More Blizzcon stuff

By now I'm sure anyone who is reading this little blog has already seen all the major blog coverage of the new features and changes for World of Warcraft. I'm not going to even attempt to recap all of that, head to wow.com or mmo-champion to get all the juicy details.

What I have seen that I like:
- Shakeup in the 'old world' makes leveling interesting again
- Heroic Shadowfang Keep sounds like a blast
- Worgen as playable class, they have an interesting backstory and can be Druids
- Guild leveling sounds interesting
- Path of the Titans/Archeology sounds like an interesting mini-quest game
- Flying mounts in the 'old world'

Things I'm not so jazzed about:
- Goblins

Things I am still not sure about:
- Removing Attack Power, Spellpower, etc from gear and using 'base' stats
- Troll Druids
- Worgen and Goblin Death Knights

EDIT - Just heard that Troll and Worgen Druids get there own unique feral forms! I like that.

Lots of changes

Reposting this from WoWHead -

• MP5 = GONE! Replaced with spirit, which will now be mana regen only—and non healers will have ZERO need for it.
• Spell Power = GONE! Replaced with Intellect, which now grants mana AND spell power.
• Attack Power = GONE! Agility now gives 2 ap for rogues, hunters, shamans, and druids!
• Defense = GONE! Tanks now receive ALL their anti-crit from talents!
• Armor Penetration = GONE! Replaced with "Masteries" through the talent trees!
• Block Value = GONE! Blocks will now be a REAL mitigation stat, preventing a % of incoming damage!
• Soul Shards = GONE! Will be replaced with a functionality more like DK runes, where you can use a "Soul Burn" spell once per shard per battle—and Soul Burn will increase the effectiveness of your NEXT spell a la Amplify Curse. Fears might become Instant, Searing Pains might have free crits, Death Coils might have increased Horrify duration, etc.
• Hunter Mana = GONE! Will be replaced with "Focus", which is similar to rogue energy, but regens faster when you use Steady Shot.
• Hunter Ammo = GONE! Replaced with an item, not a consumable!

WOW!

I mean, damn, I like it being simplified - but good golly. That is a lot of changes.

Blizzcon Time

It's that time of year again - BLIZZCON! I am not going and I am not buying the live stream, I'm just going to be watching the popular websites and checking the tweets from various people I know who are there.

Will we get confirmation of all the Cataclysm rumors? Will we get an announcement of the new MMO they are working on? Playable versions of SC2 and Diablo3?

Soon we will know the answers to all these questions and more...stay tuned.

W T F ?

So - I just say this post...http://www.wow.com/2009/08/14/new-race-class-combinations-datamined/

uhhh - new race/class combinations are speculated

• Human Hunter
• Orc Mage
• Night Elf Mage
• Blood Elf Warrior
• Dwarf Shaman
• Undead Hunter
• Tauren Paladin
• Tauren Priest
• Gnome Priest
• Troll Druid

I'm not yet sure if I like the idea, but my first inclination is that I do. I have never been a huge lore junkie, and this represents the evolving World of Warcraft. Why wouldn't some of those races learn to be new classes? Maybe we have learned from each other in the Horde and Alliance. Maybe we shared techniques and skills with the other classes and learned to adapt our race to thsoe new skills.

Most of what is listed - if true - actually can kinda make sense, except maybe the Tauren Paladin. I just don't see the Tauren buying into the power of The Light.

Now, I tend to play the Tauren and it is the inspiration for the name of the blog, and I am intrigued by the idea of a Tauren Shadowpriest as an option. I have never played a 'clothie' and maybe that could be an excuse to do it. The idea of leveling another toon does not inspire me, however.

Blizzcon is coming next week and I expect we will see this either confirmed or denied at that time. Hmmm.

this is kinda fun

I'm really kind of enjoying this bear tanking phase I have been in. Tonight I was able to tank Heroic Violet Hold and Heroic Nexus. Not the most challenging of the heroic dungeons, I know. But they were my first two heroic tanking opportunities and I took them.

I really had a lot of fun, I avoided playing feral at all for a long time, but I'm having a blast with it right now. It is just the change of pace I needed to keep me interested in WoW right now.

First up, Violet Hold with 3 guildies. We never did get a 5th to run with us, so we just did it with 4. Pretty smooth run, we got the water boss and the the big eye of the beholder. Handled both with ease and moved on to Cyanigosa, everything was going great until...somehow I shifted out of bear form and couldn't seem to get back in. We wiped on the big dragon. So we regrouped and went again, I hate doing VH the second time. All the same effort and no reward for doing it. We took down Cyanigosa on the second try and I got Staff of Trickery.

So we were willing to keep going and we picked up a DK from another guild and ran through Heroic Nexus. We had a little problem with a fear wipe on the extra boss and wiped twice trying to do Chaos Theory. No loot for me, but it was the daily so I got a couple Emblems.

I had a blast - I'm liking tanking with my face.

Second Skin - MMO Documentary

cool things in patch 3.2

just some observations that I have of patch 3.2 in the limited time I have had to play

- Mongoose effect now shows up on Staff of Feral Furies, very cool combination
- I like being a gray bear/white cat, the new forms are great
- some of the gear in the new 5 man looks great, unfortunately I haven't been able to run it yet
- decreased mount time is very nice

That's it so far, hoping to get some play time in soon and check out the new instance and try my luck with the new gear.

The return of Bumwaller, with a new focus

I recently began playing Bumwaller, my Druid again.

When I resumed playing him again we had a decent percentage of healers, so I decided to try something I have never really done before...feral spec. Specifically, a tanking spec. I spent some fairly significant gold on crafting some gear and buying some BoE pieces that I found on the Auction House.

I found a decent post on pre-raid gearing over at Three Druid Noob that helped me determine what pieces to shoot for.

I also consulted the Big Bear Butt Blogger for help with specs and rotations, still waiting on part 2 of that one.

I gemmed everything up with some +24 stamina gems, then went to the Argent Tournament to get enough Champion Seals to buy a Staff of Feral Furies, and threw a Moongoose enchant on it, pretty high on the tanking lists that I have found. I still need to get some better rings and enchant the gear a little more. And, of course, run some more instances to get some better gear.

With my renewed interest in my Druid, I decided to get the Guardian of Cenarius title mostly because I think it looks awesome over the head of a Druid and also because I really had been neglecting the title gathering on this Druid.

I had done quite a bit of running the Coilfang instances back in the day, so it only took a couple of heroic runs to get Exalted with the Cenarion Expedition. I started out with the intention of soloing Underbog in bear form, which seemed to work just fine for me. The mobs had a hard time hitting me though, so it was hard to generate rage unless I pulled a pack of 3 or 4. I started pulling and playing with getting my fingers used to the new keybindings and was having a lot of fun. Shortly after, Ariki showed up and we decided to try out his new Arms build and we ended up duoing it instead of soloing, we followed up with heroic Slave Pens and then the next night did Underbog and part of Steam Vaults until I hit Exalted. Easy as pie.

Now, the daunting part - I was only Friendly with the Cenarion Circle. I never did much questing out in Silithus, Outland was too much of a draw and I just went to Hellfire as soon as I could. A few days of pretty boring grinding on the Twilight mobs and turning in Encrypted Twilight Texts and I had ripped through the reputation and had my title. I am a happy bear!

I am feeling pretty good about my gear right now and getting more comfortable with bear rotations, I think I am ready to try some Northrend heroics, maybe Utgarde Keep or Nexus. I have successfully tanked regular Culling of Stratholme and the guys were comfortable with my threat generation and we did fine.

So - that wall of text pretty much catches you up with what I have been doing lately. I'm still on the grind and switched things up a little to keep it interesting.