4.3 PTR Resto Changes - TO THE GROUND!

The 4.3 PTR is finally up and rolling, which means lots and lots of news, changes, more changes, and even more changes!

Resto druids everywhere did a double take with this first round of 4.3 PTR patch notes which included the following:
-Wild Growth healing has been reduced by 20%.
-Glyph of Wild Growth now also increases the cooldown by 2 seconds.

This is a pretty substantial nerf and is a really perplexing one. This is essentially nerfing Wild Growth back to its state at Cata Launch - significantly less healing done and a 10 second cooldown. This is boggling because WG was a huge issue in 4.0, Resto druids simply were substantially behind other healers. They needed a boost to simple raw output so badly that in patch 4.0.6, Wild Growth got a 30% buff to its healing done and its cooldown reverted back down to 8 seconds. Now 4.3 wants to... bring back the old WG output and CD and bring us back to those output issues of 4.0?

There's an attempt at smoothing over the glyph change by describing it as a means to give Resto druids 'more choice' in which glyphs to use. This neglects the fact that there are really only 4 decent glyphs for Resto druids to choose from to begin with. Wild Growth, Healing Touch, Innervate, Rebirth. Usually the Healing Touch and Innervate glyphs are the two people swap between. Even moreso, for those druids that opt not to pick up Nature's Swiftness, the Healing Touch glyph is useless for them so they really only have 3 choices. So, there's no choice component in this at all.

It's a straight attempt to strongly nerf Wild Growth. And with this component now as well, we basically have to choose whether to sacrifice 1/6 of the output (chopping WG down from hitting 6 targets back down to 5), or to gain an extra 2 seconds on the cd. I imagine many will simply be dropping the glyph. And from our great choice selection, I guess we can run... the Innervate glyph. Hooray. I can now get a little more of my Innervate on the rare occasions I cast it on someone else following the Innervate nerf.

I can certainly understand wanting to nerf Wild Growth, as it's usually in the top end for heals used in Resto druid's healing (with exceptions being in fights like Shannox, where tank damage and healing is the primary component, bringing Lifebloom and Healing Touch towards the top of heals used per fight). But a nerf this substantial that brings it back to its 4.0 state is ridiculous, as it's likely going to bring back the same issues that caused it to be buffed in 4.0.6. Druids still have no mitigation abilities, Holy Priests will now be getting a boost to Divine Hymn to give them their Tranq-like raid cooldown, and, despite having good direct heals, druids will still not be preferred tank healers over Paladins (and possibly now Shamans, with the 4.3 shaman changes). It's the same issues for druids all over again.

If a nerf is even necessary, a more reasonable nerf to Wild Growth would be a lot better - even a 10% nerf to the healing done by WG wouldn't be as bad as the current 20% nerf. The increased cooldown from the Glyph is really too much and seems a terribly poor decision. While similar to the change listed for the Priest Circle of Healing glyph (the glyph has the same effect as WG; its 4.3 change also increases the mana cost by 20%), an increased mana cost is a lot less costly than an increased cooldown.

There are also concerns that the Tranquility cooldown changes have faded in people's memories some - Ghostcrawler did acknowledge around early 4.2 that Resto druids often 'win' at meters due to the inflation caused by Tranquility. With this acknowledgement was the hope that they would keep this in mind for future healing adjustments so that druids didn't receive unnecessary nerfs due to the HPS inflation caused by Tranq. WG numbers are always high for druids but the strength of WG was definitely something that was needed because druids didn't have the output of other healers pre-4.0.6 when WG was buffed.

I sincerely hope the WG glyph change will be reverted and that the nerfs in general to WG will be reduced.

I'd hope for some other improvements for Resto druids as well in 4.3. Our talent tree still needs work. Living Seed, Blessing of the Grove, and Nature's Bounty all remain lackluster talents. Nature's Grace still should be swapped with Genesis in their tiers in the Balance tree as well.

Having to spec Nature's Cure for a magic dispel seems a frustrating choice (for Shaman and Paladin healers as well - all three classes have to spec to pick up Magic Dispel). Magic Dispel I think should simply go along the route of Holy/Disc priests, who gain the ability to dispel friendly targets when specialising in either tree. Healers are the only ones with an ability to magic dispel friendly targets currently anyway, it seems a waste of a talent point as the dispel is often required in everything from 5 mans to 25 man heroic raids. Even if there aren't that many things which need to be dispelled, the few things that can be dispelled are powerful enough spells that they simply must be dispelled.

This is still just the first round of the PTR and the very first release of the 4.3 PTR. Hopefully there'll be many more adjustments and changes to come, and hopefully they'll reevaluate this Wild Growth nerf. There are a lot of changes for the other healing classes; an interesting one is Holy Priests will now get their raid cooldown with a talented Divine Hymn that has its healing increased and its cooldown cut down to 3 minutes. First glance at the DH change seems to put it about in line with Tranquility (keeping in mind DH is a direct cast only, while Tranquility applies a HoT). The main difference is DH also applies an Increased Healing buff, which is hopefully accounted for in DH's actual heals as well. It will certainly be a potent cooldown for Holy priests, and hopefully will be kept in line with Tranq.

They've also started previous PTRs with very large nerfs which they've later scaled back some, so hopefully we'll see this nerf scaled back and toned down in the coming weeks. The Resto community will hopefully have their concerns heard (and we can certainly see through the alleged 'glyph choices' idea to the actual blatant nerf it's attempting to gloss over).

Here's hoping for better news to come.

PTR Feedback - Resto Mastery Duration

I decided to make a post on the WoW PTR Discussion Forum regarding the Resto Mastery to give some feedback on the Harmony duration and thought I'd post it here as well to hopefully increase readers of it a bit! You can see the original post on the forums here: [Feedback] Harmony (Resto Mastery) Duration. You can upvote the thread by hitting 'Like' in the top right hand corner and feel free to contribute with any constructive comments, thoughts, or ideas of your own! (Just keep it constructive so we avoid the forum trolls).

Full post is the following:

As a preface, I’m very pleased and excited about the 4.2 mastery changes for Resto druids. The change not only boosts our direct heals and our interaction between our direct heals and HoTs (with the former activating the HoT buff), it should go a long way to encourage more direct healing from Resto druids and clever play and not just mindless spamming. I was also pleased to see on PTR that the direct heals actually proc a buff for Harmony, which is extremely helpful in tracking its uptime, whether through an addon like Power Auras or simply glancing up at our buffs to ensure it’s up.

My only concern is with the actual duration of the buff. At only 10 seconds, it’s feeling very restrictive. Taking into account the GCD following the spell which activated it, the buff is only active for ~9 seconds, and 1-3 seconds of that will be required to reactivate it (through casting a direct heal) if we want to maintain continuous uptime, which will be the ideal we aim for. 

A 15 second duration would be nice, however, that may seem a bit too easy to want to implement, as it could easily be refreshed by simply Swiftmending on cooldown, which could quickly become a mindless auto-cast without any real thought. Particularly with Swiftmend, we don’t want the spell to become the main mastery activator, especially for raid healers, as it could likely just lead to wasted Swiftmends hit unnecessarily without thought just for the mastery proc.

The 10 second duration should be very maintainable in 5mans, and likely not too bad in 10mans, where there's generally plenty of direct healing going on along with party/raid healing, especially in 10s with generally only 2 or 3 healers. In 25 man raids in particular I see this being much more difficult and restrictive, particularly for those druids who are focussed primarily on raid healing rather than necessarily tank healing. If refreshing the Mastery with a Nourish or Healing Touch, that's essentially 2-3 seconds of the buff spent simply refreshing it. You could arguably refresh with a Regrowth, particularly if you have an OoC proc, but that seems like it might just encourage poor and random Regrowth use. 

A 12 to 14 second duration for the buff seems like it may be a good balance. Not so long that it could be so easily refreshed by just spamming Swiftmend off CD without thought, but long enough that you don't feel you’re constantly struggling to refresh it and can actually make good use of spreading your HoTs on targets while raid healing and take advantage of the HoT boost component of the mastery. Regardless of final duration time chosen, definitely something that should be adjusted and ideally increased.

Overall, very positive about the mastery change and am looking forward to when it goes live. 

4.2 PTR - Alysrazor Testing and New Mastery Power Aura

I'd hoped to have a fair few more raid previews from the PTR, but a mixture of bugged encounters, rescheduled testing, and just fellow raiders having issues getting onto the PTR (and staying connected), the only real preview of interest is a look at Alysrazor.

For those of you who quested in Hyjal, you may remember the Green Dragon Alysra - we deliver the prisoner Arch Druid Staghelm to her (which apparently seems to have been a bad idea). It seems she has joined the ranks of Ragnaros along with Staghelm (who we will also face in Firelands).

The fight itself is quite fun. She drops molten feathers which players can pick up, increasing their movement speed and allowing them to cast while moving. If you pick up three, you'll gain Wings of Flame and be able to fly up into the air. There are fiery rings to pass through while in the air which give you a haste buff and allow you to stay in the air.

Meanwhile there are adds to deal with on the ground, so any DPS not chasing her in the air can assist on those. There are humanoid adds which cast brushfires, basically balls of moving flame, so killing those adds keeps the ground from becoming covered with fire. There are also two Hatchling adds which the tanks have to manage. Lava worms spawn out of the ground and you kite the hatchlings to the worms to feed them to prevent them from gaining a damage buff.

Our bear tank, Reesi (of The Inconspicuous Bear), frapsed our 10 man kill, so you can get a glimpse of the fight here!



I'll leave the preview at that as I expect there'll still be a lot more tuning and adjusting to the fight. The 10m version felt a bit undertuned so it will likely in the very least be buffed some.

New Resto Mastery


The new Resto mastery (Harmony: Increases direct healing by 10% and your direct healing spells grant you a 10% bonus to your periodic healing for 10 sec. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%.) has been implemented on the PTR, and it does indeed proc a buff on you. This will help immensely in keeping track of the Mastery and ensuring we maintain good uptime on it.

I do feel the actual time of it could be increased. A 15 second duration would be nice, however, that may seem a bit too easy for Blizz to want to implement, as it could easily be refreshed by simply Swiftmending on cooldown, which could quickly become a mindless auto-cast without any real thought. This is obviously trying to encourage our direct heals along with our HoTs, which is good. The 10 second duration should be very maintainable in 5mans and likely 10mans, where there's plenty of direct healing going on along with raid healing. In 25s I could see this being a bit trickier, particularly for those druids who are focussed primarily on raid healing rather than necessarily tank healing. If refreshing the Mastery with a Nourish or Healing Touch, that's essentially 2-3 seconds of the buff spent simply refreshing it. You could arguably refresh with a faster Regrowth, particularly if you have an OoC proc, but that seems like it might just encourage poor and random Regrowth use.

A 12 second duration for the buff seems like it may be a good balance. Not too long that it could be so easily refreshed by just spamming Swiftmend, but long enough that you don't feel your constantly having to refresh it.

Regardless, having a means to track the buff will be essential for keeping good uptime on it. Power Auras Classic is great for this, and I've made a Power Aura (which you can edit to your liking) to track the buff. Keep in mind, this only works on the PTR for the moment, as the new Mastery won't be live until 4.2.

The import code is this:

Version:4.19; b:0.0549; g:0.4863; icon:Spell_Nature_HealingWay; buffname:Harmony; r:0.1843; x:-85; customname:Harmony; texture:23; alpha:1; inVehicle:0; wowtex:true; combat:true; size:0.25; y:-160; ismounted:0; timer.b:0.9294; timer.h:2; timer.Texture:WhiteRabbit; timer.enabled:true; timer.r:0.9882; timer.cents:false; timer.Relative:CENTER; timer.UseOwnColor:true

The Aura itself looks like this (seen with my full Resto power aura setup):

The Harmony aura is the leaf on the left hand side with the timer - this way you can see the buff is active and also how much time is remaining on it so you can refresh it as needed.

My full set of Resto power aura codes are available in my post here: My User Interface / Addons.

Enjoy! :D

4.2 Mastery change, Innervate nerf, and PTR Raid Testing

Patch 4.2 is under testing on the PTR and the news keeps rolling in! While everything is still very much subject to change, there are some interesting changes slated for Druids already, including a new Mastery for Resto and a very significant change to how Innervate works. We've also had two of the new Firelands bosses up for testing and I've got some cool screenshots of those as well! As you can see in my screenshot above, the new Firelands zone looks awesome. That shot is actually taken inside the instance - it's a massive zone, and you can mount up to ride to each boss.

New Resto Mastery
There was a recent blue post with 4.2 patch notes which included this gem:

'Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.'

This is looking like a really great change, so hopefully it'll make it through testing to live. The old / current Mastery has some issues; though it's not too bad, it's much stronger in 5- and 10-mans, where HoTs can more easily line up with other heals. Probably the most frequent question I get is 'Should I be putting Rejuvs on my Wild Growth targets to activate the Mastery?', which really shouldn't be done unnecessarily (ie, on targets that don't need all that healing), so it likely ends up just encouraging spamming.

The new Mastery not only will boost our direct heals and encourage more direct healing, it's also a great boost to our direct heals and hence our tank healing as well as our raid healing. The mastery will proc off of Swiftmend too, so even if you're focussing on raid healing, you'll still be gaining the Mastery through your Swiftmends.

By the sound of it, it seems like it may proc a buff (increases periodic healing for 10 seconds), which would be nice if an actual buff comes up as that can be easily tracked with something like a Power Aura to make sure we maintain it, but we'll have to see. Either way, a very positive change!

Innervate changes
The Innervate changes slated for 4.2 so far are mostly nerfing Innervate's effect for OTHER healers. The effect when used on oneself will be the same - a 20% mana return. The change is when we cast our Innervate on someone else, it will now cause them to regenerate 5% of THEIR maximum mana.

Innervate: now causes the target to regenerate 5% of their maximum mana over 10 sec. Still regenerates 20% of maximum mana on self cast.

So this is basically just a nerf to Innervate trading. The Glyph of Innervate will be unchanged - if we cast it on someone else, we'll still receive half of our own Innervate (so 10%), but the other person will only get the 5% of their maximum mana rather than our 20%. If this change goes live, Innervate trading will basically be worthless as a mana strategy. It's still certainly viable for helping other healers when they're in need of mana, but trading the Innervates around won't be anywhere near as powerful as it is currently.

This is a slight buff to Feral innervates, though, as the Innervate on someone else will amount to 5% of the target's maximum mana (assuming that it is based on the target's maximum mana, which it appears to be), so Feral innervates will be slightly more useful now.

PTR Testing!
I've been hopping on the PTR for some of the raid testing. The new Firelands zone looks awesome inside - it's a massive space and it just looks great. We've tried out two of the bosses so far, Beth'tilac the spider boss and Lord Rhyolith. I won't go into too much detail on the fights yet, particularly as they're still subject to changing and tuning, but this should whet the tastebuds!

This is Beth'tilac. The fight itself looks like it will be pretty interesting, though it may be yet another fight that's bad for melee (and Rhyolith seemed bad for melee too, to be honest). The fight itself was ridiculously overtuned (mostly in Phase 2, where outgoing damage was ridiculous). The boss itself retreats up on top of her web when you engage. Some of the adds you deal with lower themselves down on webs, and you kill them to get a web vehicle which will transport raid members up on top of the web to engage the boss. Fortunately the web area is a normal platform - when I first heard about going into the webs in the Blizzard previews, I had a sudden fear that we'd be hanging upside down or something ridiculous. The upper web area though is a normal, fairly flat surface, though, so there aren't any weird swimming mechanics or camera angle quirks to it, which is great.

This is Lord Rhyolith. This will be a fight that ultimately requires a lot of coordination. He doesn't have a threat table (tanks will be busy rounding up adds), instead you attack his Left or Right Foot. DPSing either foot will cause him to turn in that direction, so you steer him around the area by DPSing the Left or Right foot, whichever way you want him to turn. He starts with an 80 stack of armour, which reduces his damage taken by 80%, so you have to steer him over volcanoes to melt the armour off and increase his damage taken. It looked like both feet share a healthpool, and supposedly his body will not be targetable (or at least not damageable) when this goes live - we were able to target it on the PTR, but it was obviously unnecessary to do so.

I'll leave it at that for now! As there may not be many screenshots of these bosses and Firelands things around yet, people are welcome to use my screenshots, but I ask that if you do so please link back to the blog for crediting. :)

Healing in Cata and Screenshots from the PTR

Some interesting news updates recently, as well as some screenshots from the PTR!

Let's start with news:

The most recent post on MMO-Champ has some interesting blue posts and also gives us our first glimpse at the druid tier11 set. I actually think it looks pretty cool; I like the wings on the spaulders.

There's also a very interesting post from Ghostcrawler about healing in Cataclysm. You can read the full post on healing here, I do recommend reading it. It gives me some mixed feelings so far on what Cata healing will be like. I already use all my spells while healing so, at least according to GC, I shouldn't notice a huge change in how I heal (disregarding actual spell changes). The spell changes themselves will take some getting used to, and will also take some adapting as we level up and then hit level 85. I have been poking around on the PTR, but it's a bit hard to judge there as, certainly for heroics, a) I still outgear the content (and have had zero mana issues with this in mind), b) Tanks are readjusting as well, so stray adds cause a bit more issue than they otherwise might, c) Bosses and mobs may also be out of tune. Lisanna over at Restokin had an interesting post recently with actual numbers of spells used in one of the Cataclysm dungeons, healing Halls of Origination. This gave me some hope for both the variety of spells used and also in that they seem to reflect what Blizz/GC have said they were aiming for.

Patch 4.0 I think will cause all sorts of craziness both as everyone relearns a lot of the changes that have come in, and also as nothing will really be balanced for level 80. That I think is the biggest issue I'm having on the PTR at the moment trying things out, is that it's hard to really see the end-game from level 80 with the new trees and also with the Wrath style dungeons.

There was also a recent beta patch build with lots of changes for the Balance tree, one of which is not a great talent for Resto druids - Nature's Grace (which before provided x% haste) is now Nature's Torment, which provides a haste buff following a Moonfire or Insect Swarm cast. Clearly aimed at Balance (unless Blizz is looking down the road for us to use more Moonfires while healing, but I don't think so). This is particularly frustrating as it only leaves Nature's Majesty as a desirable tier1 talent for resto druids and leaves us with 3 wasted points in Balance as we try to get to Genesis (+healing for HoTs and Swiftmend) and Moonglow (reduced mana cost). BUT, I can see a potential good change, if Nature's Torment were to be swapped to Tier2 with either Genesis or Moonglow. That would give us much more valuable points to spend to reach the other in tier2, and would also likely free up a couple of points to max out the new replenishment form of Lifebloom. That change would actually be great, so I do hope a tier swap is imminent.

As I mentioned earlier, the PTR has been a little bit wonky for testing out new spells. It doesn't help as well that I am without my beloved Vuhdo. I must give Blizz some credit for their new raid UI, as the healing bars they have now are much improved. The new Blizz UI combined with mouseover macros is quite effective (and will definitely be great for newer healers, especially while leveling and doing low-level dungeons). I'll be happiest though when it's all on live and my Vuhdo is updated just to help make adapting to the new spells a little bit more comfortable.

Hasted and critting HoTs are definitely nice. Nourish cast time feels a bit slow to me, even with the cast time reduction talent and haste, so I'm hoping there may be some change there, but again this may feel very different at 85. The Efflorescence proc is fun (and Regrowth crits fairly often it seems like so it procs a lot), though I think people are wary of standing in the glowy green voidzones it creates. I do like the leaves that fly upward in it, but the green zone does look potentially dangerous rather than helpful.

The screenshot above is with a few Efflorescence zones stacked up.

One nice thing is Regrowths become instant-cast when you go into tree-form, which can both be useful for some bigger heals + HoT effect (Efflorescence or the Regrowth HoT) while on the move. It also can result in some pretty designs as you run about popping Regrowths.

As you can see, currently our new cooldown-based tree form still uses the Wrath model, which is nice to get a glimpse still of our tree form. I think they had plans to update the model, but I imagine that may come with a later Cataclysm patch at this point. I'm still hopeful for a minor glyph to keep the appearance of this tree form (perhaps when a new model is implemented for the cooldown), but nothing has been introduced as yet, so I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

As you had a glimpse of above, the new Blizz UI frames are much improved.

Here you can see the new frames a lot better. You can select whether you want to show health numbers or percentages, whether you want to show power bars (ie mana, energy), whether you prefer to have green bars for health or class colours, etc. It can show incoming heals and a little bit of overheals. You can adjust the height and width of the bars and move them around. It will also show debuffs and buffs and your HoTs. All in all pretty decent and much improved on the old UI. I will still use addons (Vuhdo for as long as its available) and I expect most end-game raiders will likely progress to addons, but this is definitely a big step forward for Blizz and will be of great help to many.

In this screenshot you can also see the new Power Aura-style graphics for spell procs. That graphic is for Omen of Clarity, which has also been revamped somewhat - it is now passive and grants either a free feral ability or a cast-time spell. Not certain yet if there's a way to turn those off (I haven't checked) in case Power Auras or another addon is preferred for you. I think I'll likely keep those on for things like OoC but probably continue to use Power Auras for other spell notifications or cooldowns.

You can also see the new beginner tooltips they've implemented, which give a bit more detail and advice on spells. ('Be sure to use the benefit of Clearcasting before its duration expires.') You can switch these off in the Interface options.

The other UI updates are pretty nice, things like the mounts and pets pages are much improved.

There seem to be a lot of little changes like that coming in, which is great! There are similar new styles for the professions, though when I last logged on to the PTR my toons professions were still all not working.

The new Glyph UI is great, particularly now that once we learn a glyph it is always in our glyph book, so it can be easily swapped in and out. The only issue on the PTR currently is that it seems difficult to get any new glyphs! With professions broken, it's hard to find a lot of things which you need, and the few that were lucky enough to have working abilities seem to be overpricing them on the AH so far (which is quite odd to me - your toon won't get the gold you make on the PTR, why sell high?).

There seems to be a lot of tuning and number-tweaking left to do on the PTR. Certainly for ferals (and warriors from what I've heard) need damage adjustments as our dps is quite low. Hunters and locks in particular have quite ridiculously high damage at the moment. The background downloader on the Live servers has been up and running, though, and it looks like at least two portions of this patch have already been downloaded, so we can expect to see 4.0 hit live servers soon! I'm guess it may be over the next one to three weeks. I've started moving my toons out of Dalaran and setting their hearthstones to places in Storm Peaks so that they don't get stuck desperately trying to log in. I may even start logging out in Shattrath for a quieter spot to relog (incoming 'World Server is down' messages in Northrend).

In other news, I've managed to max out a few more reps before they disappear! I've hit exalted with the Zandalar tribe. I've also hit exalted with the Timbermaw and Thorium Brotherhood, though I think those two factions will be in place in Cata (no promises, though). Need a fair few more passes at Molten Core to finish out my Hydraxian rep though.

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?

PTR 4.0.1 is live!

Patch 4.0.1 is now live on the PTR! You can find the patch notes and article on WoW.com here and some more information and the patch notes on MMO-Champ as well here. Cata is well and truly closing in!

It looks like we'll have a period with this pre-xpac content and, more importantly, with the new talent trees and glyphs. There'll likely be a period before the xpac hits with all the changes in place, and we'll have to adapt quickly to keep up with raiding as we wrap up the content before the xpac officially launches.

In other news, the tier 11 bonuses were released recently.

• Item - Druid T11 Restoration 2P Bonus - Increases the critical strike chance of the periodic portion of your Lifebloom spell by 5%. / Instant
• Item - Druid T11 Restoration 4P Bonus - Whenever you have Lifebloom stacked to its maximum of 3 applications on its target, you gain 540 Spirit. / Instant
• Item - Druid T11 Balance 2P Bonus - Increases the critical strike chance of your Insect Swarm and Moonfire spells by 5%. / Instant
• Item - Druid T11 Balance 4P Bonus - Whenever Eclipse triggers, your critical strike chance with spells is increased by 99% for 8 sec. Each critical strike you achieve reduces that bonus by 33%. / Instant
• Item - Druid T11 Feral 2P Bonus - Increases the periodic damage done by your Rake and Lacerate abilities by 10%. / Instant
• Item - Druid T11 Feral 4P Bonus - Each time you use Mangle (Cat) you gain a 1% increase to attack power for 30 sec stacking up to 3 times, and the duration of your Survival Instinct ability is increased by 50%. / Instant

The bonuses are interesting. The Resto bonus seems to be gearing towards our tank healing tools and emphasizing us using the new Lifebloom on tanks. It shouldn't be hard to maintain the stacks to proc the four-piece bonus. With the new talents Nourish and Healing Touch will refresh the Lifebloom stack, so once we get the stack up it should be easy to maintain, whether by throwing on a new Lifebloom or topping up the tank with Nourish or HT, and certainly maintainable between covering the raid if we're raid healing. Our tank-healing tools should be a lot stronger in Cata, so we'll be able to do that well as well as covering the raid. It will be interesting to see how all the classes end up working together in Cata as all are going through some big changes, particularly paladins. The healing dynamic will likely be switched up a fair bit.

The Feral bonuses are a bit odd. The two-piece bonus is a pretty straightforward damage increase. The bear four-piece is pretty standard as well, increasing the duration of Survival Instincts. The cat bonus is a bit odd though, mostly that it's currently triggered by Mangle. Mangle's duration was increased to 60 seconds, so it seems odd that the proc is for 30 seconds and stacks up to three times. It's basically encouraging us to Mangle a lot more, and certainly at least every 30 seconds instead of every sixty. I seem to remember hearing that they wanted to increase Mangle damage, primarily so we have an option when we're unable to shred (on caster bosses like Lady Deathwhisper, for example, who are often turning to cast at different people, so we're having to jump around a lot to stay behind her or perhaps have just one hit that would need to be replaced with something other than a shred). It seems like it would be a better idea (and more consistent with previous proc items, like the Idol of Mutilation) if it procced from Mangle and Shred. Perhaps that's something that might come.

The Balance bonuses seem fairly straightforward as damage and critical strike increases. The four-piece bonus is working with the Eclipse proc, so should only help with boomkins working with the new Eclipse mechanics.

Interesting stuff on the horizon!