…and sometimes it’s backwards day.
HoT.
The Grizzly Hills Outhouse Quest: Putting the BOOM in Boomkin since 2008.
Tamaryn demonstrates to Commander Eligor Dawnbringer that she has already discovered the preferred method to defeating Heigan.
…and now you know why you should fear a Pike with a camera (or Print Screen button, as the case may be).
And it came to pass that Pike was no longer allowed to cry about druids flying all over the place and grabbing herbs while she had to keep dismounting and remounting. Because now, she can finally join in the fun. Bwahaha.
Yes, my druid is now level 68. It officially makes her “Northrend level”, which is sort of intimidating, because Tawyn and Lunapike were both 70 when they headed in. And all dressed up in level 70 blues/purples. Oh, and they were both hunters, aka Solo Class Extraordinaire. Now I maintain that leveling a resto druid is easier than a lot of people say (HoTs + Bear Form anyone?) but it is slower and despite the heals, there are fewer tricks in your bag for getting out of sticky situations. Fortunately, seeing as according to my achievements I did a grand total of 25 non-instance-related quests in Outlands (an average of 2.5 quests per level… yes, that is really all I did), it means that in Northrend I might be able to get away with doing basically what I did in Outlands: instances, instances, instances, aaaaaand instances, and maybe a random Kara run if I get lucky (OHMAHGAH I WOULD LOVE THAT, you guys don’t even know). But yeah, especially since I have some friends and guildies who have characters sitting around at level 70 or thereabouts and would love some heals… instances are in the cards, I think!
So yeah, that post wasn’t hunter related. Sowwy. =( I have some Hunter Kindergarten stuff in the works. No, really!
So this past weekend I hit a milestone as I successfully managed to get a third character to level 50.
Wanna see a picture?
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Oh snap! Hide your children! Shelter your weak, your young and your old! Houston, we have a problem! Pike has a level 50 character and it’s not a hunter!
What this unholy union of hunter and druid will bring in the future, I can’t say. But you’ve at least got to tip your hat to a class that can almost manage to keep my attention to the extent that hunters do. (Keyword: almost).
As for the inevitable “Why are you leveling resto you wacko” questions that I can already forsee in my crystal ball, I have four answers for you:
1.) I am doing a lot of instance/group stuff
2.) I never die
3.) Come on… you get to be a tree. Clearly the most fun of all druid forms. I run around Stormwind in Tree Form instead of Travel Form.
4.) Honestly, when I am solo’ing… tossing on some feral gear, piling on the massive resto HoTs, and going into cat/bear as needed is surprisingly effective. Not quite as fast as moonkin, maybe. And certainly not as fast as a hunter. But who cares about “fast” so long as things are working well and you’re having fun?
Well, that is my obligatory non-hunter post of the year. Hope you non-hunters that visit my site (are you out there?) were entertained! In closing, I would like to dedicate this post to BRK and BBB, both of whom are bloggers that I <3 muchly, and who have this frightening tendency to conspire together to bring Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Fo'Shizzle to the Druidic and Hunterrific masses. We will return you to your regularly scheduled hunter broadcast program tomorrow. Until then, happy hunting and tree-hugging.
I have three things of interest to say in this post.
Firstly, this is my 200th blog post. I would wax nostalgic here and give a nice long speech about it, but I’m saving that for my one-year-blogoversary next month! Thank you, though, to all you crazy people that visit here every day.
Secondly, somebody got to my blog via the search term: “warcraft hunters why do you think you’re special?” Well, Googler, the long answer is here. The short answer is “Because we are. Durr.”
Thirdly, something is afoot among the druid community. I did my very best to defend my huntery honor in the Great Foshizzle Debate of 2008, and I maintain that Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged Foshizzle is how it is best dished. But my level 40 druidling was very impressed by the unification of her fuzzy, feathery, and leafy comrades, so much so that she decided to show her own personal Foshizzleness against the baddest of the baddies: Edwin VanCleef himself. With only a level 11 priest (the alt of another druid, of course) by her side, Tamaryn ventured into that big scary boat and defended her honor.
Bear, Bell, Awlbiste, and all you other druid bloggers out there, this is for you… from the huntard with love.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmlM90fPezE&hl=en&fs=1]
(Disclaimer: if you didn’t understand the last paragraph, it’s okay. /pat)
I made a few tweaks, edits, and clarifications to my Karazhan guide, based on many of the comments. Once again, I hope at least some of you will find it helpful.
So I have my level 70 hunter, and I have my level 62 hunter. Oddly enough my third highest level character isn’t a hunter at all. Nope– she’s currently a level 31 restoration druid.
Say hello to Tamaryn:
She was actually originally spec’d Balance until level 22 or so, at which point I realized that a.) everybody wanted me to heal, and b.) I can’t DPS in an instance unless I’m DPS’ing as a hunter. I just can’t. So to make my life more enjoyable, I had to switch roles completely. (Although sometimes I still do miss some of the fun stuff from the Balance tree and I’ll probably go back and play with it post-Boomkin-level).
So she respec’d pure Resto and hasn’t looked back. Solo work is not quite as easy as it is on a hunter (or as I’m sure it would be if I was spec’d feral or something), but it’s still not bad yet. Right now I can toss a Regrowth/Rejuvenation combo on myself, pop into Bear form, and take on three or four guys at my level, wearing half-clothie Intellect stuff. Dunno how long that’s gonna last, but for now, it’s pretty fun.
But let’s talk about healing. I’ve done quite a few lowbie instances now with appropriately-leveled groups, and also made a few forays into Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, and healing is very different. At first, it was hard to get used to. I wasn’t really watching the action except for on the side; mostly I was just staring at the name plates of my party members and playing this game of whack-a-mole where’d I whack the appropriate name with a heal.
Then I started doing it more and more, and things got even more complicated. Suddenly I was in situations where everybody needed a heal and I had to prioritize. It sorta hurts to have my healy-button hovering over the hunter before realizing that the tank needs it too… and opting to give it to the tank. Because you can do things without the hunter but there’s not a whole lot you can do without the tank unless everything’s almost dead already. It really all came into perspective when a warlock I was healing, who has a priest main, told me “Stop healing me and heal the tank.” I sorta hate to pick one person over the other, but… it has to be done sometimes.
Things I still have to learn and practice: healing myself (I am absolutely horrible at this; I watch everyone’s nameplate except my own and then I end up dying) and managing my mana. To be fair, really the only times I’ve ran out of mana that I can think of are when pulls go horribly bad and we pull a lot of extra stuff. Still, I really have no idea what I’m doing as a sapling and so I’ve no idea if I’m doing things mana-efficiently or not. My current healy cycle consists of mostly Regrowths with Healing Touches thrown in if someone needs a big heal. According to the people I group with, I’m pretty good at it, but I still feel kind of paranoid. I know I can play my hunter, but I’m still learning to walk with my druid. (At least I know a couple blogs that can teach me all I need to know, right? =P)
Now PvP with a healer is actually really fun, I think so anyway. The only other non-hunter class I’ve attempted PvP with was a mage and it was horrible and painful and I gave up after about fifteen mintues. But healing in a battleground is a whole new ballgame and I really dig it.
Things I’ve noticed:
1.) I get sheeped all the time when I’m a healer. It rarely happens when I’m a hunter, but when I show up as a healer everyone starts flinging Polymorphs in my general direction. Which is hilarious because I can just shapeshift to get out of it and start healing again.
2.) A surprisingly high number of people do not seem to be aware of the fact that they can kill the healers instead of their target and it will probably make their life easier. I was in a WSG game where me and a holy paladin kept our flag-carrier alive for several minutes while probably no less than five horde swarmed around the guy trying to take him down. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them that they could just come and take care of me and the pally first. Nope. The reason we eventually lost the flag was because the pally and I went OOM, otherwise we coulda kept healing indefinitely I’m sure.
3.) The few people that do have a “Kill all healers” mantra are very dangerous and will stop at nothing to destroy you. *hides*
Well, that’s really about it. I just thought some of you might want to hear some rare non-huntery-WoW-stuff. My closing thought is that budgeting my talent points is surprisingly hard. As a hunter it’s straightforward, for the most part, you drop five points in something and the rest opens up, rinse and repeat. With my druid, new stuff opens up before I’ve maxed something else out and then I’m forced to choose between maxing stuff out now or later. Soooo tough to choose.
That’s me.
Tamaryn, kittycat, druid.
Yes, I can hear you, screaming at your computer monitor, “Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute!”
“Didn’t you roll a horde druid that you got to level ten?”
Yes, yes I did. Then I decided to reroll as an Alliance druid because I wanted to play with my guild.
“You actually got a non-hunter character to level 20?”
Hey, this is my second non-hunter to get to level 20, thankyouverymuch. I have a 21 mage.
“So you decided to make a feral druid?”
Actually no, all my talent points thus far have gone into the Balance tree. The picture shows me in Cat Form cause I just got it and thought it looked fun.
“So you’re gonna level Moonkin?”
Yup, I figured it was the best bet if I wanted to be able to solo decently efficiently while still having a strong mana pool for times when I’d want to jump into a healing role. Endgame I think I’m gonna either stay moonkin, or more likely, switch to tree, because I really want to give healing a serious try.
“Wait… did you just say… endgame…?”
Yes. Yes I did. I’m being serious when I say I’m leveling this character. And thus far this is the only non-hunter class that has been able to hold my interest for a decent amount of time.
Here’s the deal, basically I decided that I wanted to try playing a “hybrid” class that would allow me to heal, or, with the proper reshuffling of gear and talent points– tank, for my guild. That gave me two options: paladin and druid. In the end it came down to whether I wanted a reliable rez or whether I wanted to be able to turn into stuff, and being able to turn into stuff won out. (Not to mention I have a horribly hard time trying to get into paladins. I just can’t do it… I don’t know why!)
How am I liking the class so far? To be honest I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s fun to be able to cast at stuff and then when you’re running low on mana, switch to bear or cat and start swiping at things. It’s fun to be able to run around and give people buffs (hunter pets are always buffed. Always.) Perhaps one of my favorite things is that it’s an all new challenge for me. Running into quests that are orange or red to me with one of my hunters is challenging and it’s fun to take on that challenge; but trying to do the same with my druid is even more challenging, partially because I’m still learning about the class. I felt so proud of myself today trying to complete some collect-the-mushrooms quest in a cave in Darkshore. There was one last mushroom that I had to get that was surrounded by three guys all at my level, one of which healed. I popped an armor elixir, cast Regrowth on myself, hopped into Bear Form and ran into the fray. A healing potion, a couple healing spells, and a whole lotta Mauling and Swiping later, I’d finished the quest and was /dancing all over the cave.
That’s really the beauty of the class so far– you can change your style of play based on what you feel like doing. Feel like casting? You can. Feel like tanking? You can. Feel like being a rogue? You can. Feel like healing? Yep, you can do that too. Granted, this does leave out “feel like being a hunter?”, which is my favorite type of character, but hey… nobody’s perfect. And running around in Cat Form sorta feels like a perpetual Eyes of the Beast.
I have no idea how much longer I’ll be able to feel like a true hybrid before I realize that my feral skills are falling farther and farther behind because I’m spec’ing and gearing myself up like a mage, but in the meantime, it’s fun. There is a “MoonkinForLife” in my guild who told me he leveled up to 30 with no problems using Cat Form, even as Balance, so that’s encouraging.
Oh and for the record, I still like hunters the best and this is always gonna be a hunter blog. =P My hunterness, I feel, extends beyond the game whereas donning the druid costume for a couple hours does not.
That said, I’m having Writer’s Block lately. Ask me hunter questions so I can answer them. Dooooo iiiiiiit!