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.