Note to self,

Remember that things are always changing and not always for the better.

After recently leveling my Druid, Mythstaken, to level 85, I started to dig in a bit and do some research on the gear that would be good upgrades and the optimal talent spec and rotations.  I had been trying to keep up with this all along the way, but honestly until I finished leveling I was just concerned with leveling.  Now I’m like, let’s figure out what I’m doing wrong and see what I can do to make it better.

My usual sources for information are other blogs that I can sneak a peak at (past work firewalls), and the Elitist Jerks forums and Tankspot.  I find that I can get a good overview from some blogs, but I know I will have to bite the bullet and read and reread some of the info to make sense of it all.    At the bottom, I included some links to some interesting sites, well worth the time in my opinion.

It seems that the overall impression in the blogosphere seems to be, OMG they nerfed ferals.  I thought we were doing pretty well.  Must have been masked with all the shiny new gear upgrades I got from leveling and getting used to the changes that were made to the talents.  Anyway…

Note to self:

Remember to not “hunt and gather” excuses to hold as armor to protect your beliefs that you are a better player than you are.  Or rather, do not accept the limiting “beliefs” that you “NEED” better gear to do better DPS or Tanking.  Do not use what you read in the forums or blogs (about how ferals are nerfed and cannot do the same competitive DPS as they did in the last expansion) as an excuse for why your DPS is low.  Remember that most of what you are reading about relates to the top end of the game.  Performance by the folks that really understand the theory crafting and play to raid, as opposed to myself (your typical casual average Joe) who would really like to raid in this expansion but haven’t quite figured it all out yet. 

You see, I really want to improve.  I read WoW blogs and really appreciate the time and energy people have put into researching and sharing their findings.  But If I start to buy in on the current mind set on the state of feral dps, I’m afraid that I will come to believe that it won’t be worth the effort.  I mean if all these more experienced players are finding that they don’t enjoy playing their feral spec due to all the changes from the last expansion and the resulting decreases in dps that are being seen then why should I bother.

Hmmm … that’s a dilemma. 

Change in general is always difficult.  You get used to certain ways of doing things and dislike it when forces outside your control make you change the way you have to do something.  Especially if it was something you really liked.  It is never easy to embrace change, but it certainly is something that we all must deal with.  And deal with it we shall!

Having just gotten my druid to 85 a few weeks ago, I’m just going from a leveling mindset to a self evaluation mode of thinking.  What gear should I be trying to get?  Where can I get it?  What’s the best priority rotation?  Which talents are best for tanking, dps, pvp?  So that’s why I’m just becoming aware of the above discussions of “the feral isn’t what it used to be” debates.   To be honest it is a bit disheartening to read the opinions of others that they are so upset with the changes that they are switching their mains because of it or canceling their subscriptions because of it.  

But after a lot (too much to admit) of reading old blogs and forums about how the different classes have changed in the different expansions, I’ve come to see that there is a bit of a bigger cycle to it all.    Inevitably any class which is too far ahead in certain talents and abilities will always get “adjusted” either directly (a class nerf) or indirectly (all other classes get buffed).  Change will always continue to change things.  Funny how that is.

So if you are as stubborn as I am about playing a class or spec regardless of whether it is the flavor of the month, you should at least put some time into learning to play it as well as you can.  So for now for me, it’s back to digesting what it means that expertise and hit rating are not as important to raw dps as it used to be.   In Wrath, the first thing you wanted to do was to make sure you had enough expertise and hit if you were having trouble getting your dps to improve, then when your gear was at a high enough level, switch your gems to stack armor penetration.  That has all changed in case you haven’t noticed it.  The key reasoning about this is below, but for the undistilled version of this, go read this stuff for yourself over at Elitist Jerks:

“It's a tradeoff between convenience/ease and raw dps. There are three factors that make hit & expertise not required for optimum dps:

1. White hits & associated fury swipes only make up ~1/4 of our damage 2. Energy abilities that miss or are dodges do not use up their entire cost 3. We are not GCD capped; that is we have downtime between abilities while we wait for energy to build up.

The third factor is what really makes hit & expertise not required. Even if you miss, because you have not expended the entire energy, and because you have free GCDs anyways, you can simply re-use the ability until you hit.

The big caveat is that, as you were made painfully aware, you really need to be able to keep on top of your buff/debuffs and be able to make quick decisions on what ability to use next. If you are able to react quickly and correctly to your misses, then you lose little dps even with 0 hit and 0 expertise, and because those stats have been converted to other dps stats (hopefully mastery) overall you gain DPS. However, if you find yourself unable to keep tabs on what's missed and what's hit and your bleed uptimes suffers, then you will find hit & exp more useful.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that your theoretical max dps will suffer if you have hit and expertise, but if you can't pull off the mechanics in reality then theory doesn't help that much.”

So far I’ve stumbled across some interesting sites for information and if you are so inclined please check them out for yourself.  I cannot hope to provide nearly as good information as they have already done.  The best that I can hope to do is to share what ever good information I can find.

Here is a link to where to find the elusive Earthern Ring Quartermaster to get your tabard for the reputation grind.  But don’t just go there for that.  There is a link there to the Cynical Brit’s Rep guide and a 35min utube video he put together.  If you enjoy listening to him as much as I do, you will like this video.  Also go and listen to his POD casts.  You do not have to be an EPIC LEET player to enjoy.   (I know I’m not and I enjoy listening.)

Want to know more about how to be a good feral kitty, check out Glitter’s guide.  She has put together a nice concise guide that is still very comprehensive, without the detailed theory crafting that can make me go huh. 

Interested in Restro but don’t know how or what to do or where to start.  Keeva has a great site she put together.   Here is also a link to her blog.  And she has an awesome voice, I love the Australian accent.  /sigh.  I first heard about her from listening to the RAWRCAST Podcast when she was a guest.  By the way, Stomp and Half – I hope you guys start doing your POD casts again.  I really miss you.  Anyway, I had not touched my Restro spec since they took away our tree form.  I miss be able to be a tree all the time, but I also miss trying to heal a bit.  So I’m trying to relearn it all.

That’s it from me.  Hope you all had a great week and have a great weekend!