee range or just the one it has targeted.

Well I hope this guide is helpful and helps you keep your fur clean and shiny!

OMG this rocks

So, I was reading BBB today and saw this

It was apparently done by Tesh and I must say he freaking rocks!

And while it is a NE druid in the picture, it totally captures the attitude correctly of what I have been thinking.

I love the fact I don't wear plate with all the other guys. I love tanking in the buff so to speak!

However, it is sort of tough in a raid environment because if you are a plate tank, you might have to roll against 1-2 other guys for plate gear. Me, I have to roll against the 5-6 rogues we currently are running with and the 5-6 people who want my weapons. That is the only thing I really hate about the new loot system. Plate tanks still don't have as much competition as us bears for gear. Plate tanks only roll against other plate tanks. Bears roll against rogues and cats. So I'm just saying it can be tough.....

Anyway, I just had to share the picture because it is too awesome!

Working Life....

Oh, and I found out yesterday morning that my company is going to be bought out by ExxonMobil.

Article

Ugh, I liked my smallish company. So who knows what will happen. I expect to have a job, but will I like it in the long run?

Sigh

Happy Holidays everyone.

ICC

So the patch has hit and everyone is excited. After my group cleared ToC10 last week, we went and tried ICC10.

Woah! Things didn't go all that well. Our best shot on Marrowgar was 54%. However, I think our biggest issue was we only have 1 ranged person. And for whatever reason, I can't seem to buy a ranged person. When we first walked in, my OT was right next to me and I was still getting 1 shot. Holy cow. I have 32K armor with 25% dodge (after the chill) with 50K health. I don't think that is chump change.

I wasn't expecting to just waltz in there and down him, but I sure wasn't expecting what I got.

And now, every blog I read and most sites talk about clearing the first 4 bosses. And all I can wonder is what have we done wrong that they did right?

Then, I went back on Sunday with my "Alt" group. Me on my Elemental Shammy for dps. And this time we had 3 ranged dps, 2 melee dps, 3 healers and 2 tanks. We ended up moving one of the melee to make a third tank and still the best we got was 38%.

I'm just frustrated. So, instead of running ToC10 this week, I have scheduled ToGC10. Just to try to push the limits of my raiders. But I wonder how much difference that will make. I have pretty decent gear and there aren't any upgrades from ToGC10 for me really. I could upgrade my staff one notch, but otherwise, there isn't much. Same for most of my group. So I know the gear is slightly better, but will it give us the edge to kill Marrowgar?

Anyone have any better suggestions?

T9 set

So I have now gotten my 4 piece set of T9 and my question is, where is the damn armor pen? The set is pretty good for bear and I'm happy about that, but I was hoping to use it for cat as well. The whole set only has 59 armor pen. What the heck?

I know to get some really great damage out of cat that is the stat I need the most. So I guess I have to turn to non-set pieces to get it. And yes, I know there are quite a few leather items out there with armor pen, I just am getting pissy about not having very much on the T9 set. I was running around as kitty in ToC25 the other night and was only pulling around 6K dps, but I also only had 20% armor pen. And hit rating....I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of it. Yesh.... I'm almost 100 points over cap and I'm not gemming for it. I'm wearing gear based on the other stats.

So my quandary is, why does our gear seem to have so much hit but not near enough armor pen?

Bearcat wanderings

So as I have mentioned before, I am an officer in my guild and I like my guild. But lately I'm feeling a bit caged. I feel like a tiger pacing in my enclosure.

My guild has been clearing ToC10, Ony10 and Ony25 for several weeks now but last night we finally made progress on ToC25 and downed 3/5. And hopefully we will go back tonight and finish it up!

Now here is the thing, we have some really good players, and then we have some really not so good players. Being a casual guild, it is hard to get all really good players when we don't require attendance. I'm happy we are downing ToC25 but I want more.

I want to try heroic modes, I want challenges but I just don't know that there are enough people in my guild that are up to it. I don't even have to do ToGC25 at this point. I would settle with ToGC10. But I don't want to /gquit either.

So I plan to try and put together a group soon. Til then, I pace restlessly.

Question for the interwebs....

I have a non-WoW related post for y'all that maybe ya'll can help me with.

I created my dad's website for him and I have submitted the url to the different search engines. I started the website back in July and that is when I submitted to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. And I can see that Google has never seached his site.

Also even when I search for specific keywords that are listed, he doesn't show up in the first several pages. Does anyone have any suggestions to help with showing up higher in the search list? Especially on Google?

In case anyone is interested, the address is http://www.catfishgarysguideservice.com/

He is starting the guide service to help pay my mother's medical bills so I would appreciate any help I can get!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Work....

So I'm back at work again and I have realized that not much has changed up here and that a trained monkey can still do my job. Ugh. When you spend your day going Click, Click, Click it is boring as hell.

On the raiding front, it seems my guild is doing a few interesting things. We are running 25 man ToC, but several of the people in my guild can't seem to find their keys to save their life. When we have hunters who can't out damage me as a bear, or my Pally offtank, what the heck is going on. Now understand, they are in purples, but wow.

Then we are running 10 man ToC weekly as well, and clearing it but not a single useful thing for me has dropped. Sad....

Now on to the interesting thing. We have tried ToGC10, and while we aren't getting very far, we have a couple of people in the run who after a couple wipes starts saying they want to do something else cause this isn't fun. No, wiping isn't fun, however, you do have to do some of it to attempt new methods and such. I don't understand what the heck they are thinking. If you sign up for a progression raid, be prepared to wipe and try again.

There seems to be this attitude in my guild recently that I don't understand. I don't know why people want to just blow thru kills quickly with the experienced and geared people and not take the people that need the gear and experience. It is basically badge farming. And while I like my badges, there needs to be balance to get new folks in and still get badges.

My guild is kind of stuck in the middle. We have quite a few very good raiding people in the guild, who do the research and work on their toons. But we are also a casual guild, so sometimes we have people along on raids who don't put in the same kind of work. And while I would prefer not to take the people who haven't put in the work to at least research the fights and gotten the gear from badges and heroics to upgrade their gear, it isn't possible to fill a 25 man if we don't take some of them. And I want to do 25 mans and I want to do the heroic 10 mans. I want to put in the work but I don't know that we even have 10 that are willing to put in the work for 10 man heroic. So while I'm an officer in my guild, I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't prefer to raid in another guild. So my question is, at what point do you consider moving your main to another guild to raid in, but keeping my other toons in my current guild?

Wow.....

Okay, well, sorry for the long long delay, life has been entertaining, but not really in a good way. I'm doing better and should be back at work in the next few weeks. I didn't end up mending quite as quickly has planned, but then nothing ever goes according to plan. However, I am becoming quite fond of gaming on the laptop while in bed. Got a nice little tableish thing to put it on and a lapboard with the mouse on the right side and my G13 on the left. Quite comfy!

Wow-wise, been raiding TC10, I haven't seen any good upgrades drop for me yet, but hopefully soon. We have TC25 scheduled for this week, and I can't wait.

I have also been leveling a shaman. I have to say, I'm quite surprised by how fun Elemental is. She is currently 78 so she should hit 80 soon.

I am still working on the article for the 10 man only gear. Should be soon.

Ugh . . . I'm going to be Bald Bear Belly soon.....

So in the past couple of weeks since 3.2 hit, I haven't been able to run much at all. I have passed a kidney stone (ouch) and had the stomach flu. And when I'm that sick, I just don't like to sit at the computer for very long.

Now, on Monday, I am having a total hysterectomy. So I will be in the hospital for 3-5 days and won't be feeling up to tanking for a while. Damn. Well, at least I should have time to do dailies during my 6-8 weeks at home. Gold for the win!

I have been trying to compile a list of gear from 10 mans that would be upgrades and I hope to have that posted up here soon. If not before Monday, then probably the next week.

Patch 3.2

So the patch hit last night and I got to play around with it a bit. We went and ran the new 5 man dungeon on normal 4 times and heroic once. I am shocked that my dodge went down quite as much as it did, but that could also be because I replaced my Alchemist's Stone that had stam and dodge for the The Black Heart which has 126 stam and a chance to grant 7056 armor for 10 seconds. I don't know what the internal proc rate is for the armor bonus, but I will say I saw it quite a few times last night. Of course, the first time it happened my whole group was a bit confused. It gives an animation of wings above my character, and since we didn't have a pally in the group, we really didn't know what was going on.

I don't know how much cat dps has really gone down yet. I will have to wait and see. I tanked last night or did shadow dps on my priest so maybe this weekend I will have time to find out.

Not much changed on my Disc priest. I know Penance got a longer cooldown, which sucks, and Prayer of Healing got nerfed. But as far as actual changes, not much happened to change my rotation.

I played around on my 56 shaman a bit with the totem bars. I think that is just sweet!! I love that feature! I have been leveling her in my spare time and I fully intend for her to be my next 80.

I am hoping to get some more play time this evening, but with real life stuff going on too, I don't know that I will.

Wait, what happened here?

So I have been getting some drops out of 10 man Ulduar lately and they appear at first glance to be nice upgrades for bear. However, while my attack power, haste, crit, and dodge go up, my health goes down. I have gotten the Valorous Nightsong head and shoulder pieces. And it kills me that it actually lowered my health approximately 2000 over what I was currently wearing. (I think I switched out my hands too, but since I can't seem to remember what the drop was that I switched the T7.5 hands for, ...)

So now the question becomes, should I sacrifice health for the other stats? Now, understand the following, I am not an enchanter, or a blacksmith, or a jewelcrafter so I don't have a huge health pool to start with. I only have about 32.5K unbuffed these days so when I switched those couple of pieces out and dropped below 30K, I nearly had a heart attack. I am not happy with my health pool being at 32.5K to start with, let alone falling below that. However, I do have about 42% dodge and 40% crit with around 6ooo AP.

But still, if your armor, dodge, AP, crit and haste all went up, would you sacrifice health?

It's Hammertime!!!

I don't know exactly what the title has to do with the post, but I found it funny. Okay, so I read the Q&A about druids.

And I have to agree with GC right now, I think bears are in a pretty good place. I haven't run across anything that I just couldn't tank, not that I'm always the best tank for the job, but I don't just suck ass. Which is nice. Savage Defense is working pretty well for me, don't really have any complaints.

I can regularly pull 5-6K dps in 10 man Ulduar while in catform depending on the movement involved. While the rotation is quite complicated, I find that it makes me happy that I can kick ass and be #1 in dps. And I still do Battle Rezes and Innervates. I like being very good at my spec, I'm not the best Feral out there, but I am still quite good. And I work very hard not to be a "low contributor".

And I find it interesting that in the next patch they are moving the mana reducing talents to King of the Jungle. I find this interesting because in my feral cat spec, I have both King of the Jungle and Primal Tenacity, however in my feral bear spec, I have neither. So moving the mana reduction does not help me in the slightest. It does however make me rethink my talents for bear. So now with GC talking about wanting to make it even cheaper to switch forms, that makes me very happy. I would love for it to be less costly seeing as I only have 5500 mana typically.

And as far as the Boomkin changes, I think it would be great for them to be more viable in PVP, but I have never actually played that spec, so I don't have a lot to comment on.

As for Resto, that is my wife's department and I sure know I don't have even half the knowledge she does concerning healing as a Tree so I'm not even going to try and comment. However, I do have to say, I love to arena with her on my Disc Priest. We make a damn good healing team! And if they changed it so that Restos spent less time in Tree of Life form, I think I would totally miss seeing the Tree more!

Now, other stuff going on. Well, I raid Ulduar on weekends with my feral druid, but I have now started raiding Ulduar with my Disc Priest during the week. It is a totally different perspective. And it is one I'm enjoying. Not that I would ever change my main, but it is nice to play around with healing some. And I like the Disc Priest mechanics better than healing on my Druid.

Anyway, back to work for now. Rawr!

Rawrcast

So, I listen to podcasts at work to make the time go by quicker. And I just have to say, if you don't listen to Rawrcast with Stompalina and Hafrot, you should. The are funny funny stuff. But it is not for little kids! Give them a listen if you get a chance!!

http://rawrbitchrawr.blogspot.com/

I'm back.....

So after driving 3600 miles in 11 days, I am back home. And I had a great time, but I am extremely happy to be home and in my own bed! Some things I have to say. The Denver Zoo is quite nice. It was cool to see Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Arctic Foxes, Arctic Wolves and such. We don't exactly have those in zoos in Texas.... A little too hot for them. Dickinson, ND was very nice. Not too hot, not too cold. And the family reunion was a lot of fun. I really like my wife's side of the family there! We then drove to Little Chute, WI. And let me say, nothing but farmland for 800 miles from Dickinson to Little Chute. We met up with some guildies in Little Chute and had a great time! Even got to go see Lambeau Field in Green Bay. Plus got a lot of cheese. I love cheese!! Overall, it was a great vacation, but now I need to rest up!

We ran into Ulduar on Saturday and Sunday and got all the way to Yogg-Saron, and that was a lot of fun. We didn't get Yogg down but then, we really only tried twice because we were running out of time. I think we will get to Yogg quicker next week. I am still trying to catch up on all my reading about patch 3.2 so I will let you know if I have anything to say about it soon!

Vacation Time

Well, we cleared Mimiron yesterday, and that was a lot of fun. We worked on General Vezax for a bit, but just didn't have the dps and he was healing too much. I think we might have it next time, but starting tomorrow and for the next 2 weeks, Steaky and I are on vacation.

Traveling to Denver, CO to visit my brother and a couple of friends, then off to Dickinson, ND for a family reunion, and then we will be heading to Appleton, WI to meet/visit with some of the other officers in our guild. I can't wait to meet them! We have been chatting for over a year now, but none of us have met in person, so this should be fun!

Anyway, I figure by the time I get back, we should have some more news on the state of bear tanking. Ya'll keep it furry!!

A Bearable Situation

So, like many of you, I do try to keep up on my daily blog reading. I find it interesting lately though that most of the feral bloggers haven't much to say. While the Resto bloggers are still chatting it up and disscussing different things, not much has changed for a while for Bears. And that is a good thing and a bad thing.

It is great that things aren't changing and that means that we aren't too messed up right now. But it also means that nothing real exciting is happening either.

My guild has been running 25 Man Ulduar during the week and my 10 Man Ulduar runs on the weekend. Our 25 man has been plagued by many difficulties. First it is summer, hence fewer online players. So we matched up with a similar guild to run 25 mans. And while this is nice so we have enough players, when our top ret pally can out heal 3 of their healers using only his Judgement of Light, something is mighty wrong. I saw this on the WWS (Eff. Heals) for defeated bosses. He was 4th on heals and also 3rd on damage done and 4th on DPS. I was kind of shocked. Then take into account that their GL is their MT, and while he is okay, he isn't what I would consider a great tank. He dies every fight at least once, and isn't that great at holding aggro. I mean, come on!

However, my 10 man is going well. We had missed several weeks due to people being out of town, so we finally got down Hodir, Freya, and Thorim on Sunday. Only took us 2 attempts each which isn't bad since we had never seen the fights before. We would have taken down Mimiron, but we only had 1 ranged dps, a Boomkin, and 4 warriors, so that kind of hurt us. Hopefully this weekend we will have our Lock. But then we go on break again for 2 weeks, but I can't complain too much since it is actually Steaky's and my vacation that is messing stuff up there.

Anyway, not too much exciting happening for us.....

Just a little fun!

New forms

As I'm sure you all have seen by now, there are new forms for cat and bear.  I have seen them all and they are definately different.  And above all else, I am soooo glad I'm a Tauren!!  I really like their forms better.  

I think it is funny that the Tauren cat forms look male and the Night Elf cat forms look female. If you have the designs in game, why can't males have the Tauren manes and females have the NE cat design? I mean, come on, why would a male NE druid want to look like a female cat?  But seriously, why do the Taurens look like male lions and NEs look like female lions?  I admit the colors on the NE forms don't scream female lion, but the look of the cat does.  And what is the deal with the jewerly?  

Anyway, just a thought for the day.  I can't wait to play around with the different colors and decide which one looks best on Ylee!

Where's the Cloth??? And Leather???

So my guild ran Nazz 10 last night  for a few of us that have alts that are Naxx ready.  We did Spider, Plague and Military and the ONLY cloth drop happened on the 4 Horsemen.  Gown of Blaumeux dropped which is nice for my Shadow set, but dang, not a single healing upgrade.  And I can't even wear it yet because I'm not hit capped and it lowers my hit from what I have now.  

And on my Bear, I haven't seen a single leather drop in Ulduar yet.  Dang it!

Anyway, I'm going to be tanking Ulduar tonight on my Bear and finishing up Naxx tomorrow night. So I'm hoping for some upgrades!!

Tanking stuffs

So I have been working with a couple of new tanks recently, mainly because I'm playing my priest in heroics but I have a few things I would like to mention.  

Make sure your party knows the kill order and that it takes a few seconds for a warrior or a druid to get AOE threat on all the targets.  And if you are the tank, make sure you move and really piss off the ranged casters or rangers (think Nexus).  There is nothing worse than having those guys shoot the crap out of your healers in the back cause you didn't grab them well enough.  

If a target starts running toward someone else, use your taunt button, that is what it is there for.  Don't rely on running after the target, if it gets to your clothie before you get to it, you might be down one clothie.

If a pull or two goes haywire and you struggle to get control of everyone, understand Sh!t happens and learn from it.  Don't throw in the towel on tanking just because of a bad pull or two.  Understand, WE HAVE ALL HAD THEM.  

I know some people don't understand that tanking is more than just running in there and grabbing aggro, but it is.  You have to learn the ins and outs of all the instances better than anyone else in the group.  You have to know what mobs to kill first, what mobs to CC, and where to stand and where to move if you have to move.   

Tanking is about being prepared ahead of time and putting in the time to learn stuff to do it right.  My friends say I make it look easy, well, that is because I do the research and put in the time so that I know what to expect.  Plus I have tanked every single heroic in both WotLK and BC as well as raids and nothing prepares you better than practice!!

Ramblins

So things on my druid are going pretty well these days.  I am pretty happy with the state of bear tanking and cat dps.  I have now specced feral/feral and love it.  My wife however feels that I should keep all this tree gear in case I ever need to heal.  I'm a BEARCAT not a tree, I keep telling her.  I have run quite a few heroics lately on my Disc Priest alt and love it.  I even have been doing some shadow which is different.

Things have been sort of slow on the raiding front, but that is to be expected this time of year.  Everyone wants to go on vacation, or at least spend more time outside.  I can't blame them, I do too!!  We are even taking my mother to Scarborough Faire this weekend as a belated Mother's Day gift.  And of course that is the day my guild chooses to go into Ulduar 25 for the first time.  We have all been on 10 man, but this is the first 25 man we are trying and I'm not going to be there.  /cry

Ah, well, real life and mothers first!  And Lord knows, if Mother ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!! 

The Siege of the Antechamber....

So this past week saw my 10 man group take down the first 4 bosses on Thursday night and then we took down Iron Council, Kologarn and Auriaya yesterday.

Can I just say wow, they nerfed the crap out of the first 4 bosses.  We one shot Ignis and XT and didn't really have much issue with people going down.  I was cat the whole night since my buddy Gurggy the Mighty Warrior was there to tank.  We downed the first 4 bosses in less than 2 hours and called it a night.  It was a lot of fun!  And I am still running top on damage and still helping with innervates and rezzes.  But Sunday I get to tank again!!

Now on Iron Council, at first we had me on the middle and small guys but I just couldn't get the little guy to move so we switched it up.  We had the DK tank (Eximius) on those two while I took Steelbreaker.  He was a lot of fun to tank.  Just remember to call out those Fusion Punches and keep an eye on the ground below him.  I will also mention that if you position your camera correctly, you can see is animation for the Fusion Punch and it is easier to call out so you aren't just watching his cast bar.  Steelbreaker will raise his arm above his head and it gets this bright white glowing spark and that is when he is casting the Fusion Punch.  

Once he was down, I grabbed Molgeim and tanked him.  Make sure someone is dispelling his Shield of Runes and that you move him forward just enough to get him out of the Rune of Power he puts on the ground but stay close enough your melee can stand in it.  Also, when you see the Rune of Death, run!  Don't pass go, don't collect 200 dollars, just get out of there!!  Those hurt if they somehow get combined with him standing on his Rune of Power and hitting you!!  I was made into a bear rug.  /shiver

Then we moved on and wiped out Brundir, and he is pretty easy as long as you run from his Overload and when he hovers in the air, stay away from him while he wanders around the room.  He was really easy to kill if you watched those things!

After this we went to fight Kologarn.  Now, let me pass on something we didn't know ahead of time.  YOU CAN RUN OFF THE EDGE OF THE PLATFORM.  So if you are tanking him, don't run too close and fall off!  ;)  I'm not the one who discovered this but I was laughing way too hard when he said it in vent.   Other than that this guy is a pansy.  His adds he calls are a joke and easy to take down all by my bear self.  Just keep an eye out for his evil eye (laser beams!)

Now we moved on to Auriaya, who really wasn't bad either.  We cleared some trash and got her set up and Eximius pulled for me and I tanked her.  We just kept moving her around the corners so that when her Sentry respawned Eximius could take care of it quickly.  It went quite smoothly.

We then moved onto Hodir but we really didn't have time to try more than like 3 times since some folks needed to get going.  But I think that was a pretty good week!

Four down... 9 More to go.

So my 19 man downed the first 4 bosses in Ulduar last weekend.  It was a lot of fun!  And we got two of the three bosses down for the Iron Council so I know we will get it down this weekend.

We got Flame Leviathan, Razorscale and XT down on Thursday.  Then Sunday we came back and got Ignis and worked on the Iron Council.  

One little hint that may be helpful for Razor is that there are two types of balls of fire that fall from the sky.  Blue balls and Orange/Blue balls.  Now, we all know there are certain things in life you don't want, and this continues to be true.  IF YOU SEE THE BLUE BALLS COMING YOUR WAY, MOVE!  The Blue balls put the blue flame on the ground and kill you if you stand in it.  The Orange/Blue Balls are the fireballs and while they deal damage, they aren't as big a deal.  So, please notice Blue balls = bad, not that you probably didn't already know that!  ;)

What I did learn on XT was that every little bit helps.  I used my Tranquility during the second Tympanic Tantrum and that really helped with the healing for my group.  And I was still top DPS with 5100 so I was happy I could help heal the group and put out the dps.  Also, if you don't know, there is now trash in XT's room that you can pull before you engage XT.  This helps a lot! 

And on Ignis, when you are in the pot, use your healthstones, potions, and lifeblood if you have them.  This will make things much easier on your healers.

Currently I am full cat spec and running with Glyph of Rip, Glyph of Shred and Glyph of Savage Roar.   I am really enjoying cat right now but I also enjoy tanking.  I'm not so fond of healing, but I know that my guild runs short of healers occassionally so I can't just make my two specs bear/cat but I think it would be lots of fun. 

Ulduar

So my guild normally runs 25 man raids, but before we do that, most of us like to run the 10 man versions to get an idea of how things work.  We do this because we are a casual guild and we don't just invite the best of the best for raids.  That being said, we have composed 2 10 man raids and are giving it one heck of a go.  

My groups name is Short Bus All-Stars (SBAS) and we have been running 10 man Naxx together for months now.  The other group is He-Man Woman Haters (HMWH).  Yes, we are odd with our names.

Last Thursday, SBAS went into Ulduar for the first time missing a few of our regulars so we picked up a couple of other folks.  Well, Flame Leviathan is a lot of fun and we downed him pretty quickly.  We then moved on to the trash outside Ignis and I got 1 shot.  Needless to say, I was a bit shocked but we tried a couple of times, but we just didn't have the dps.  So we decided to give Razorscale a go.  That fight is pretty simple and fun also but again, we didn't have the dps for it and a couple of people had to go so we called it a night.

We went back in on Sunday and started with Razorscale.  That was a lot of fun and we were able to get it pretty quickly and he went down!  Yeah!  Then we cleared all the trash in front of Ignis and gave him a go several times, but we had trouble coordinating the iron constructs, we would get them molten and I would take them into the water, but then couldn't get the damage needed to for them to explode.  So the trash ended up respawning before we got him so we moved on to XT.  Now this was an interesting fight since we only had 1 ranged dps.  So to compensate, Steaky respecced to Boomkin and our Pally started healing.  Still, I think this fight would have gone much better had we had more ranged dps to get the adds down quickly.  That was our biggest problem.  On one of our attempts we got him down to 40% with 3 minutes and 40 seconds left, but then the adds just got too much.  Hopefully our ranged dps folks can make it this week.

Overall, some things I learned were:

1.  On Razorscale, keep moving, don't stop.  I seemed to die every time I stopped moving for some reason and it wasn't just the blue flames on the ground.

2.  On the trash outside Ignis, the flame tornado mobs need to be tanked on either side of the wall and be prepared to move away from the tornados they spawn.

3.  Scorch hurts. Don't stand in it longer than you have to.  

4.  Kitty dps on the heart of XT rocks, but keep a lookout for pummelers.

and most of all,

5.  Get a motorcycle for FL, that is way too much fun!!!

P.S.  Got my Glyph of Savage Roar.  Ouch!  But my priest finally got a Book of Glyph Mastery and learned Glyph of Penance.  Now if only she was 80.

It's Hereeeeeee........

Well, Patch 3.1 is here and I'm happy about that.  

However, I'm pissed as hell at Curse and Wow Interface.  I don't ever click on the damn ads, I never even look at them.  All I want is a nice easy way to update my addons regularly.  And when I tried the Curse one, all it did was not update things and give me errors.  I DON'T want that damn thing.  So now I'm back to manually doing it. 

Growl, I am not a happy bear.

Glyphs

From the 3.1 Official Patchnotes : 

Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

This change is a wonderful thing for Bearcats everywhere.  This means that if you truly need to be one or the other for a fight, you can swap glyphs in Ulduar and give that much more help to your raid.

Therefore, in my case, I can carry stacks of different glyphs:

Glyph of Maul

Glyph of Growl

Glyph of Savage Roar

Glyph of Shred

Glyph of Frenzied Regeneration

Glyph of Rip

Glyph of Mangle (situational, but I like it)

Most of the time I will choose glyphs so that I don't have to switch, but if my raid wipes a few times, it might be nice to give them a little extra help on my part.  Whether that be as bear or as cat, I want to do my best to kill that boss.

I will probably run with Glyph of Maul, Glyph of Savage Roar, and probably Glyph of Shred most of the time, but having the option to switch them out is very nice.

I personally have an Inscriptionist so I can make these much cheaper than you can buy them. I know that it will take me a while to learn all the new ones, but I will get them.  So ya'll should find yourself a nice Inscriptionist and see if you can trade them something worthwhile so they will hook you up!!  

Am I ready?

So I have been reading stuff on Ulduar as I'm sure most folks have at this point.  And I'm beginning to wonder if I'm all that ready or not.  Currently I usually have about 43K health with 34K - 36K armor and almost 50% dodge buffed.  Now, I know that I could have way more HP if I gemmed for stamina, and while a large health pool is nice, I still prefer to dodge when I can.  

So with the changes that they are making to bears, my armor and health will go down considerably, but I will have Savage Defense.  Well, normally my AP is close to 6K and I have almost 50% crit so it should be up quite a bit.  

I have most of the gear I could want for bear other than a drop or two from Sarth 2D but that is because of all the guild changes lately that we just haven't gotten everyone back up to that same skill level we had in January.  

And I'm actually considering stocking materials to make Flask of Stoneblood after the patch hits. Especially since it has now been buffed and my HP will be taking a hit.  I think this may be more useful than the Flask of Endless Rage since it would only add 45 to my shield.  

I also have about 25 Fish Feast to share and I have mats to make another 20.  I also have 18 Blackened Dragonfin and I'm going to go fishing to get the mats for more.  So I'm hoping to be ready to hit Ulduar when the patch hits.

I am going to make a bunch of the other foods too and put them in the guild bank.  Plus I regularly put all sorts of elixirs in there.  Since raiding is definately not a one person thing, I try to do what I can so my guildies can be ready also.

Overall, I think I have a few more things to get before Ulduar, but I think I'm close to ready.

Are You?

You want me to do what?

So last night it was time for 25 man Naxx again....  And I have convinced a friend to come back and play on our server and he was specced tank.  So I was going to roll Kitty.  But then the unspeakable happened.... We  Were  Short  Healers.... dun dun dun......

So I specced tree and tried to figure out what the hell was mapped where and who I was supposed to be healing.  As I have said before, this is normally my wife's job.  But I thought I would give it a shot since I have been collecting all of this gear for healing.

So 2 Trees, 2 Priests and a Pally walk into Naxx for some healing action......

So the Spider wing goes fine, no issues there.  

On to the Plague wing, starting Noth and people get cursed and I'm told to Remove Curse..... Shit I don't have that set up in Healbot or on my bar.....  And neither do the two mages...Wipe.  So we rez and go back and now I have Healbot set up and the mages have Decursive going...... and Noth goes down...Yeah!  However, I got Healbot set up for Remove Curse but forgot to check to make sure that my CTL button was mapped correctly on my speedpad.  Had to map that in the middle of the Noth fight..... thank goodness that the G13 let me do that!

Okay, onto Heigan and the dance.  I learned a VERY important lesson.  Screw everyone else, don't heal them, just dance.  Needless to say I was trying to heal and dance at the same time and I died, and I never die on the dance when I'm melee or tanking.  So, no healing while dancing...got it.

Moving on to Loethab.  We are all still buffing and getting ready and a couple of us were still in the hall when someone pulled.  So a hunter, mage and myself get locked out of the fight.  And I thought surely I could keep the three of us alive.  WRONG. Damn it I suck.  I hate the friggin' 3 second healing window!  All three of us died.  Argh.  Well at least the rest of the group got him down. 

So on to Patchwerk and I'm assigned to the MT, which is good since he will need less healing.  Yeah!!  But one of our priest healers and his mage wife had to go to bed, so we are down to 4 healers.  Yeah, we just didn't quite have the healing to get it done, but I don't think I sucked that bad!!  I was able to keep my tank up so I am happy about that.

Overall I think it was a good run, we went and did VoA pretty quick after we left Naxx.  Several times I had to ask her, "Honey, how exactly am I supposed to heal this?" or "What the hell am I supposed to do?"   Don't get me wrong, I'm really not one of those bears.....  but I just don't have her knowledge of the best way to heal a tank on Patchwerk or really anything else.  And I keep forgetting to use Lifebloom.  oops, maybe I really should stick to Bear!  

BRK

My first was a female dwarf hunter, and the first WoW blog I ever read was Big Red Kitty  years ago.  To him,  I give the Feral salute

/ROAR

Branching Out

So last night a few of us in guild decided to do some BGs and we were going to do arenas, but we never quite made it to that.  It was a lot of fun.  However, I have a confession to make.....

When we PVP I respec to Tree.  I know, I know, I should be ashamed.....  I swear I miss my fur the WHOLE time.  That bark is just itchy.

However, I have to say that I'm really beginning to get the hang of it I think.  I was able to heal myself through a rogue attack until help could get there and kill him.  That is making progress.  You see, I have never had to heal in all of my 80 levels.  Only in the last few weeks have I been trying to heal as a Tree in PVP.  I have always carried a Tree with me.  AKA, my resto druid wife, so this is all new to me.

We won every BG we entered and even got a Prot Warrior friend the Ironman achievement so he was happy.  I got about 12,000 honor for the night so I'm working my way up to another PVP piece.  I'm thinking maybe cloak.  Our goal is to get me used to healing so that our arena team would have 2 healers.  So I'm trying and slowly getting better.

But I do have to say that it is depressing that she can out heal me twice over.  And I'm doing everything I think I can do, so back to the ole drawing board.  But then, she is an old Sequoia Redwood and I'm just a little sprout of a Tree.

Glyphs and the Bearcat . . .

With the new glyphs that are coming our way, the question becomes, but be a good Bearcat, which ones should we chose?  I want to be a good tank, but I also want to do respectable damage when I'm a cat and since my 2nd spec will be Tree, I only have 3 major and 3 minor glyphs for Bearcat.

Lets look at the choices that I would actually consider.  These are the major glyphs as the minor glyphs aren't changing.

Glyph of Barkskin - reduces the chance you will be critically hit by 25% while you have Barkskin up.

Glyph of Berserk - increases the duration of Berserk by 5 seconds.

Glyph of Growl - increases the chance for Growl to work by 8%.

Glyph of Mangle - increases the duration of Mangle by 6 seconds.

Glyph of Maul - Maul now hits 1 additional target.

Glyph of Savage Roar - Savage Roar gives 6% bonus damage

Glyph of Shred - Each time you Shred, the duration of your Rip is extended by 2 seconds, up to a max of 6 seconds.

Well, in my personal opinion, I have to have Mangle and Maul glyphs because they do a lot for me by working together since Mangle increases Maul's damage.  Currently I have these two with the Glyph of Growl so I don't have to worry about my Growl missing.

However, with the upcoming new Glyphs, I am debating between Berserk, Savage Roar, and Shred.  Since I do both Bear and Cat fairly often, I am thinking the Glyph of Mangle works for both, Glyph of Maul for Bear and then the last glyph is for Cat.  But which would be better?

Since the whole goal is to keep Savage Roar going at all times, I would think 6% damage would win almost every time especially since it will have a 100% uptime to get an extra 6% damage.  Berserk would only add 5 seconds onto my time, which works out to be 3 extra global cooldowns which toward the end of Berserk I am sometimes out of Energy anyway so I don't know that I would gain that much.  And extending my Rip 6 seconds total is nice, but really, there is no way it will do more damage in those 6 seconds every 30 seconds than increasing my total damage by 6% will.  

So, I think I'm going to go with Mangle, Maul and Savage Roar.

What are ya'll planning on glyphing?

Tanking Shrinkage....

So, a few months ago, my guild had more tanks than we knew what do to with.  4 Warriors, 1 Pally, 2 DK and 2 Druid tanks.   Now however, we seem to have had a few leave for different reasons and we seem to be short.  We are down to 1 Warrior, 1 DK and 1 Druid with a couple of warriors that are willing to respec.

And so, things in guild have changed yet again.  The old guild leader has taken the reins back over since he is now finished closing his Circuit City store and has less stress and more time again.  And now, some of the officers are considering breaking into two guilds.  One purely for social and one for more hard core raiding.  My question is, what exactly does this buy us?

There would be 2 different GLs, 2 different sets of rules and 2 different banks.  The reasons behind this is so that those who aren't ready to raid or do not want to raid could have a more social guild but those that are more hard core could work on achievements and get ready for Ulduar.  I am okay with this occurring IF there is a process in place for people who weren't ready to raid but wanted to.  

If the people got a trial period.  Say they ran several heroics with a couple of officers and did what we expected of their class.  They could then "try out" at the 10 man raid level.  If they have a couple of successful raids there, they could then move on to the "raider" level of the guild.  To me, all of this could be done within one guild with a ranking system and achieve both goals.

We present ourselves as a casual raiding guild, then to me, that is what we are.  While we definitely want competent people, we don't want to be so hard core that we don't help others become better players.  My cousin is a prime example.  I gave him my old computer, showed him a few things, and I had his class leader speak to him.  He has taken his damage from 1400 to 2700 in a week and is continuing to get better and once he gets more drops it will be even better.  But we never would have known he could do it if we hadn't given him a chance and worked with him.

Right now the decision has been made to just try and work on 10 mans.  So each of our groups gets used to running together so we are ready to attempt 10 man Ulduar when it comes out.  Which brings us back to that tanking shortage and that not everyone fits into the 10 man groups.  However, I am hoping with dual speccing, we might can solve that problem since quite a few folks have a tanking set.  But I guess we shall just have to see how things expand....

Round and Round we go.....

So, I have read the new changes to Swipe and while I am excite about the no target change, I'm a little iffy about the 360 degree thing.  Yes, I am well aware it will be quite nice especially with an 8 yard range, but how exactly does a bear swipe BEHIND himself?  Are we going to do a jump and spin while all 4 paws are extended?  I think that would make a great annimation, however I know it won't happen.

I love Swipe because it generates a great deal of threat and this will make it much more useful on certain fights where you have multiple mobs running at you and you have to try and position yourself  to grab them all.  (I'm thinking Gothic at the moment, but there are others.)  However, I wonder if a cooldown is in our future.  

If they change Swipe by removing target requirement and make it 360 degrees with an 8 yard range, I would expect it to be given a cooldown similar to Thunder Clap (6 seconds).  However, the difference lies in that TC increases time between attacks by 10% for 30 seconds while Swipe does not and TC does 300 base damage while Swipe does 108, and both damages scale with attack power.  So, TC really does a lot more than Swipe does and therefore we might not end up with a cooldown after all.

I am not going to compare it to Concecration or Death and Decay since both are area spells that remain for 8 seconds and 10 seconds respectively.  These are a different kind of spell since any mob who goes into those areas will get hit with them while Swipe is an instant cast.

Overall, I'm not going to get my hopes up yet, but I can't wait to see what makes it to the live realms.

Greatness!

So I went ahead and got the greatness agility card.  I think it will be more helpful in the long run.  And I did see it proc several times last night in Naxx.  I forgot to post the WWS or I could tell you how many times.  It was a shock to see my HP drop when I replaced my Alchemist stone for the Greatness card, but I will get used to it.  I was surprised fully buffed I was only at 42K last night.

And I'm working on a comparison of glyphs for 3.1 but I'm waiting a little longer before I debate those just in case they change.

Nobles Deck

So, I finally got my Nobles Deck put together the other night.  Yeah!  I am so sick of grinding herbs and begging from my friends for theirs just so I could make those cards.  I just couldn't bring myself to pay over 1000 gold per card but I have at least repaid my friends with a other decks and cards.

Anyway, my point is: Which greatness card do I want?

Strength 

Agility

Now, the reason that I ponder this is that since Savage Defense is coming, I may really want that strength.  And if I get the strength card, that will give me 90 strength (210 AP) but when it procs I will get an additional 300 agility because that is my highest stat out of strength, agility, intellect and spirit.  

I have approximately 113 strength and 979 agility in my cat set, but that won't change much with my bear set at the moment.  So even if I choose the strength card, I would still be getting the proc for agility.  To me this is a win win situation.  I could get both stats bumped up, even if one is only when it procs.

What are ya'll thinking of doing?

AP and Crit

So I have been thinking about the upcoming changes in 3.1. I currently sit at about 35K armor, 43K health, 45% dodge, 40% crit and close to 6K AP raid buffed. I know that my armor and health will go down but that my crit and AP will become a lot more important.

So if I am tanking multiple mobs, I know that I will crit enough to keep Savage Defense (SD) up most of the time, and that it would be a 1500 HP shield so that is nice. However, on a single target boss, will 1500 be enough?

If I change out my agility gems for strength gems, am I gaining or losing? My SD shield would be bigger, but my chance to crit would be smaller. So my question becomes, do I want a smaller more frequent shield, or a larger less often shield?

My personal thoughts on this is smaller more frequent. Since the SD shield goes away as soon as you take damage, you want to make sure you have one up as often as possible, therefore, you want it as frequent as you can.

If for instance you have 6000 AP and 40% crit, if a single Boss hits for 5000 per attack (100 attacks per fight, no dodges or misses), and assuming 40% crit means you will have a shield 40% of the time, your damage taken is

5000 x 60 = 300,000 (non shielded)

3500 x 40 = 140,000 (shielded)

for 440, 000 total damage taken

If for instance you have 8000 AP and 25% crit, if a single Boss hits for 5000 per attack (100 attacks per fight, no dodges or misses), and assuming 25% crit means you will have a shield 25% of the time, your damage taken is

5000 x 75 = 375,000 (non shielded)

3000 x 25 = 75,000 (shielded)

for 450, 000 total damage taken

However, from a very generalized look, it doesn't seem to matter much whether you have a large shield with smaller crit or a small shield with larger crit. It seems to average out in the long run. It will be interesting to test this theory and if I have time, I will go to the PTR and play around with different amounts of AP/Crit and see what I get.

Guild changes abound!

So, my guild has had some tough decisions lately.  We had some issues with a couple of folks concerning gear and had to let them go. We don't run with DKP so we expect people to only roll on stuff for their spec/class and not guilt folks into giving them gear.  It has been a royal pain and we have been dealing with it for several weeks now, but at least we can move on as a guild now.

And after we got all of that taken care of, our guild leader decides to step down and quit playing due to stress of game and stress of RL.  I will truly miss him! I think his replacement will do a fine job and we should still be a damn fine guild.  

On a positive note, we won't be raiding 5 - 6 nights a week anymore which will make my home life much better.  This bear needs more tree time!!

Rage against the Machine...I mean Shield

So after reading the 3.1 class changes that have been posted.  One of them has me wondering what is up with bear rage generation.  In the warrior changes it stated

You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.

So my question becomes, will bear druids get the same change?  It was not stated in our class changes that we will, but I would really love to see this change occur for Bear.  There are many times that I end up rage starved when I get shielded.  

During a 10 man run in Naxx, I was tanking Loatheb and the priest shielded me 6 times during the fight and I got rage starved very quickly and had to quit using my special attacks for several seconds.  And since Loatheb is a DPS race, I really wanted to be giving it all I had DPS-wise, but I only did 1270.  This is just an example I had WWS numbers on back before I got some decent gear.

I know that I generate a great deal of rage via Primal Fury and from Natural Reaction, however, we also still generate rage by taking damage.  

The equation is

Rage = [2.5*(Damage Taken)] / (Rage Conversion at Your Level) 

which at level 80 the conversion factor is 320.6 according to WoW Wiki

So the equation is Rage = [2.5*(Damage Taken)] / 320.6

Now the combat log I was looking at doesn't say how much damage was absorbed, but an average hit was between 1700 and 2300, so looking at those two values

Minimum rage generated = [2.5*(1700)]/320.6 = 13.2564

Maximum rage generated = [2.5*(2300)]/320.6 = 17.9351

So if the PW:S is buffed, it can absorb over 5000 damage.  So, since I was shielded 6 times, that would be 30000 damage absorbed or 233.9364 rage that I missed out on.  Just for reference, my Primal Fury generated 450 rage and my Natural Reaction generated 261 rage during the Loatheb fight.  So that 234 rage during the fight is almost the same amount as was generated by a Tier 6, 3 point talent (Natural Reaction) and we are missing out on it!

Therefore, I would love to see Bears get something similar to what the warriors are getting.  This would make Disc Priests a lot more viable when your tank is a druid.  And I love Disc Priests, I think there should be more of them.  Mine is 67!

Growl Update

Okay, so like a bad bear, I didn't actually look up Growl to see it was a spell and so subject to the spell hit cap.  Therefore, go get your Glyph of Growl and then still get melee hit capped and you should be fine!

I also forgot to mention that Signet of the Impregnable Fortress is a great bear ring! So add that to my list!

  

And I am on my way back to training for work on software I already know how to use.  

/sigh

What to wear?

Here you go!

Bear

So I updated my bear list given that I need more +hit than other things.  My growl has missed several times in the last couple of nights and my hit rating wasn't that low I didn't think.  It was right around 180 which I know isn't capped, but since I had not gotten the drops with +hit, I wasn't that stressed about it.  Then I missed my growl twice in a row on Gluth.  It ended up being okay, but it could have been very bad and I wipe the raid.

So I am now going to make it a priority to run heroics so I can get exalted with the Argent Crusade so I can get those feet.  

One thing that I have noticed is that two stats are quite useful for tanking/dps for a feral are expertise (131 cap with PP) and hit rating (263 cap).  However our T7 or T7.5 only has 82 expertise and no hit on all 5 pieces.  This means that we need to gather these stats on other pieces such as our feet, waist, wrists, cloak and jewerly/trinkets.  

Now for tanking, we have a pretty good idea of what should be our trinkets. Darkmoon Card Greatness, Essence of the Gossamer, Indestructible Alchemists stone, and a few others are good.  But the point is we won't have hit or expertise on any of these.

So there are only 4 sets of boots that have either of those stats.  And none that have both of those stats.  Hmmm, that doesn't seem quite right.  I guess that would be why Footwraps of Vile Deceit came out on top.  You can at least gem them for hit.

So, on to the waist.   So here we have 5 choices that have either expertise or hit on them.  And considering them I think I would choose the Belt of the Tortured so that I could get that +hit.  

Wrists have one lovely, lovely piece that has both hit and expertise on it.  The Thrusting Bands.  Get them if at all possible!

Cloaks don't have a lot of choices on this topic.  I personally recommend the Platinum Mesh Cloak that you buy with 25 Emblems of Valor since you have the same stamina as the Cloak of the Shattered Sun and you gain 32 hit and only lose some strength and 1 dodge.  Seems like a really nice trade off to me.

For your neck, I recommend getting Heritage since it had hit on it as well as defense and dodge.  You can get quite a few that have dodge rating on them, and that is nice, but if you are having problems hitting or being dodged/parried, Heritage has both hit and the defensive stats.

So that leaves us with rings.  I think a must have is the Gatekeeper.  It has armor which is still nice but not have to have like it used to be, but it also has dodge and hit rating!  Next up I would recommend the Strong-Handed Ring since it has 28 hit on it and the other stats on the ring would help your threat generation.  (plus when 3.1 comes out, you will want that crit)

Which actually gives you at the end, 150 resilience and 202 hit rating.  Which means, you might want to keep those Boots of Neverending Path for those fights you really need to make sure you don't miss on.  You can always also use Extreme Snapper and Elixir of Accuracy but  you have other foods and elixirs you should be using!

Bad Kitty

So I came across a wonderful new mod called Bad Kitty (BK) that is totally set up for feral forms, both of them.  However, it also works with other druids.  

So last night during Naxx, one of my feathered kin put Faerie Fire up and it automatically acknowledged it on BK.  Worked the same for mangle when another druid put it up so I am really impressed.  I had been trying to find a mod that would do this for both forms and I tried Need to Know and while it was nice, it wouldn't work for other druids' spells.  You can also customize the spells you want shown and the size of the rows.  I also like that it shows a cooldown for Berserk, Savage Roar, and Tiger's Fury in terms of when the cooldown is over so you know when you can use them again without missing a beat.  Go download it and play with it!  

So I just wanted to say

Bad Kitty is the cat's meow!!!!

Gear and Loot ramblings

Okay, so we cleared Heroic Naxx last week for the first time, we were excited.  

The Betrayer of Humanity dropped.  Now we are a melee heavy guild and have been for quite some time.  Now our Raid Leader/Loot Master decides that this is a hunter weapon and therefore the only hunter in the raid should get it.  Understand, we have a lot of people in the raid for which this is a very big upgrade.  Lots of melee still using blue weapons.  But the RL says this in vent and argues with others who try to explain that LOTS of classes consider this an upgrade for them.  But he gives it to the hunter instead of having a roll off like we do for everything else.

Now, last night, we cleared 3 wings of Heroic Naxx; military, construct and spider in that order.  In he spider wing, we were trying to beat the timer, so we were hurrying and apparently the RL (same guy) decided to take his headset off.  So he never heard the MT warrior say, "hey man, I need those gloves" while he and I were still pulling trash to the last boss.  And so he let people roll for off set and gave it away before the MT warrior realized what happened.  The MT Warrior is pissed but as luck would have it, the guy (another warrior) who won the gloves doesn't mind giving them to the MT warrior, so we have to open a ticket and get that taken care of. Okay...done.

And then the RL was too far away when Inevitable Defeat drops and the GL repeatedly says to pass so we can discuss and roll.  However, this one warrior who always gets the high rolls and NEVER passes to someone else even if it is only a minor upgrade for him and a major upgrade for someone else rolls need and gets the item. (he has the full T7.5 and epics and others who have been on the same raids don't have a single piece from Heroic Naxx, LT Share!)  

Well, so now we have to deal with this.  We have another roll off and as luck would have it, the mace goes to the warrior who gave up the gloves to the MT Warrior and he was replacing a blue (Runeblade of Demonstrable Power).  So hopefully that balances out some Karma!

Now, the other issue is we have a group of people in the guild who want loot to be awarded first to those who regularly attend raids.  WTF?  Have they missed the fact we are a casual guild?  Its sign up if you can make it to a raid, not required.  Our loot rules have never said, "those who show up the most get to roll first".  Real life always comes first to us.  This is a game, and yes, while it is nice to have the same people there raid after raid, what if they can only make it twice a week?  Does that mean we shouldn't help gear them up until after everyone else?   And if you show up regularly, you will have more chances to roll on stuff anyway.  And it isn't as though they aren't some of the best geared people in the guild anyway.  They haven't exactly missed out on loot.

And then last night, Origin of Nightmares dropped.  And a hunter wanted it.  And I wanted it for tanking given it is better than my Staff of the Plague Beast.  However, I had said to give it to the hunter but I wanted it next time it dropped since the hunter had a blue.  But it was given to me since it has armor on it and so I have mixed emotions.  I am happy I was given the staff, but I feel bad for the hunter.  I really hope he gets Journey's End tonight!  I got it last week for cat when we downed Kel'Thuzad and he wasn't in the raid and the other hunter had gotten the Betrayer of Humanity so no one else rolled against me.

All in all, Loot is such a head ache.  

And in other news, I went as cat last night for the first 2 wings.  I got up to 3600 DPS on Razuvious but the fights where I have to move a lot or have a lot of adds I can't do quite as well as the ranged with the massive AOE.  Overall for the night, on boss fights I was in the top 10 every time on DPS so that makes me happy.  I didn't do quite as well on the trash pulls but once I get the hang of cat, I might can do better!

Twilight Assist

So we downed Sartherion last night with 1 drake still up.  We initially tried it with all three up just to see, but after 8 attempts the masses were getting restless so we killed 2 of the drakes.  It was quite interesting to see how it all worked together.  

I will say, if you have a choice and you are a bear, don't be put on portal duty or elemental duty.  Too many of the spawn at a time and they get out of swipe range very quickly.  So then you spend your time running around trying to pull them off casters.   Not a good scenerio.  

Post Patch 3.0.8

Ugh, what a mess last night.  Northrend kept going offline....Kicking people off and causing all sorts of issues.  But that is to be expected with a large patch changing as much stuff as they did.  

I did get to log in and found that unbuffed my armor is now up to 32,400 so that is a big jump for me.  I had not been able to get the armor trinkets yet, so the change was a very good thing for me.  I have the Essence of Gossamer and the Indestructible Alchemist's Stone as my trinkets.  The Gossamer procced 10 times during our 25 Man Naxx the other night.  I am actually surprised that it didn't proc more often.  However, between the two, that is 186 stamina and that is a nice chunk of HP.

I actually saw a feral in bear form the other day in Dalaran, he had 37K hit points unbuffed but every single gem socket had a +24 stamina gem in it.  So he had great hit points, but not much mitigation.  He was even wearing the Polar set gemmed with stamina gems.  While I know having a large hit pool is great, it is better if you don't get hit.  Balancing HP and dodge is a good thing, it makes your healers happy if you can dodge 50% or more of the attacks.  Especially on Heroic Patchwerk.

Patch 3.0.8

So the patch is going live today......I can't wait to find out what my armor changes to.  I haven't been able to get the armor pieces for rings and trinkets, so this should actually increase my armor by about 4k.  That is nice.  Prior to the patch, I was sitting at 26.5K armor with 33.5 HP, so I will post tomorrow about the change.

We cleared all 4 quarters in Naxx 25 this week.  I got a new Tunic of Indulgence, and I am quite happy!  I had been running with he Polar Vest, so this is a nice upgrade.

Also, at what point do guilds itemize for tanks.  I mean, it is getting quite close to where the DPS folks can outpace my threat generation even in my threat gear because I am just not getting drops.  Oh well, I guess I will get drops sooner or later.

Bear DPS and Ramblings

So during our 25 man Naxx last night, the best boss dps I was able to put out was about 1750.  Now I am fairly happy with that but the DK tanks can do approx 2600 DPS. Now seriously, what is up with that.  I realize that my guild is not that well geared yet, but our DK tank was in the top 10 DPS, as a tank.  Top DPS was about 4100, but still, it is somewhat frustrating that I can't do more damage.  

And I am well aware that I'm a tank, not a DPSer and that I was still doing about 300 or so DPS more than the pally tank, so I'm good with that.  Plus I have way more armor than the DK but really, only about 4000 HP more.  I really need to start getting some drops on gear!  I keep running heroics for the couple of things that I need, but so far, no luck on the drops.

I have evaluated my gear, and with no buffs at all, I stand at 26.5k armor in bearform with 30k HP.  So with patch 3.0.8 my armor should actually increase to over 30k, maybe 31k.  That will be nice!

25 Mans and Arenas

So, tonight we will be running Heroic Naxx for the first time as a guild.  I will be main tanking with two OTs that are death knights.  They are a couple of really good tanks so I have no worries there. When we ran Heroic Vault of Archavon last night with a PUG, raid buffed I was up to 34K armor, 40K health and 42% dodge.  So I feel pretty good about that and my gear upgrades pretty much come from 25 mans now.

I will buy the legs to the Savage Gladiator's set tonight and that is the last of the 5 main pieces that I need.  Woo Hoo, now to just farm honor for the Hateful accessories.  I'm at 342 resilience before the legs, so I know those will help.  Our 5v5 team is actually ranked this week, I'm in shock.  The ranking on my armory profile says 155th, but if you click on the team and follow it, we are 468th. Not sure of the difference yet.  Oh well, I guess I will figure it out.

Gear Link Updates

Since we are now doing 25 mans in our guild, I got to thinking I needed to update my gear sheets to include them.  This is using Loot Rank.

Bear

Cat