Are group members in an instance group entitled to the disenchanter's services?

With the announcement of the way the new loot system will work in patch 3.3, the wow.com comment section was in a flurry of people debating whether groups are entitled to an enchanter disenchanting their blues. As an enchanter, I can personally relate to this issue: enchanting is not a cheap profession to level, and because enchanting recipes aren't rare these days, we can't charge what we used to be able to charge for them. As such, the main use of our profession becomes making shards out of the unwanted blues in heroics. Many enchanters feel this is unfair, for herbalists aren't expect to share the herbs they gather from herb nodes within dungeons, and ditto for miners with nodes and skinners with bodies. Is this fair? That is the question I want to consider today.

It is important to remember that, unlike the gathering professions, enchanters are taking items that players could otherwise use. If you have a group with no herbalists and you pass by an herb in a dungeon, it makes no difference to your group that it is there at all. If, however, you do a dungeon run with no enchanters, you can sell the blues for a few quick gold. (It's not much, but this ring sells for about five gold, for example) As such, when an enchanter rolls greed on every BoP drop in an instance (as most do to make the process easier), he is denying the other members of the group potential gain, something that does not happen when an herbalist takes an herb. As such, if the disenchanter gives everyone in the group the same chance to gain the item as him by rolling greed along with them, then they have no claim to any shards he gets from disenchanting the items. However, by greeding on the pieces for the purpose of DE'ing them, the disenchanter does in fact owe it to the group to give them back the shards. (Of course, since I tend to get the lowest role, I am always considering keeping a shard for myself, no matter what the roles are. But I digress.)

Still, I have not considered the question of whether the group is entitled to the enchanter's services. Does the enchanter owe it to the group to disenchant its unused BoP items into shards to give back to them? From a purely practical standpoint, he certainly does. Dream shards sell for abut 10 or 15 gold on my realm, much more than a player can get by selling the gear to a vendor (except in rare cases, like 2H weapons). Of course, there is the issue of simply taking the effort to disenchant the item, but this won't be a concern after patch 3.3.

That said, one issue I saw brought up a lot in the comments on the wow.com post was that the inclusion of the new disenchant option on the new loot interface took away the enchanter's choice. Enchanters will no longer have a choice as to whether their profession is taken advantage of, and many enchanters in the comments section of the post were quite indignant that the widespread taken-for-granted-ness of our profession, one that is incredibly expensive to level, is now being institutionalized. To this I say, so what? Yes, disenchanting is probably the most under-appreciated profession-related job in the game, but we aren't going to change that by being stingy with our services.

To those angry enchanters, try to think about it this way: when you enchant someone's gear, how frequently do you do so with your own mats? How frequently do you do with theirs? The fact is that most of our business is done with people who buy their mats off of the AH, and where do they get their mats? Us. Even if you withhold your disenchanting services out of hope to raising the prices of dream shards, other enchanters will gladly disenchant stuff for people, keeping the market flooded. Point is, there is no point in withholding disenchanting services, and though we won't have a choice after patch 3.3, there is no point in doing it now.

How to tank as a druid, Part 3

And now for the meat of druid tanking: how to do it. As you should know, the purpose of tanking as a druid is keeping enemies attacking you, and thus the main focus of this post is generating as much threat as possible. Make sure to read part 1 so you aren't lost when I mention which abilities to use, since I won't put links to each ability when I mention them. With that said, let's talk about tanking tactics. I'll split this into two sections: trash and bosses.

Trash
1 enemy
Since swipe causes more instant damage than lacerate, it's perfectly acceptable to simply use mangle every time it is off of its cooldown and use swipe when it isn't, using maul when you have extra rage (more than 50), but this method won't cause optimal threat. It's good to use lacerate on single-enemy trash pulls (unless the enemy isn't particularly powerful and will thus die too quickly to make lacerate's bleed effect worth it), but the only way you can cause more threat using lacerate than you can using swipe is if you let lacerate tick. Thus you need to be able to use a rotation where you only use lacerate every three seconds, thus allowing it to tick once before you apply it again. Assuming you have improved mangle, here is a rotation you can use until you get to five stacks: mangle, lacerate, swipe, mangle, swipe, lacerate, etc. This allows for six or three seconds between each application of lacerate, allowing it to tick and making it useful. If the enemy isn't dead by the time you get five lacerates on him, just use mangle when it is off of its cooldown, swipe when it isn't, maul when you have extra rage, and lacerate when it is within five seconds of running out.

2-4 enemies
If the enemies are going to die fast (as the likely will) then swipe with mangle should be enough assuming you have a kill order and use mangle on the one you are killing first. Glyphed maul helps quite a bit with these pulls. Just make sure that you are always targeting the enemy that is highest on the kill order so that you cause the most threat to them. Use mangle when it is off of its cooldown, swipe when it isn't, and maul when you have extra rage. If your pull is limited to two or three enemies, try using berserk with mangle. It will make your job a good deal easier.

5 enemies or more
Swipe. That's it. Maul when you have extra rage, but aside from that, swipe.

Bosses
1 boss
You will want to use mangle whenever it is off of its cooldown while keeping a full stack of lacerate on the boss. I usually use mangle, lacerate, lacerate, mangle, lacerate, lacerate, mangle, lacerate, lacerate again if one missed. After that, I use the following thought process for deciding which ability to use:

















After you use each ability, start at the beginning again, and use maul when you have extra rage (above 50). Congratulations! You're tanking a boss!

2 bosses
There are some fights where you will need to tank two bosses by yourself. It's a good idea to start these fights with Berserk and mangle, which will give you some nice starter threat. After that, I recommend switching between the two bosses (the tab key works for this) and using mangle when it is off of its cooldown, lacerate when it isn't, and maul when you have extra rage (glyph of maul helps greatly for two bosses). Thus you will do the following:
Mangle boss one
Lacerate boss two
Lacerate boss one
Mangle boss two
Lacerate boss one
Lacerate boss two
etc.
This has the added benefit of allowing lacerate to tick, causing even more threat. It takes a bit of practice, but it works wonders when done well. If you can't pull that off, then just spam swipe while using mangle on the first boss that needs to go down. It won't cause as much threat, but it's better to cause some threat than no threat.

I don't think any boss fights require you to keep aggro on more than two bosses for an extended period of time, but if they did, I would use the same strategy as I use for medium-sized trash pulls. If you need to keep aggro on a boss and his adds, use swipe when mangle isn't off its cooldown and mangle when it is.

So there you go. Now go get geared up and do the druid class proud!

What I would like to see in Cataclysm. Part 1: Professions

We have all had some time to think about what we would like to see in the new expansion, and I especially have high hopes for this one. Because Cataclysm will remake Azeroth completely, it will basically be WoW 2. This means that Blizzard has many opportunities to do things over and improve the game in a vast number of ways, and I hope they take advantage of those opportunities. I'd like to discuss some specific ways I hope the game is improved, starting with an aspect of the game that I think has become particularly bland since the release of the last expansion: professions.

As I went over in my post on the homogonization of Wrath of the Lich King solo content, professions have become simplified, streamlined, and boring. Perhaps I feel this the most because I am an enchanter, and we get all of our recipes (excluding the odd raid drop) from trainers and the shard vender. That is an incredibly boring way to get recipes, and it quickly grows grindy. As it stands now, almost all professions get the majority of their recipes from some kind of currency vendor or from reputations. Alchemy and Inscription add some variety with their research mechanics, but I want more.

Now granted, I'm not going to attempt to glorify the days of limited quantity recipes in Burning Crusade, where you needed to visit Wowhead, look for all recipes sold by vendors, and fly around to visit all of them, and ditto for recipes that dropped from mobs. I would like a little more transparency in my recipe acquirement, but the current system takes it too far. What I would like is some sort of happy medium. Profession-specific quests are out of the question, for Blizzard has expressed a big aversion to quests that a limited part of the player population can see. But what if we had quests for professions that offered a recipe for whatever crafting profession(s) you have? After your trainer has taught you all they can, they can send you off to some artisan who you help in a way that would vary based on your profession (the only thing that would vary between the quests would be the specific items that would be the goals of the quest, such as a specific potion or enchanting a piece of the artisan's armor, so it wouldn't be that difficult to make different versions of the quests for each profession). The quest text could be very vague to allow for this kind of variation. For example, the artisan could say, "I seek to understand the more benevolent forces of this world. Can you help me with that?" An alchemist could make a spirit potion, a blacksmith could make a blue healadin armor piece, an enchanter could enchant one of the artisan's pieces for spirit, a scribe could make a few glyphs for healing spells, etc. He could also send you out to collect quest items to help him in his research. You would then turn in the quest and get a recipe as a reward. Perhaps an MP5 flask for alchemy, an epic healadin set for blacksmiths, an upgraded mooncloth set for tailors, jumper cables for engineers, etc. This could make acquiring recipes more of a challenge without making it difficult, and it would certainly make being able to craft said item more satisfying.

Another issue I have with professions as they are now is the lack of exclusive benefits for the crafter. I know that balancing these benefits was an issue in Burning Crusade, but as it stands now, every profession with the exception of Engineering and Tailoring gives the exact same stat benefits to the crafter, but it just gives them in different ways. Scroll down to the seventh paragraph in my homogenization post to see an example. While this makes balancing easier, the fact is that it's not enough. Crafter-specific benefits have been simplified to the point of irrelevance, and that makes professions suffer.

But what can be done without throwing the crafting system into imbalance? Many of the simplifications resulted from failed crafter-only benefits, such as potion chugging when combined with an alchemist's stone and BoP crafter armor. While we need simple benefits like the ones in the game right now, we also need benefits that will make the professions more interesting and make choosing a profession a more consequential choice. I'm talking about bringing back that fourth glyph slot for scribes. I'm talking about make the alchemist's stone a worthwhile trinket worth wearing into raids. I'm talking about bringing profession-dependent set bonuses back to crafted BoE starter gear (such as that on the heavy clefthoof set from BC). Yes, these kinds of things are difficult to balance, but when the alternative is homogenization on such a level that it makes professions almost irrelevant to the game, I think it's worth it.

So those are my thoughts on professions. I hope to go over some other aspects of the game I hope to see improved, such as solo-content. Until then, what changes would you like to see to professions in Cataclysm?

My take on "The disappearance of the bear"

There was recently a post of Shifting Perspectives, wow.com's weekly druid column, in which Allison Robert discussed the reasons that bear form druids are underplayed brought up in a thread on the official forums. You can find the post here, and it's an interesting read. It also depressed me badly, because most of the reasons are true, though some are more relevant than others. Being a druid tank myself, I thought I'd give my thoughts on the reasons listed. All of these complaints and the accompanying quotes are taken verbatim from Allison's post; they are not my own creations. The one exception is when I replace words to make them more child friendly, in case any kids are reading this.

Complaint #1: Bears just aren't as visually compelling as other tanks.
"If I'm going to tank, I don't want to stare at a bear [butt] all the time, especially a LARGE bear [butt] that takes up half the screen."

WoW is a very visual game, but I am surprised that players actually have time to look at their characters during raids. With all of the enemies that need to be kept track of, the difficulty of positioning them correctly, and all of the numbers flying across the screen, I wasn't even aware my bear had a butt. That said, the essence of this complaint was about the unchanging bear model and the lackluster animations of bear abilities. I have already gone over ideas of how to make bear form scale with gear in this post, so I'll let you read that if you are interested. I suppose I am biased in this issue, since any dedicated druid will have long given up on their forms being as cool as other people's armor. Like I said, though, time spent in combat leaves little time for admiring your character's shiny gear, and if you really want to see the gear, you can spend time out of combat in caster form. (Doing this also allows you to take advantage of Furor.) Armor is cool, but there is plenty of time for admiring it when you are going from place to place on a mount or waiting between a wipe and the next pull. These times are much more appropriate for thinking about how cool your armor is than during battle. The same goes for animations, which seems to be such a petty complaint to me. Sure, they may not look cool, but all abilities end up looking stale when you use them long enough. I think this is just a case of people trying to come up with a justification for why they think bears aren't fun to play and making one up.

Complaint #2: Gear consolidation had a more demoralizing effect on druids than other tanks. "In BC the tanks talked the drops over and took care of each other. Now I'm fighting half the raid for gear while the other tanks get everything handed to them. That's not fun."

This is a more reasonable complaint. The short version of it is that plate tank gear is plate tank gear, no if's, and's, or but's, but we druids need to share our tanking gear with our kitty and rogue compatriots. This is a result of the gear consolidation of Wrath of the Lich King that made more classes able to use the same gear, which reduced the incidences of unused drops, but had the unfortunate effect of increasing competition for us druids. Now we need to compete with DPS for our tanking gear, and I will admit, that does make it harder to gear up.

The heart of this issue lies in the fact that the three other tanks have their own separate gear from other classes, but we druids, as leather wearers, don't. It would be unreasonable to expect Blizzard to give us unique itemization again, since that doesn't fit in with their new design philosophy, but where can the happy medium be found? Perhaps if Blizzard made more leather armor with high amounts of stamina and less agility, it would mark it as tank gear without making it useless to rogues and kitties. This would allow bears to have a sense of which gear was all their own and which gear the rogues and kitties should get first dibs on. Perhaps this gear could also be more likely to have +hit or +expertise than other gear, in order to make it more like tank gear and less appealing to a rogue, who are also looking for +haste and +armor penetration on their gear (though they won't be looking for armor penetration after the expansion hits). At this point, its uncertain how reforging will affect the way gear is distributed, so any sort of change to the system will need to wait until after Cataclysm hits.

Complaint #3: The need to use DPS leather has resulted in an uncomfortable opportunity cost associated with gearing bear tanks.
"My raid leader's a rogue, and he's sick of sitting around waiting for me to get my stuff. We're going for hard-mode Jaraxxus-25 this week and his three options are a warrior, a death knight, and me. Guess who'll be coming as resto?"

The essence of this complaint is that DPS are bitter about bears taking their gear, and that it takes longer for bears to gear up because they are competing with so many other people. Allison downplays this issue as one that solves itself with time, but I think it's an unreasonable one because we should only be competing with rogues and kitties for our gear. The article mentions competing with hunters and warriors for our drops, but they should be rolling on mail and plate, respectively, and not our leather. Why? Because allowing them to have the same priority for leather that we do gives them an unfair advantage in getting gear. It allows them to role on gear that is below their tier, but we can't role on gear that is above ours. If a warrior can role on plate, mail, and leather, but a druid can only role on leather, then it is unfair to let the warrior role on gear outside of his armor type. In short, a druid should never need to compete with a hunter or plate wearer for gear.

That said, what about the fact that we do still need to share our gear with rogues and cats? Like I said in my response to the last complaint, this would be less of an issue if there was clearer itemization for tank leather and DPS leather, so these two complaints could be solved together. Until then, its a legitimate concern, more so than Allison makes it out to be.

Complaint #4: Early Wrath weaknesses in 5-mans left a bad impression on players, and this bled through to raid content.
"Who's your least favorite tank to heal and why?" "My least favorite in a 5 man is a druid. It's not their fault and I still love them to pieces but they have the biggest challenge for maintaining aggro on groups. In a Pug situation, I will outright decline if the tank is a druid."

The issues of balance have been solved since Wrath was launched, but the damage has been done. Not only have players lost trust in the druid class as a tanking class, but I'm sure many bears started going to raids as boomkin, cats, or trees, thus falling behind in their tank gear. As such, their tank set is probably woefully outdated, making them unable to hop back into taking easily if they haven't been tanking through the new content. More on this with complaints seven and eight.

The real issue here, though, is the general perception of tanks, and the fact that old prejudices die hard. It probably won't be until Cataclysm is released that players are willing to rethink how they think about druid tanks, and like it or not, we are stuck with the existing perceptions.

Complaint #5: Bear gameplay is boring. Too much of the bear's effectiveness is baked into talents rather than being determined by player skill.
"I wore the letter off my Swipe hotkey."

Like Allison said, this is mostly an excuse written by people who don't actually play a bear tank, but its still a legitimate point. We druids have a ton of abilities open to us, but we can only use one fourth of them in bear form. It would be nice to see some variety, but the problem is in shifting out of bear form to use our other abilities. Yes, we have rebirth, innervate, cyclone, and other awesome abilities, but we can't shift out of bear form to use them.

Perhaps Barkskin could be the key to this problem. As it stands, Barkskin doesn't reduce damage by enough in order to use it to shift out of bear form, but what if it did? What if the talent Protector of the Pack was edited to include something like this:
Also, when Barkskin is used in bear form, it causes 33/66/100% of the bonuses you receive to your damage taken and threat to apply to your caster form as well.
This would allow you to pop barkskin and rebirth a fallen healer or innervate a caster. A talent like this would really go far in making druids closer to their nature. After all, we are masters of shifting, and it seems quite un-druidic to stay in one form for the whole battle.

Complaint #6: Gear consolidation often results in druids looking insanely stupid in caster form.
Allie: (In Ulduar), all of the non-set melee leather was oriented toward rogue tier, which had the effect of making druid (tanks) look like a postmodern clown on the run from Cirque du Soleil. Matt Rossi: Druids look like they got into the craft bin at the local thrift shop.

I suppose if I'm going to call complaint #1 bogus then I need to acknowledge this one as legit. I don't really look at my armor very often, personally, but I will agree that the druid set pieces look very different from the rogue pieces. This problem could be addressed if Blizzard took my advice concerning complaint #2 and then made the tank-oriented pieces look more druidish, while making the DPS-oriented pieces look more roguish. Its a simple complaint, really, so I don't think it warrants much thought.

Complaint #7: If the raid needs more tanks, it's easier and faster to gear up a plate class than a druid. "The plate +defense gear's been going to offspec for weeks, but the hunters get dibs on the next Twin's Pact or Hellion Glaive, and the rogues are still rolling on non-set. We need another tank, but they'll just respec one of the death knights for the next boss."

This is closely intertwined with complaints #2 and #3, and perhaps my suggestion for solving complaint two would address this as well, but the essence of this complaint is in the fact that plate wearers can easily build an off-set for tanking by picking up unneeded drops in raids, whereas druids do not have that option. Thus plate-wearers are more likely to be taken when an extra tank is needed. That said, if you are DPS'ing and are picking up a tank set in your spare time, what are you doing complaining about not being able to tank? I find DPS'ing to be more stress-free and more enjoyable than tanking, so why are DPS druids worried about being picked to tank? This complaint only applies to DPS who are picked as extra tanks, but I personally would not want that role if I were lucky enough to be a permanent DPS.

Complaint #8: A druid who's dual-specced into healing or DPS has more difficulty returning to tanking than other classes.
"Look, I know you really want to tank this fight, but all three of our tanks have excellent attendance and I don't want to leave any of you out of the raid. The warrior's going to tank, the pally's going DPS, and I'd like to have you come boomkin or heals because melee sucks on this fight. Would you seriously rather be benched?"

The essence of this complaint is that druids can be every role in the game, and the pressure to fill those roles tends to squeeze us out of the tank slot. As Allison says, its the classic druid dilemma of "do I change my spec to fit around the group, or do I force the group to fit around me?" and most people will do the former. That, after all, is the greatest strength of the druid class; to be able to fit yourself around the group. Warriors and Death Knights, the two most popular tanking classes currently, both can only be tanks and DPS, but paladins and druids, the classes that are currently lacking representation in the tanking community, can be healers as well, another in-demand role. Because healing leather is much easier to pick up than tank leather, it's not unreasonable to expect a druid to be able to pick up a healing set in a quick amount of time (it happened to me), thus forcing that avenue open for him, making him less likely to be picked as a tank.

Unfortunately, this it just par for the course when it comes to druids. Because we can fill any role in the game, we will be expected to, and considering that it is easier for us to gear up for healing or DPSing than tanking, and it's easier for plate wearers to gear up for tanking than it is for us to do so, I guess that's going to be our lot in life. Because of dual specs, its harder for us to put our foot down and say that we will only fulfill one role. Perhaps if Blizzard can solve the issues above and make tanking more lucrative for Druids, this issue will solve itself.

Until then, I will wear my tank gear with pride, for tanking is the role I am best suited for, and I will not let circumstance push me out of that role. I hope other feral tanks make similar commitments, for considering how far we have come as a class, we cannot let ourselves die out. It took a long time for us to become viable in all four roles (tanking, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healer), and we cannot let our victory become our demise.

Good World of Warcraft websites

Due to this week being midterms week, I can't write a very substantial advice post, so I'll simple do a write up of good online resources for WoW. Why am I putting this under advice rather than miscellany? One of my pet peeves is websites that list links without any supplementary information, and I intend to avoid doing that. Not only will I link some good WoW websites, but I will also advise you on what each one is good for.

World of Warcraft Official Site
This is mostly a generally useful site. Though the information on it is simple and occasionally outdated, if you need an answer to your simple WoW questions, the official site can probably answer it. It also has the official WoW forums, but most people tend to avoid them because of the maturity of its posters, or lack thereof. Still, the realm forums are good if you are looking for a guild or want to report a ninja.

Wowhead
The main draw of this site is its database, which basically contains every piece of objective information to be found about WoW. It contains every item, spell, quest, etc. in the game and allows you to browse them. Its uses are endless; just trust me on that. It also has a good talent calculator that allows you to plan your character's talent build in advance, as well as an item comparison tool and forums whose quality tend to be better than that of the official forums.

WoWWiki
This is exactly what it sounds like: a Wikipedia dedicated to WoW. If wowhead is your go-to place for objective information, WoWWiki is your go-to place for subjective information, including boss strategies, background story, lore, and general class strategies. Some of its content is outdated, but with a keen eye, you can easily spot said content.

WoW.com
This is a great site. Formerly known a Wowinsider, WoW.com a huge blog dedicated to WoW. It's best purpose is for finding WoW news, but it also contains many weekly columns about every WoW-related subject imaginable (including professions, each class in the game, roleplaying, leading a guild, one for new players, etc.). I check it every day because it is just awesome like that. Due to the fact that it is in fact a blog, it is also a good source for up-to-date information on many aspects of the game, including guides to the holidays and the wealth of great advice in the class columns. Just read it for a few days and you'll find something to like about it.

What abilities I envy in other classes

I have quite a bit of experience with all of the classes in the game, so I get quite envious of my alts sometimes. Though I love my Druid with all of my heart, there are certain abilities that make me occasionally contemplate switching sides. But as soon as this happens, one certain ability that my Druid has keeps me playing him in lieu of one of my alts. I'll tell you what ability that is at the end of this post, but first I'll go over the abilities I envy in my alts, in order of how much I envy them.

10. Mages: Teleport: Dalaran
As much as I would love to be able to summon my own food, the fact is that I rarely use food on my druid aside from for the buffs, so teleportation spells take the cake in this case. I picked Dalaran since it is the most convenient place to teleport to, but I would love to be able to teleport to any capital city of my choice. That said, Dalaran has portals to all of them, which is why I put this ability so low.

9. Warlocks: Ritual of Summoning
I don't think I need to explain this one. As someone who has run Violet Hold countless times (VH is located in Dalaran, and as such does not have a summoning stone), an ability like this would prove incredibly invaluable.

8. Paladins: Crusader Aura
As awesome as Divine Shield is, I really just wish I could travel as fast as Paladins can. It's a simple, almost petty jealousy, I know, but sometimes even my Netherdrake isn't fast enough for me.

7. Warriors: Shield Wall
As much as I appreciate Barkskin, the fact is that sometimes we need more than just 20% damage reduction. Why we Druids don't have a better defensive cooldown is beyond me, but as long as we don't, I will still envy this ability.

6. Death Knights: Pestilence
I was tempted to put Death Grip instead of Pestilence, but if I could spread my bleed effects from enemy to enemy, that would be fantastic. Think about how great it would be to be able to stack lacerate on one enemy, then spread it to all of his friends. The thought of it makes me shake with delight, quite honestly, which is probably why Blizzard gave an ability like this to Death Knights and not us Druids.

5. Priests: Wands
Since there aren't any Priest abilities that I really envy, wands are a good choice. Why? Because I have always wished for a mana-free way to cause of bit of damage while healing in tree form when my party vastly out-gears the instance. Melee-ing in tree form is a really bad idea, and shifting out to use moonfire means loosing healing efficiency. I really wish we could do something like wanding an enemy, but unfortunately, we have no such option.

4. Rogues: Vanish
As a Night Elf Druid, I do have Shadowmeld, but it pales in every way to Vanish, aside from the cooldown. Shadowmeld doesn't remove threat or allow for movement, and let me tell you, though it's great to be able to disappear while healing and reappear to rez everyone after a wipe, an ability like this would make it even better. Come on, Blizz, make it happen!

3. Hunters: Tame Beast
Though I picked this ability specifically, my actual jealousy is for hunters' ability to have pets. As a master of turning into an animal, shouldn't it be easy for me to recruit animals to fight on my side? Although pets are more disposable than they used to be since Blizzard abolished the loyalty system, when I first leveled my Hunter, I had a pretty deep connection with my pet. I had to earn his trust, and as an animal lover, to be able to experience that kind of virtual relationship again would be quite enjoyable.

2. Shamans: Reincarnation
When I spend time on my shaman, there is no ability I love more than this one. It's convenience while leveling cannot be overstated, and though it certainly finds less use at the level cap (keep in mind I don't raid or PvP much), it would still be incredibly useful for those bad runs and subsequent wipes when Shadowmeld doesn't do the trick.

And now for the ability that keeps me playing my Druid; the ability that, unless Blizzard adds a similar ability to another class, ensures that I will never permanently reroll.

1. Swift Flight Form
God, do I ever love this ability. I can collect herbs in this form without needing to "dismount," and the same applies for collecting items for certain quests. This allows me to be an actual "rolfcopter" as I fly away as the enemies try to attack me, allowing me to try a different position to pick up the herb from. The fact that I can use it in air means that I can jump off high ledges and use it to save time and my Druid's life. I can also use this "rofl fall" ability (name is my own) to save time when I need to fly over a mountain to get to the other side and then get to the ground quickly. But most importantly, this ability can be cast instantly. As much as I love looking at my Onyx Netherdrake, sometimes I just don't have that 1.5 seconds to mount up and fly away. That's when Swift Flight Form comes in. Perhaps it's only because us Burning Cruade-era Druids had to work for Swift Flight Form that we love it so much, but regardless, it is incredible. Here's to you, Swifty!

Insert some clichéd song lyric about flying free here.

And that's it. Sorry to all of you other classes that don't have our awesome raven form, but just remember, each of you has something that I envy as well.

Should gear become obsolete after every expansion?

I recently read a post on another blog that discussed how WoW is a gear oriented game, and yet most of the gear we get becomes obsolete with every expansion that is released. This post was written during the Burning Crusade, and with the news that Blizzard wants to try to release expansion packs more frequently (about one a year), it is an even more relevant point now, since our gear stands to be viable for even less time. The main question posed in the post is, is it worth it? Is the time we spend grinding reputations and money to get geared up for raids worth the short amount of time we get out of our gear? This begs the question of why one should even raid in the first place, but I already considered that at the end of my post on why end-game isn't better than leveling (skip to the fifth to last paragraph). To recap, I said that raiding is more challenging, social, progression-based, and satisfying than regular 5-mans, which is why people do it, and that gear is a poor motivation to raid, as Daddy Gamer brought up.

Gear, however, is still what keeps people coming back to raids. I think it was wow.com that did a poll on whether people who run 25-mans would run 10-mans instead if they offered the same gear, and it was found that most people would run 10-mans instead in such a situation. Still, can it really be the gear that keeps these people running 25-mans? The gear may be better, but as I have said before in previous posts, gear only serves two tangible functions: allowing the player to access more difficult raids and representing the satisfaction that comes with beating those harder raids. The former is important in considering whether gear should become obsolete or not with each expansion pack.

Gear basically serves as the gate-keeper for keeping people from running into raids the minute they hit 80 and breezing through them. Gearing up forces you to put some time into your character before you can use him to see the game's content. I suppose that's really the true purpose of WoW's gear grind: to get you to spend some time on your character. It's an artificial barrier, sure, but it does allow you to practice before you go into raids so you don't make a fool of yourself. But what if you are already a veteran WoW player and already know how to play? Should you be forced to grind for gear in order to raid?

It's worth noting that the amount of time it takes to gear up for a raid without entering an instance is much greater than the amount of time it takes to gear up for heroic 5-mans without entering an instance. It's quite easy to reach the level of gear needed to enter heroics, and you can use heroics to gear up for raids while still seeing new content, so it isn't completely necessary to invest a lot of money in starter gear for raids, unless you want to start raiding immediately. Then again, starting with raids rather than heroics means you'll miss a lot of the game's content, so that's your choice.

Still, regardless of whether you get geared up for raids outside of heroics or in them, you'll still be investing a lot of time into getting gear for raids, gear that will quickly be replaced. In fact, that can be said of all gear you get once you hit 80; you'll invest a lot of time in getting it, but it won't last you very long if you continue moving up the raiding ladder. To quote Daddy Gamer, "If we should be inspired to try to get better and better equipment we need to feel the investment (of time) is worth the outcome (of gear) in accordance to its longevity (time to update making it obsolete)." It's a good argument, but if raids don't offer better gear, then they need to offer something else to keep raiders coming back. As much as I love raiding for the stories and the fights, those motivators won't keep me coming back over and over again. That's the role of gear.

If players like Daddy Gamer want their gear to have some longevity, then gear needs to last beyond individual raids. Many pieces that drop from Naxxramas have direct upgrades in Ulduar, which have direct upgrades in Trial of the Crusader, which will probably have direct upgrades in Icecrown Citadel. That gives most gear a maximum longevity of one major patch. The problem is that gear acts as the effective gatekeeper to make players run raids multiple times before they move on to the next. Should this be the case, though? Should raiders be forced to run raids multiple times? I'll probably muse on that question in another philosophy post, but for now, lets assume it's a good idea.

So, let's say we want gear to last us longer than just one raid. For starters, bosses would need to have much smaller loot tables, since players wouldn't be looking for upgrades at each boss. Perhaps each boss could have one drop that reflects their nature and is a guaranteed drop each time. That seems to be more realistic to me than the way it works now, but it would mean that players would need a way make their characters better so that they could move on to new raids at a reasonable pace. Blizzard could use skill as a gatekeeper, but that would make raids more difficult to balance. Some other system is in order

One way Blizzard can add a non-gear gatekeeper function to the game is to add a new leveling function by which raiders gain levels as they go through raids, and with those levels, they get better stats. This could be seen as giving raiders an unfair advantage in the leveling game when expansions come out, but Blizzard could make it a sort of level-plus system, so that everyone starts on the same footing when an expansion comes out. Basically, players would run heroics to get to level 80+, then Naxx to get to level 80++, Ulduar to get to 80+++, and ToC to get to 80++++, which would be the maximum since that would be enough for Icecrown Citadel, the last raid of the expansion. Blizzard could make it so that only heroics and raid dungeons grant experience for these new levels, and it would be a way for players to improve their character that wouldn't be dependent on random drops or costly crafted items.

These plusses would go away when a new expansion came out and everyone started leveling again. Why? Like I said, it prevents raiders from having an unfair advantage and getting to new content first. From a lore perspective, the idea would be that your experiences with the horrors of Northrend couldn't possibly prepare you for the challenges of the sundered world of Cataclysm. Those challenges were unique, and the lessons you take from them have no use in this new world.

Gear drops would play a minor role in this system, providing side-grades more often than upgrades. Such side-grades could include armor with procs on it, like the Signet of Edward the Odd, with the procs becoming more interesting with each raid. It could also include trinkets with more interesting procs or effects, and ditto for relics (the ranged-weapon-equivalent for Druids, Paladins, Shamans, and Death Knights). Tier gear could also have more interesting set bonuses, with intro-raid tier gear having flat damage bonuses and more advanced raid tier gear having ability-changing bonuses like those set to appear on tier 10 gear. In this case, the tiers of gear wouldn't really have improves stats but would just have better bonuses, allowing for more flexibility in gear choice.

To summarize, the point of this system would be to allow gear to serve a player for longer, which would alleviate some complaints of short longevity of gear. That said, under a system like this, gear would still become obsolete after each expansion pack, and that's exactly the complaint Daddy Gamer was writing about. I think Blizzard took a step in the right direction when they didn't make Wrath of the Lich King gear us much of an upgrade from Burning Crusade gear as Burning Crusade gear was from vanilla WoW gear, and with the level cap slated to rise five levels when Cataclysm is released, rather than ten, there is a good chance that our gear will last us even longer into the new content.

But what if Blizzard made it so that gear didn't get better with each expansion, which seems to be along the lines of what Daddy Gamer wants? What if the heroic 5-mans of Cataclysm dropped i-level 200 blues and epics? Would you really play through them? Probably not. I hate to say it, but WoW players like Daddy Gamer will just have to put up with the fact that gear in WoW will always be replaced. If you want to be able to acquire permanent best-in-slot gear, then maybe an MMO isn't the kind of game for you.

How to tank as a druid, Part 2

Here's the link to the first post, in which discusses abilities, talents, and gear. Without any further ado, let's continue on to the important issue of key bindings.

Key Bindings
I myself use the in-game action bars to bind my abilities, so if you want to bind them to specific keys on your keyboard, I can't help you there. If you choose to bind to the in-game action bars, you will definitely want to enable more than just one bar. Go to the Game Menu, then Interface, then Action Bars, and at least check off the bottom left bar. I use all of them except for one bar on the right.

Main Action Bar
Because this bar changes with your forms, you'll want to put abilities that are specific to bear form here. Here are the bindings I use. If you think something different would work better for you, then use a different configuration. The main idea behind this binding system is to put your most important abilities close to the WASD keys, since you will need to use them more than the others, and putting them close to your left hand allows you to use them with your left hand while still being able to use your mouse to select targets or even click abilities (the great sin of tanking, I know; but I still do it, and you don't see my group-mates complaining).

1 - Feral Charge (Bear)
Because of the nature of this ability, you will want to keep it within easy reach, so that you can use it the moment you need it. That said, you won't use it as frequently and Growl, which is why I put it first; it's important that you be able to use this ability instantly, but not so much as using growl instantly.

2 - Growl
The essence of the tanking role is keeping enemies attacking you, and that is exactly what this ability does. Because clothies, be they DPS or healers, can probably be killed in a few hits if they draw an enemy's attention, you'll want to be able to use this ability to get an enemy's attention before he gets to them. That's why I put it right above my middle finger; that's the easiest place to reach it.

3 - Mangle (Bear)
With few exceptions, you should always use this ability when it is off of its cooldown, which is why I put it so close to the WASD keys. The 3 key is pretty much as reachable as the 2 key, and since this ability is as important as growl, it is a good one to put on the 3 binding.

4 - Lacerate
Another ability that is used frequently by bears, but the fact that it's use is less imperative than Mangle is why I bind it to the 4 key. What do I mean by that? Like I said, Mangle should be used whenever it is off of its cooldown, so you need to be able to use it at the drop of a hat. Lacerate does not need to be used with the same urgency.

5 - Maul
When you use this ability, you will want to be able to spam it, which is why I put it relatively close to the WASD keys. This allows you to hit the ability whenever you have excess rage. However, because I don't use maul spam very frequently, and because maul only needs to be hit once before each of your attacks (which gives you a 2.5 second window to hit it if you don't have any haste on your gear), I put if after Mangle and Lacerate.

6 - Swipe
When you use this ability, you will probably want to be able to spam it. That said, unlike Maul, you won't be spamming this ability while using other abilities (with the exception of Maul), which is why it can be off on its own. Because I rarely need to target a specific enemy while maul spamming, I usually reach up with my right hand to use this ability while also using Maul when I have the rage for it.

7 - Bash
While I do sometimes need to use this in a pinch, I don't use Bash very frequently, which is why I put in after my more frequently-used abilities. You'll usually have a pretty good window of time to use it for interrupting a caster or stopping a runner, so you can usually click it rather than hitting the key is it bound to.

8 - Demoralizing Roar
If you use this ability at all, you'll have enough time to click it. It can be used frequently, though, which is why I put it here, before the emergency use abilities.

9 - Enrage
I usually put my emergency abilities after my frequently used abilities since I usually know when I am going to us them and thus have enough time to click them. I put Enrage and the next two abilities on the action bar because they have no use outside of bear form. I put Enrage before the other two abilities because I use it more than the other two.

10 - Frenzied Regeneration
This is a pretty useful emergency ability, but it is used a good deal less frequently than Enrage, which is why I put it after Enrage.

11 - Challenging Roar
I rarely use this ability, but I still keep it on the bar for the few times when I do need it. You could argue that, because this is basically a taunt ability, you would want to have it within easy reach of your hand so that you can use it quickly. Well, I tend to only use it in maybe one run in every five of ten, so it's hardly worth putting in a prominent position on the action bar.

12 - Runic Healing Potion
I tend to not use healing potions, but if I ever did, I wouldn't want to go looking through my bags to use it. Why do I bind healing potions on the bear bar and not on the additional bar? Because the only time I would ever need to use my potions is while I'm tanking.

Additional Bar
I tend to put spells that I can use in multiple/all forms or that are used before the battle, when time is not of the essence, on the additional bar. The order isn't as important here. Though I put my more frequently used abilities closer to the left, you can do whatever you are comfortable with. That said, here are the abilities I keep on my additional action bar in the order I keep them in.

Barkskin
Because of this ability's short cooldown, I find myself using it frequently, which is why I put it first.

(Lifeblood)
Not everyone has this ability, but I do, and I put it next because I use it pretty frequently. Why? Because it gives me healing in a pinch when I need it, so I like to be able to use it quickly. If I had Survival Instincts, I would probably put it here too, since it serves a similar function.

Trinkets
As a tank, your trinket should be defensive in nature, and they should be on-use trinkets so that you can save them for when you need them. As such, you'll want to be able to use them without needing to look for them, so you should bind them to your bars somewhere within easy reach of your mouse.

Berserk
Because this ability is offensive in nature, rather than defensive, it's not as important to be able to activate it immediately, which is why I put it after the defensive ones. If you use Berserk, you will probably plan it in advance anyways, meaning you won't need to be able to move the mouse immediately.

Faerie Fire (Feral)
This is really nothing more than a pulling ability which you will only use at the beginning of the fight, which is why I put it so far to the right.

Moonfire
Sometimes you will find yourself in caster form. It is during these times that you will want to start the fight with Moonfire and then switch to Bear Form to take advantage of Furor. This is because Moonfire causes more damage and threat than the damage of FFF. That said, you'll probably have time to apply FFF to your target before you get in melee range, and you should do so.

So there you go. Due to time constraints and the unexpected amount of space needed to explain keybindings, I'll need to put off going over strategies for different kinds of pulls until next week. See you then, same time, same place.

About me

I decided to finally write this post, since its really silly to not have an introduction of some sort in my blog. My WoW name is Ardol, my real name is Owen, and this post is about me.

Note: My blogger name was once O-Digga, so any comments that appear by that name are mine.

History of Ardol
My first character was an undead warrior. I decided to be a warrior class after I had seen an episode of Cheat on G4 about WoW and they recommended a warrior for anyone starting out, since they could take a lot of damage. Some of my newbie-er habits included only having one quest in my quest log at a time (so that I could focus on it) and selling my ore and skins to vendors (I didn't know about the AH). I got him to level 13, and when I joined a guild, I saw that the GM was a rogue. I had heard all about how awesome rogues were, so I rolled a troll one. He only got to level 8, when I decided to try a paladin, since Cheat had referred to them as a hybrid class, and I knew I wanted to be a hybrid. He was very boring, though, so I dropped him and rolled a hunter on a new server with one of my friends. He was alliance, so rolling on that server made my transition from horde to alliance complete. I got my hunter to 22 before my friend left the server and I decided to reroll to start fresh. I left the horrors of the RPPvP server and rolled a druid. I played my druid on and off and simultaneously sampled every class in the game before realizing that the druid class was for me. It took me a year and a half from when I started playing to get him to 70 (he was 46 when BC came out).

What attracted me to the druid class was the idea that they could tank and DPS with one spec, and since I wanted to be a hybrid, this was perfect for me. I leveled my druid feral and only had a brief fling with resto during BC. Aside form that, I was feral only until dual specs came out, when I made my second spec resto and put together a healing set. Since then, the healer shortage on my realm has become a tank shortage, so I have shifted my focus from healing back to tanking, a focus I will probably retain through Cataclysm unless healers are in short supply again. For the longest time, my healing set was better than my tank set, but now my tank set is better than my healing set, since that's the one I focused on after the healing shortage became a tank shortage again.

Why the name Ardol? Well, when I rolled my hunter, I named him Arder. Don't ask why; I thought it was cool. When I rerolled, the name was taken, so I chose Ardol instead. Why do I keep it? Meh, I'm too lazy to change it, even though I have a shaman named Ollendi so I'll always have that name reserved in case I ever decide to spend the ten bucks. (If you don't understand why I want "Ollendi," just read it aloud. Still don't get it? It reads, "I'll end thee." I know, it's a name more suited for a PvP'er, but like Arder, I thought it was cool.)

History of Owen
Due to the inherent risk in putting anything too personal online, I will simply tell you that I am currently a full-time student studying mathematics. I play video games in my spare time, including WoW and Rock Band, and I also enjoy biking, reading, drumming, and, of course, philosophy.

Achievements I am proudest of:

5. Cooking with Style 10 (11-15-2009)

4. Hail to the Chef 10 (02-13-2009)
3. Traveler's Tundra Mammoth 10 (11-08-2009)

2. Lil' Game Hunter 50 ( 11-22-2009)

1. What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been 50 02-15-2010

In defense of roleplaying

My first experience with roleplaying was when I was new to WoW and a friend of mine convinced me to role a character on the RP-PvP realm he was on. I had no idea what roleplaying was, so it was a bit of a culture shock. Seeing those people who acted like no one I had ever met in real life was a bit disarming, especially when they criticized me for not being like them. I didn't stay for very long, especially after my friend left the server.

After that, I rolled a character on a PvE server, and that's where I stayed. I somehow found out just what roleplaying was, and I viewed it as just as odd as other people did. I laughed along with all the other non-roleplayers when I watched videos of LARPing, and I never gave a thought as to why roleplayers roleplayed in the first place. There were a few times where I considered rolling and alt on an RP server, since I thought it would make the game more immersive and thus more enjoyable, but those ideas never came to fruition. I always thought of WoW as just a game, nothing more, and roleplaying didn't fit in with that perception.

Recently, however, I gave some thought to the issue, and I realized that there is one very redeemable aspect of roleplaying. For all of its geekiness, roleplaying allows players to accomplish something they can't usually do in WoW, or in most video games out there: it allows them to flex their creative muscles.

Of all of the negative accusations lobbed at video games (they encourage violence, they promote obesity, they destroy children's minds, etc.), I am surprised that this one never gets any press. Video games are like movies that you control, but unlike movies, you are completely immersed in the game, and thus video games don't lend themselves to critical interpretation. That is the one thing that makes watching a movie a possibly creative act (critical interpretation), and it's something video games lack. The fact is that by playing a video, you are being sucked into the game maker's creative imagination, with no way to express your own creativity. Some games break this mold (Animal Crossing comes to mind), but those games tend to be labeled as "fluffy" and "lacking substance," so game developers tend to shy away from making them.

Then again, maybe anti-video game lobbyists refuse to use the destruction of creativity as an argument against video games because it is a reasonable argument. Zing!

The fact that games that foster creativity tend to be labeled as lacking substance is what truly scares me, because it means that we as a gaming community have indeed been negatively affected by games. Now, I am not saying that all gamers have been negatively affected, and if you are a gamer who can appreciate a free-form game like Animal Crossing (even if you don't enjoy it), then this does not apply to you. If, however, you were one of the many gamers who labeled it as an empty experience, then you may have already lost your creativity to video games. Or perhaps you haven't lost your creativity, and video games have simply taken away your will to use it when playing a game. Truly, that's no better. An unwillingness to exercise a certain skill is, for all intents and purposes, the same as not having that skill.

What does all of this have to do with roleplaying? Roleplaying is creative. When you roleplay, you come up with a back story for your character, a personality for him/her, etc., and when you roleplay with other people, you are forced to think through that personality and adapt and apply it to new situations. That is an expression of both methodical creativity and spontaneous creativity, making roleplaying an especially creative endeavor.

The only thing that can save the video gaming community from its creative dearth.

What makes roleplaying more creative than other expressions of creativity is that it takes a medium that by its nature does not foster creativity and finds some creative expression within it. The purpose of a video game is to engross you in the world created by the game's designer, and thus you cannot negotiate your own meaning from a game. The act of making a game can be seen as just as creative as other forms of artwork, but the viewer of a painting or a movie or a sculpture can interpret the artwork in his or her own way. This kind of audience interaction is not facilitated by video games. That is, of course, unless the players are roleplayers as well.

Does that mean that anyone who does not engage in roleplaying is a member of the masses of uncreative sheeple? Not at all. Everyone has their own way of engaging in creative thought, and just because a certain way doesn't appeal to them does not mean that they are not creative. Many people play WoW to relax from the stresses of the day, to give their brain a break, and I think I can speak for most people when I say that it is perfectly reasonable to expect those people to not wish to roleplay. However, to those of you who do, keep up the good work. You have my reverence and my respect.

How to tank as a druid, Part 1

I know I said I wouldn't include many specific posts in my advice section, but one can only write about generalities for so long. As such, I decided to write a post about tanking as a druid, something I'm quite familiar with. This post will refer to tanking at level 80, and thus leveling druids will want to look elsewhere. This guide also assume that you understand the basic elements of the game's mechanics and are just new to tanking or druid tanking. With that said, let's begin.

Abilities
Because of the hybrid nature of our class, we may not have as many abilities available to us as other tanks, but that means fewer abilities for you to memorize and adjust to.

Mangle: This is our single greatest single-target threat-causing ability, and the bleed damage increase it applies makes it great when used in conjunction with Lacerate. Unless you are fighting four enemies or more, use it whenever it is off of its cooldown.

Lacerate: Sunder Armor for druids; this ability is useful, but only for the bleed effect. Swipe causes more instant damage than Lacerate, so Lacerate is only worth using if the target will live long enough for the bleed to cause damage. As such, it is worth using on bosses and trash that takes a long time to kill, but otherwise, it's hardly worth using more than once or twice.

Maul: Heroic Strike for druids, and an interesting ability, this; it increases the damage (and thus threat) caused by your next regular melee attack, while also preventing that attack from generating rage. It's good to use when you have extra rage, but if your rage falls bellow thirty, stop using it so that you can guarantee that you will have rage for your other abilities. Otherwise, spam the hell out of it. Any druid tank worth his salt will want to glyph this ability, which will make it great for holding threat against two enemies at once.

Swipe: This ability is simple enough; it causes damage to everyone around you. It's thus most useful when you are facing a large crowd of enemies, though it's also good for when you have five full stacks of lacerate on the target and Mangle is on its cooldown. Swipe causes about a fourth of the damage of Mangle, so if you are facing four targets or more, you'll want to simply spam this ability.

Growl: The spell's description is simple enough, but I'll elaborate. This spell not only forces the target to attack you for a little while, but if someone has caused more threat than you, you will instantly cause the difference in threat. If you have 2000 threat against an enemy and your mage somehow has 10,000 threat, this ability will cause 8000 threat. Also note that this spell is not subject to the global cooldown, so you can use it any time it is off of its own cooldown. It's worth repeating that this will be next to useless if your target is already attacking you. I say next to useless because, in order for someone other than you to catch a mob's attention, they need to cause 110% more threat than you if they are in melee range or 130% if they are farther away (forgive me if my numbers are wrong). Thus it's worth it to use this ability if you have threat meters and your rogue is hovering around 108% threat or your warlock is hovering around 128%. Also note that many bosses are immune to this ability, but it's still worth using if someone else draws aggro, just in case the boss is not immune. Finally, because this has a thirty-yard range, you can use it on an enemy that runs off to attack a party member when you don't want to rush over to help them, due to positioning or something like that.

Feral Charge - Bear: This ability causes you to rush your target, while also stopping them from casting any spell they are casting and making them unable to move for a short while. If one of your enemies runs off towards a party member, this stops them dead in their tracks and gives you some time to build up threat or use Growl. If no one in your party can interrupt spells and you are facing a boss whose spells need to be interrupted (and Bash is on its cooldown), keep in mind that you can use this ability as a last resort. Just back up and charge back in. You'll loose threat from not being in melee range, but those are the sacrifices we make.

Bash: Stuns the target for four seconds, making them unable to move, attack, or do anything, really. I often use this on trash by stunning a target when he is about three or four seconds away from death while moving on to another target to start causing threat. Most bosses are immune to the stun effect, but you can still use this to interrupt their spellcasting. Keep that in mind if they have a spell that causes large amounts of damage.

Faerie Fire (Feral): This does decrease the targets armor, but it's really not worth using too frequently. It's a good ability for pulling an enemy because it causes some damage and thus gets their attention, but the extra damage caused by the decrease of armor is only really worthwhile on bosses, so once you are in combat, don't bother to use this ability unless you are fighting a boss and it has run out.

Demoralizing Roar: This makes enemies cause less damage to you (about 30 less damage every second, if the AP conversion rate is the same for mobs as it is for players.) The thing is, the damage reduction is often negligible (1800 over one minute), so it's only really worth using on large crowds when it will make a bigger difference. Otherwise you're just wasting time that could be spent causing threat.

Enrage: This ability does exactly what is says it does, though I have found the armor reduction to be not worth worrying about. This ability is more useful at lower levels, but considering that most trash pulls in high-level dungeons allow you to go from zero to 100 rage in ten seconds, it becomes situational at the level cap. It's good to use before a pull when you have very little rage to start with, and it's also good to use in conjunction with Frenzied Regeneration, which will eat up your rage. If you have less than 20 rage before going into a fight, use this.

Barkskin: A useful spell for all druids, but as a tank, it's main use is as our only no-strings-attached defensive cooldown. It may only reduce damage by 20%, but for a one minute cooldown, that's pretty good. I usually use it at the beginning of trash pulls when the most mobs are alive, but I also sometime wait until we are facing a particularly difficult pull to use it. During a boss fight that requires you to use your defensive cooldowns at a specific time, save this ability for that time.

Challenging Roar: This works like an AoE taunt, but unlike Growl, it causes no extra threat, so it only really gives you a six-second window to catch up with your DPSs' threat. That said, it's useful if an entire group of mobs has gone after the healer and you don't want to take any chances.

Berserk: Remember how awesome Mangle is? How would you like to use it without a cooldown? And have it his three targets? For fifteen seconds? For multi-target pulls with no more than three mobs, this really shines, and it's a good way to start a boss fight where you are facing two or three bosses at once since it lets you build up a large amount of threat on up to three people. It also makes you immune to fear effects and dispells any fear effects already on you, so if you are facing a boss with a fear effect, save this ability for when the boss uses it's fear and use Berserk immediately afterward. That increases the chance it will last until the boss does it a second time. It's one flaw is that it activates the global cooldown, so if you are going to use it for it's multi-mangle capabilities (as you always should, even if you intend to use it to break a fear effect) use it about a second before you intend to launch your first attack.

Frenzied Regeneration: It's unfortunate that this ability is our most potent emergency ability, because it isn't a perfect one. You should only use it when you have full or near full rage and you are somehow generating more, since it needs to consume ten rage with each of its ten ticks in order to be most effective. I have generally found that I can usually keep using swipe, mangle, and/or lacerate with FR up with no problem, but maul spamming with FR up will usually cause you to run out of rage, so don't use maul with FR up. As long as you follow those guidelines, FR should serve you well when your healer lapses or you take some heavy damage and you need some emergency self-healing. Dedicated tanks will want to glyph this ability.

Survival Instincts: I personally don't use this ability, but that's because I mostly run heroic 5-mans, where burst damage is rare. This ability is only useful on a boss that causes easily-healable damage normally and simply causes high damage every once in a while, since if the boss is causing consistently high damage, that damage you take after 20 seconds will only make it more difficult for your healer. If you do use this ability, you will probably want to glyph it.

Savage Defense: This is technically a passive ability, but it's still worth mentioning. This ability makes crit rating worth getting on our gear, and also makes swipe-spamming even more worthwhile, since swipe hits multiple targets, and each of those hits has a chance to crit, and a crit means a mini-shield.

Talents
If spells make the class, then talents make the role, so you'll want to choose a good spec for your tanking druid. This build contains all of the necessary tanking talents with a few points left over for you to play around with. You can put those in talents to further improve the nuances of the tanking role or talents to help you while solo-ing. The decision is yours. This is the build I use, though if you copy it, you'll probably want to take a point out of Brutal Impact and put it in Survival Instincts. It's intended use is to have all of the necessary tanking talents while still having some talents useful for solo-ing, thus making it a tank build and a solo build.

Gear
As leather wearers, we druids need to share armor with rogues, but we can still wear tank gear in the form of our cloaks, rings, amulets, and trinkets. Because of that, there are basically two sets of guidelines you need to follow for gearing up: one for armor, and one for the rest.

Armor:
We druids share itemization with rogues, so you'll be choosing among DPS armor for your tank set. You'll want to look for pieces with more stamina than agility and with hit, expertise, or crit.
Haste and armor penetration aren't completely useless for a druid, but they don't have as much use for a tank as they do for a DPS'er, so look for pieces with at least one of the three above-mentioned stats. Two is ideal, but you can't always get what you want.

The Rest: Tank pieces are pieces with strength, rather than agility. Thus you will want to look for cloaks, rings, and amulets with strength on them, and the rest will generally be stats you need. There are, however, some DPS pieces with strength on them, but you can usually tell the strength pieces apart because they will have defensive stats and much more stamina than strength. Just avoid pieces with parry rating, block rating, or block value, all of which have no use for a druid. As for trinkets, just take what you can get, and try to avoid the chance-on-hit or chance-when-hit trinkets, since as a tank, you'll want to save your trinkets for when you need them. Extra armor used to be an important druid stat, but now extra armor is only really useful on cloaks, since they will get the 370% bonus from Dire Bear Form. As such, look for cloaks with armor quantities in green, but treat armor on rings, amulets, and trinkets like you would any other defensive stats.

Weapons: There are very few two-handed weapons with tank stats, so look for weapons with a lot of stamina and with hit rating or expertise. It's also a good idea to look for weapons with agility on them, rather than or in addition to strength, since agility increases your dodge chance, and is thus a defensive stat as well as an offensive one.

Next week: Strategies and placing abilities on your action bars.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Technically my birthday is tomorrow, but why break schedule when you can keep on schedule and celebrate early at the same time! As a celebration, I am giving my readers the gift of my favorite articles on the humor site Cracked.com. For those of you not familiar with Cracked.com, it is basically humor in list form--"Top X" lists specifically. Although it is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, it is often insightful, and it is a site I check frequently. These are in no particular order, although the first one is definitely my favorite.

7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable
5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)
The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey
A Gamer's Manifesto
The 10 Commandments of Facebook
9 Words That Don't Mean What You Think
5 Reasons Being Single Sucks Even More Than You Thought
6 Ways That Porn Runs The World
6 Ways World of Warcraft is Worse Than Real Life
5 Awesome Cases of The Internet Owning The Mainstream Media
7 Dogs That Accomplished More Than We Ever Will
6 New Personality Disorders Caused by the Internet
5 Ways to Stop Trolls From Killing the Internet
8 Awesome Cases of Internet Vigilantism

Why the new 5-man progression is a good idea (Spoilers ahead)

In case you missed Blizzard's announcement about the new 5-man dungeons being added in patch 3.3, take a look here. To give you the TL;DR version, Blizzard will be adding three new 5-man dungeons to Icecrown Citadel collectively called The Frozen Halls. You will need to finish the first one before you can do the second one, and you will need to finish the second one before you can do the third one. Blizzard is doing this so that players who don't have time to raid will feel like they can participate in progression in some way. As a capstone to the whole thing, the final dungeon will culminate in a battle against the Lich King himself.

It won't be easy, however. Each dungeon will drop ilevel 219 gear on normal mode (10-man Ulduar equivalent), and ilevel 232 gear on heroic mode (10-man ToC equivalent). This should serve as a warning that these dungeons will be difficult and will require good skill and good gear. I expect that guilds will be much more able to do these dungeons than PUGs, so you'll want to try to get your guild to run these.

I see this announcement as another way that Blizzard is catering to the casuals who want to see a conclusion to the storyline of Wrath without needing to raid. As I have said before, Wrath of the Lich King seems to be all about getting casuals into instances so that they can see the same content as everyone else, but it seems the Blizzard wants to take it one step further and allow everyone, raiders and those with no time to raid, to be able to participate in the end of the Wrath story, while also giving casuals a lot to do to keep them occupied until Cataclysm.

We could see the seeds of these thoughts when Blizzard put in a 5-man and raid version of the Argent Colosseum (Trial of the Champion and Trial of the Crusader respectively), each of which was harder than the previous content of the same type. Normal ToC5 dropped ilevel 200 epics, while the heroic version dropped ilevel 213, making it equivalent to Naxx-10 and Naxx-25, respectively. However, even though the gear dropped by the normal versions of these new instances will be like Ulduar-10 gear, the gear that drops from the heroic versions will be better than Ulduar-25, meaning we can probably expect the jump in difficulty from normal Frozen Halls to heroic Frozen Halls to be even greater than that of Trial of the Champion and previous heroics.

Still, that's neither here nor there; what I want to talk about is just the idea behind these new dungeons: the idea of allowing players who don't raid to see a conclusion (maybe not the conclusion, but it's still a conclusion) to the Wrath storyline, something that was noticeably absent in Burning Crusade and even Vanilla WoW. Those of us who didn't have the time to raid never got the satisfaction of knowing what happened to Illidan, and though we got to face Kael'thas Sunstrider in Magisters' Terrace, those of use who never ran the Eye had no idea why the battle was so significant. As for vanilla WoW, well, we casuals may as well have not existed then.

As I have already said, the inclusion of three new really difficult 5-man dungeons will allow dedicated players without a lot of time to raid to actually have something challenging to go through and will reward them for their skill by allowing them to see new content, much the same way raids do now. The increased gap of difficulty will also serve to represent the difference of difficulty between running a 10-man raid and a 25-man one. (As someone who has run both 10-man and 25-man OS, I can attest to the difference, and it is not one that can be made up for by gear alone.) Thus players who just want to see the content will be able to run the normal instances, while those looking for a challenge that won't eat up their schedule will be able to run the heroic versions.

I could see one possible objection to the inclusion of these new instances. This objection is based in the assumption that the Icecrown Citadel raid and the Frozen Halls will follow different story-lines, which I am pretty sure they will. Hard-core raiding guilds could see these dungeons as a thorn in their side, since they will want to get through IC10 or 25 as quickly as possible, and if their guildies are all running around trying to see these new instances, that may distract them from the guild's main goal. Still, as long as guild members running these new dungeons doesn't cut into raid time, I doubt the raiding guilds will feel the effect of them, and considering the level of gear dropping from the Frozen Halls, it's unlikely that the hard-core raiders, who are probably decked out in best-in-slot gear, will run the new 5-mans more than once--that is unless Blizzard makes them so fun that players want to run them just for the hell of it.

But it's not all a bed of roses. As I said in my post on the homogenization of solo content in Wrath of the Lich King, though Wrath has been a great expansion pack for casual raiders, it has been a terrible one for solo-ers, and considering that Patch 3.3 is slated to include three new 5-man instances and a 12-boss raid, I don't see much solo content being added in this patch. I could be proven wrong when the PTR comes out, but considering the work Blizzard will need to put into these instances, if we do get any new solo content, it will probably be limited to some Argent Tournament based dailies outside of Icecrown Citadel, and considering Blizzard's track record with those dailies, I won't be looking forward to them. Ah well, let's just hope Blizzard can wow us with those instances, since for us non-raiders, they will be the last of Wrath of the Lich King that we see.