I'm going to punch that dragon in the face! New quests after the Shattering.

It's been an interesting week! The Shattering has come at last and I must say, I've been really impressed with the results. I've been checking out some of the revamped zones, both on alts and on my main, and the new quests are really impressive (not to mention the landscape changes!).

The levelling experience has been improved dramatically. Certainly it seems to have sped up a lot (that or you really do just get caught up so don't notice the time going by!). Each zone feels much more coordinated now - story and quest lines all flow together, leading you logically from one area to the next. There are still some little quests around which you can either skip or come back to later, but the majority seem to be interconnected, often starting with one or two quests to introduce you to the zone which develop into a whole host of additional quests.

For those who will be working on Loremaster in this expansion, the new zone objectives will make it a lot easier, and it's also very easy (and fun) to get all the quests in each zone to get them. Many friends and myself checking out the new zones on alts found it very easy to get the achievements by simply following all the quest lines, completing the zone and moving on to the next.

The quests themselves are a ton of fun. There's a mix of old and new quests as far as I've seen - most all have been revamped in some way, but there are still ones that are unchanged (the two children in Redridge are still losing their necklace in the Lake, for example). The quests are really interesting and fun, and though there are still the 'kill x amount of creatures' and 'collect y amount of items', they're mixed in with a lot of unique tasks and mechanics and just all around fun. I highly recommend reading the quest text! You're definitely missing out if you don't.

I haven't had a chance yet to check out all the zones (some guildies I know have been working quite quickly through all the Loremaster achievements), but I've really enjoyed the ones I've seen so far, and thought I'd share some (...many) screenshots of some of the highlights so far!

Spoiler alert: The screenshots and text below may contain some spoilers if you haven't yet done the zones. I'll try not to give away too much, but just in case, read on with caution!

More treants!

I'll start with Darkshore, as that is where I went to first. I was particularly keen to find Withers, who is a new quest reward (I believe he's also available via an NPC purchase for horde). At first I was a bit disappointed that the quest wasn't available right away, but I'm now very glad it wasn't, as it gave me a chance to do all the Darkshore quests. It was incredibly fun and felt like a great place to start on my druid, who likely would have been home in Teldrassil following the long adventure in Northrend and would of course go to help his fellow Night Elves following the devastation to Auberdine and Darkshore.

Surveying the ruins of Auberdine.

The opening quests have you helping the survivors and plunge you straight into the aftermath of the Cataclysm. You begin closer to Lor'danel, the new base, and gradually expand outward into the zone. Eventually you'll be sent all the way down to Auberdine. The devastation to the town is quite staggering and many of the quests are tinged with the tragedy that has befallen the Night Elves and other inhabitants of Darkshore. I think the saddest thing I picked up was this: Broken Timepiece. It's earned a permanent spot in my bags as a memory to those lost. There are some very sad quests especially in Auberdine, and those familiar with the zone may recognise some of the NPCs lost in the wreckage. It's not all sad, though, and there are plenty of funny moments as well (in particular a rather senile Dwarf).

I was very excited to find Shan'do Stormrage in Darkshore, who had not yet travelled to Mount Hyjal. There are some fun quests as you travel around gathering help for him to repair the land.

A very sad Moonkin.

Assistance from the Green Dragonflight.

Protecting Darkshore from trolls.

If the new Tree of Life form looked like this, I might not have glyphed Treant form.

Finally I returned to Lor'danel and got little Withers.

I really enjoyed questing around Darkshore. The new quest lines really get you wrapped up and involved in the stories. It takes a little bit longer when reading all the quest texts but it's definitely worth it (and for those levelling, XP rewards are really quite good, so it shouldn't slow down your actual levelling too much). There are a lot of new mechanics too, of vehicles and disguises and tasks (don't assume you need to just kill mobs, some require that you don't kill things!), but they're all done very well so they're fun rather than annoying.

After Darkshore I made a quick swing by Alterac Mountains to check out one of the other new pets, the Singing Sunflower. There's also Mr Grubbs from the Eastern Plaguelands, who's not as long a grind as I had first thought (I found him quite quickly). The Sunflower is from the Plants vs Zombies game and quests, which was quite a lot of fun. I'd never played PvZ before so it was an interesting experience!

I then went to the Badlands. There were a ton of great quests here, including a nice long chain involving dragons and some fun little riddles and games. By far though the best quests were the three 'The Day that Deathwing Came' quests. They take place just by Dragon's Mouth at the Scar of the Worldbreaker.

As you can tell just from those screenshots, this is an amazing quest! One of the best quests I've done. I won't include the screenshots from all three of the quests here, as they're definitely best as a surprise, but if there's any quests you make sure to do, these three are it. The only thing I'd change is to implement an option for you to go back and speak to the NPCs and ask to see their stories again, so that you could repeat the little quests over and over (without any XP gain though). I'll be going back on all my alts! I'll include this last shot as the red sky just looks amazing behind Deathwing.

That is really just the smallest sample of some of the amazing new quests out there, and even just those two zones there are a ton of great quests. I've gone through all of Westfall and Redridge now as well, and Alliance (and even Horde who wouldn't mind levelling up a toon 1-20 Alliance-side) should definitely check these zones out.

Playing in the tornadoes in Westfall.

Epic battles in Redridge.

I was also lucky (or unlucky) enough to get the following:

Unfortunately I don't have a good screenshot of that as it was incredibly unexpected! I was running through the Burning Steppes to Blackrock Mountain, so the sky was already quite red, and had just noticed something large in the sky in the distance and was thinking 'What is that?' when BAM. Dead druid.

I'm looking forward to checking out all the other zones and working on Loremaster. I'm very glad I didn't bother trying to complete it before 4.0, as going through all the new zones is going to be great. I'm also looking forward to levelling a new toon, though I think I'll be waiting for Cata to land so I can roll a Worgen warrior. I just might even level another druid at some point (troll perhaps?) but we'll see!

Also, for those who don't play with the in-game music on, I definitely suggest turning it on! The new music is really great and definitely adds to the atmosphere in the zones.

I'll leave this here for now. Just over a week now until Cataclysm arrives! I can't believe it's almost December already. I'm working on getting the guides updated so they'll be ready for the launch and the push to 85. I imagine they'll be getting many little updates over the initial weeks and months of Cataclysm as well, as I'm sure Blizz will be making adjustments and changes as everything goes live and much more data than they had on Beta starts to flood in.

Happy questing!

Scar of the WorldBreaker.

New Resto Mastery

The most recent post on MMO-Champ had some good news for Resto druids: Our Cataclysm mastery has been redesigned!


Our old mastery had to do with our HoTs getting boosted on targets at lower health, which had various issues. Summed up here in a recent reply from GC:
Deep Healing Mastery
We like the shaman version. The druid one is problematic for a couple of reasons. Conceptually, a hot is often the last thing you think of putting on someone who is grievously wounded. Second, at the moment the bonus is only calculated on the initial application and not the ticks. If we can fix that problem, then the druid mastery would be better. It's also possible we'll just redesign it.


They ended up redesigning the mastery, so it now looks like this:


New Resto druid mastery: Increases the potency of your heals on targets upon which you have a hot.

It benefits both hots and direct heals equally while still supporting Resto being a healer that cares a lot about hots. It encourages layering different spells while disincentivizing Rejuv blanketing.


This looks a lot more positive and in good keeping with the druid's style of healing. This looks like it will encourage both use of our HoTs and our direct heals. In concept it's a lot like what Nourish is today, an ability that is boosted by the presence of HoTs, and this is looking like a nice progression upward from that.


A bit more information on the new mastery from GC:


Examples:

1) You cast Regrowth on someone who has a Rejuv = bonus healing.
2) You cast Nourish on someone who has a Lifebloom = bonus healing.
3) You Swiftmend a Rejuv = bonus healing.
4) You cast a Rejuv on someone who does not have a Regrowth, LB or WG on them = no bonus healing.
5) You cast Rejuv on someone who has a Rejuv = no bonus healing. (You merely refreshed Rejuv.)
6) You cast a Wild Growth = bonus healing on those with preexisting hots. 

Rejuv, then LBx3. Rejuv falls off, and LBx3 is refreshed by Nourish. Will the LB ticks retain the mastery benefit? 
Yes. There was a hot on the target, so Nourish benefits (from the mastery in addition to Nourish just working that way). 

If someone gets low and they don't have a HoT on them already, are you really going to want to put on a HoT, THEN a heal? Probably not. 
My impression is that some of you are going from the extreme of "Rejuv everyone in the raid" to "Rejuv nobody but the tank." The reality will probably be somewhere in the middle. Some targets will have hots on them and some won't. The more hots you can keep up, the better off you'll be, but you'll have to balance that against the mana cost of doing so. I don't think it's as simple as "always do X." 


It looks like some positive news for Resto druids. Hopefully we'll see some changes in the Balance tree for resto in the next build as well.


In other news, some more of the pre-Cataclysm events are up on the PTR, so closing in again on patch 4.0 and the Cataclysm launch date. I wouldn't be too surprised to see 4.0 hit in the next 1-3 weeks. No word that I've seen so far on whether the Operation: Gnomeregan and Echo Isles events will be ending with that patch, but they'll likely not be around for too long, so if you still want to get those done, sooner is probably better!


Brewfest has also started up again, though there are no new achievements for this year. The new holiday boss LFG system is in place again to help you go defeat Coren Direbrew. You can queue up as often as you wish for a chance at the drops (same drops as last year, looks like), but you'll only get the goody bag once per day, which contains 2 Frost Badges and I think a chance at the mounts.


The Harvest Festival is also up for a few more days, including the Uther's Tribute quest, which I recommend checking out (particularly as the Plaguelands will be changing in Cata).

4.0 Background Downloader up and PTR fun!

As you can see from the title and recent updates on WoW.com and MMO-Champ, the first part of the 4.0.1 patch is available on the background downloader! In other words, OMG CATA IS COMING. Looks like we're definitely on course for November release date.

I haven't started this download yet, though, as I'm currently finishing up downloading the PTR! After much discussion with guildies and friends about talent tree changes, gem changes, and basically how crazy everything will be for raiding once the patch hits, I decided I had to check it out for myself and see how things were. The PTR is pretty massive (about 16GB) so it's taken a while, but I like the option with the new launcher to load the game while it's still downloading.

I'll be testing things out a lot more once it's fully downloaded and over the weekend as well. When I last logged on it was all fairly choppy but that's likely because I hopped on as soon as it would allow me to. The character copy was surprisingly quick (few hours, tops, despite a supposed 4-day waiting period), so I hopped on to check on my druid and also adjust basic UI features (a large portion of my action bar keybinds are not the default ones).

Some first impressions:

• We can't fly in Azeroth yet, but I was able to mount up on my flying mounts! The druids in Moonglade weren't phased by the sight of my frostbrood drake, however. You can jump and the mounts will flap, but they won't lift off.
• Already feeling nostalgic for my tree form. The cooldown Tree of Life currently takes you to the current Tree form model, though I imagine that will change at some point (though perhaps with a later patch in Cata? I'm not certain). I guess my little Teldrassil Sproutling will have to keep me company even more often now so I can keep my tree spirit with me.
• Haven't been able to test healing yet in a dungeon or raid setting, but playing with the new spells has been interesting. The reduced duration on the Regrowth HoT will take some getting used to. It's a bit odd having Regrowth as my fastest cast now (on Live my fastest is Nourish, at 1 to 0.9 seconds depending on Nature's Grace procs... even faster with 25m haste buffs and heroism). 
• The Efflorescence graphic is a mixture of pretty (leaves drifting upward) and vaguely threatening (wait, you want me to stand IN the green voidzone-appearing area??).
• Current gear stats at level 80 seem to be holding - at first glance all of my stats seem to correlate (though have a slightly larger mana pool (edit: I did not look closely at this the first time, I have a much larger mana pool!)), and my spellpower looks to be correlating to my spellpower in Tree form on live.
• Lifebloom no longer returns mana, so I'll have to adapt how I use my Omen of Clarity procs (also - OoC is indeed a learned talent). Nice little in-game Power Auras-style graphic for the OoC procs.
• Also rolled a little level 1 hunter while waiting for the character copy - focus is so much nicer than mana! Maybe my hunter will get some attention again when Cata hits.

I'll get some proper time in and post more information after it's all finished downloading and I can actually navigate without the game being choppy, etc. I'll also try to get some screenshots (of things like the Efflorescence proc). I also need to find some new glyphs as my glyphs are currently half-empty now (missing most of the Prime spots).

In other fun, what will you be rushing to get done before Cata hits? My guild is currently pushing to finish off our LKHM25 kill, which we'll hopefully have done before 4.0 hits (particularly as I think everything will descend into chaos, at least for a week or two, when that lands, from simply talent tree changes alone, let alone everything else that's coming!).

Personally, I've been trying to grab a last few achievements and things. I'm still trying for the Raptor mount in ZG, though it still eludes me - I'm glad I at least managed to get the Tiger, though, as that's the one I really love. I've been pushing a bit to try to finish off the Zandalar rep as well, but it will take some dedicated farming I think. I'm a fair bit into Revered, but still a bit far off! I haven't tried properly for the Baron mount, but may be something I look into if I have the spare time.

I did manage to successfully complete my Winterspring rep finally though! I spent a day grinding out the last Revered-to-Exalted stretch, which fortunately was livened up some by teaming up with a couple of other players who were out there doing the same thing. Teaming up is a good idea - stops everyone stealing each other's mobs and can provide nice relief to the grind. My Winterspring tiger was my 100th mount as well, so a nice couple of rewards at the end of it all!

So what are you hoping to finish before Cata or 4.0 hit?

For Gnomeregan!

The time has come to take back Gnomeregan and the Echo Isles!

This week saw the implementation of the Gnomeregan and Darkspear Trolls pre-Cata events! It almost feels like it snuck up on us a bit - for me, at least, I was so distracted by beta updates and changes that I had forgotten this was due. The events are a ton of fun, I highly recommend checking them out! The quests are pretty quick and definitely worth the time (not to mention they give a couple of fun rewards), and if you're level 75+ you can participate in the final event to recapture Gnomeregan or Echo Isles too.

Some screenshots and highlights below! Just a note, they do contain spoilers! If you haven't done the events yet, you may want to check them out before reading on.

The Gnomeregan quests begin in Ironforge, where you have to recruit some gnome citizens for the battle.

There's a series of fun quests to do after you deliver the recruits, the most fun of which being able to test out the spider-bot vehicles. Especially fun as a tree!

The main quest line will reward you with an item which will allow you to wear a gnome costume (or a troll costume for the Horde questlines). The cooldown is long (four hours!) but the costume lasts for 30 minutes, so not too bad!

After you finish up the quests (and if you're level 75+), you can participate in the battle to retake Gnomeregan. The event is similar to the Battle for the Undercity quest in that you run with the leaders and gain a buff which boosts your damage immensely and heals you.

Gnome King Mekkatorque has a particularly funny line when trying to disarm a radiation bomb left by Thermaplugg, asking for some Refreshing Spring Water, Handful of Copper Bolts, and Dirty Trogg Cloths to fix it!

The bomb does go off, but we do reclaim the surface of Gnomeregan! I'm guessing there may be some more to come yet. Cool explosion though!

I recently moved my hunter horde-side, so I do have some screenshots from the Echo Isles event! (Though not as many).


As with the Gnomeregan quests, you need to get some recruits for the battle!

The quests are a little bit less humourous as the gnome quests (reflecting the different cultures, really), but a lot of cool troll lore is mixed in, and connections to the spirits. There's also a very interesting introduction to the troll druids!

The troll costume is also incredibly awesome! Much cooler than the gnome one I think.

That's all I've got! Definitely go check out the quests and events, they're a ton of fun! I'll be going through on all my alts, well worth it! After the battles too you get a cool Darkspear or Gnomeregan cloak. It looks like they took out the 'overcloak' option though and they're just normal cloaks now. Oh, and for those of you working on your Loremaster achievements, the quests do count!

Have fun!

Beware the shadow! Halion 25-man heroic down!

After many weeks of wipes, strategizing, frustration over cutter deaths, combat log malfunctions, and a 2% enrage wipe, Halion 25 man heroic is finally down! We finally got him down last night. Great job by everyone involved.

Guardian of Cenarius

I've just about completed my Cenarion Raiment set (only missing the boots), but the robes finally dropped so it looks complete nevertheless!

The Cloak of Unending Life from the AQ20 quests (made with the Idols, Scarabs, and drops in AQ20) matches it perfectly too. I don't have the best weapon for it (something like Dreambinder would probably be fitting), but it's quite fun using my Sulfuras with it, even if it does look a bit out of place.

I had a ton of fun healing a few randoms in the gear, so I may start doing that now to liven up my daily LFG (though if I get any of the ICC 5-mans I'd have to pop my proper gear back on).

I think this is one of my favourite tier sets - I love the leaves and twigs, and it just looks very much like something I'd imagine a druid would wear. If any tier set model were to be revived in Cataclysm or later, I would definitely hope it would be this one. The Cenarion Expedition tabard goes quite well with it all too, and the Guardian of Cenarius title just tops it off. Altogether it makes a really great druid set!

By fire be purged!

I've finished my mace! Two xpacs behind, but no matter, I'm still very happy to have made it. :D

I'm tempted to use it in randoms, probably while healing and just run up to mobs and smack them with it, though the drop in stats is quite significant so perhaps I shouldn't if I want to maintain a (reasonable) level of contribution to the group. Perhaps I'll use it on the occasions I get overgeared tanks so it's safe to have the drop in spellpower.

I'll be continuing to go into Molten Core both for rep (Hydraxian Waterlords and Thorium Brotherhood from the Lava and Fiery Core turn-ins) and to finish off my t1 set (The Cenarion robes just will not drop! I only need the Robes and Boots now.). I'm quite tempted to head in on my Pally now, though, and try to get the pieces for Thunderfury, as that weapon is awesome. I've seen some tanks use that in randoms and it looks like a lot of fun. We shall see though!

Here's a bit of interesting information from WoW Wiki on Sulfuras:

Sulfuras is the mighty weapon of Ragnaros the Firelord. The weapon never leaves his grasp. It is composed of flaming red elementium and etched from end to end with intricate runes that seem to move like flowing lava across the weapons surface. Sulfuras is covered with many vicious pikes of varying sizes, each white hot and surrounded by the distortion of shimmering heat.

When a creature is slain by Sulfuras, its body is consumed by intense flame and effectively disintegrated, leaving behind only a pile of ash. The heat and pressure of this effect solidifies the ash into a hard, dark, crystal. This crystal is known as an eye of Sulfuras and is used by Ragnaros' followers in ancient rituals or to craft special weapons such as sulfuron hammers.