Healing without leaves

I have two goblin starting zone posts lined up, but the beta keeps giving me the bird when I try to log in, so I've been unable to get the last few explanatory screen shots that I want. Jumping ahead, let's talk about how I'm faring with my tauren gal.

Who have I been reading?

Beru's Q&A on Falling Leaves and Wings

Lissanna's Resto guide on Restokin

Keeva's spec/FAQ guide on TBJ

RestoDude's RestoGuide

Spec and Glyphs

I poked around on all the specs offered in the list above and came up with the following to cautiously test my mana pool and new abilities.

talent calc here

I would like to include Nature's Cure and Blessing of the Grove and max out Nature's Majesty. I'm still thinking about Fury of Stormrage and Malfurion's Gift, but only for the chance of Lifebloom proccing Omen of Clarity, and I'm not sure how much I'll want that at 85. Perhaps a lot. I see Genesis looking delicious in the second tier of Balance, but I'm not sure how I would juggle points to get down there, so I'm not going to worry about it until later.

Having done a handful of heroics and two raids, I think I'm ready to get rid of Furor and invest those points in something else. With what I have on me now, it's unusual if I dip below 75% mana, and that's with Rejuve spam and much generous casting.

With the changes to Regrowth, I switched to the Lifebloom Prime glyph. In Major glyphs, I stuck Healing Touch in instead of Innervate because I don't expect to do much innervating for a while. Minor glyphs are what they are. I just can't get enough of that fast Aquatic Form! With glyphs, because of the distinct lack of options, it seems pretty easy to pick what you should use. Well, to be honest, when it comes to specs as well it seems that just by avoiding PVP stats I can make myself a good PVE build and avoid picking a terrible spec simply due to what's available.

Gear, Gems, Enchants

This is the part where I reveal exactly how lazy I have been. (Hint: very, very lazy) It's actually more of a to-do list than anything.

To get my leather specialization, I need to replace my Circle of Ossus with the Belt of Petrified Ivy. Then I will need gems for that and also for my Idol of the Black Willow. I'm not sure if I will be replacing any of the other gems that I already have socketed - although I would not be opposed to replacing some of my gems with Int/Haste to get haste-capped, I'm not sure if I want to spend the time and money to do that scant weeks before I start replacing these sick purpz with quest rewards.

As far as reforging goes, I'm considering playing around with spirit pieces to see if I can't eke out some more haste, or see what this mastery business is all about. This is mostly encouraged by my current lack of mana problems. I think I can get away with losing some regen in favor of getting closer to haste cap!

Spells

I am feeling the hurt left behind by lack of a long hot from Regrowth. Before the patch I would load up the squishies and healers of a group with Regrowth before say, Bonestorm or BQL's fear. Then, as I was running willy nilly around during said phases, I would Rejuve anything in range and LB people in particular trouble. Now, I feel like I only have one hot - obviously that's not true, but Regrowth's hot is kind of a joke, and LB is restricted to one person. Fortunately, I was able to fully retrain myself in tonight's raid to not only stop casting it on more than one person, but to keep in rolling instead of using it for free mana during OOC procs.

Regrowth replaces Nourish as my quick top-off. Nourish and HT are excruciatingly slow (it's ok, other healing classes, you can laugh), often either too late to save someone or needless overheal. For now, HT is still relegated to my NS+HT macro, or if I happen to hit the wrong button and have the time to watch it go off. I feel like I'm missing a medium cast, medium heal spell. I'm still keeping Wild Growth on cooldown and tossing Rejuve around on DPS in addition to keeping it on the tank. I feel less inclined to cast, having only the useful Regrowth and the cumbersome, overzealous HT, and yet lacking in hots. To be honest, I don't always know how to spend my GCDs. I find myself lacking instants or quick casts, but wasting time and mana when I try out the longer casts. I guess the idea is to spam Regrowth...hopefully I can retrain myself to do that soon.

Efflorescence is a mixed bag...I like planning where to drop it in the same way I plan where I use WG. Unfortunately, because of that, I feel wasteful when I use Swiftmend on a ranged target all by her lonesome and end up with a useless healing circle miles from the raid. Also, I'm not sure if it includes overheal in the percentage it heals targets standing in it for. For instance, if the melee is taking damage but the tank is topped off, a Swiftmend on the tank that heals for 1000 won't create much of a healing puddle. If it doesn't take overheal into account, it would obviously be better to SM a low-health melee, but sometimes you don't have the GCDs to prep with a Rejuve and then SM. 

Tree of Life now seems very foreign to me. It's still on the class bar which tempts me to click it, but I always remember at the last moment that if I do it will blow the cooldown. Incidentally, cooldowns like this have always confused me. In fact, I try to avoid on-use trinkets in favor of equip style effects because I never know when I should save the cooldowns for! It's not the same as being dps, where most long cooldowns should be saved for bloodlust or a time-sensitive phase. I'm torn between macroing it to a spell like Lifebloom or Regrowth to ensure it gets used once in a while, or putting it somewhere unobtrusive on my bar to save for some phase in some boss fight that puts out lots of raid damage.

Raid Frames

Grid, my current raid frames of choice, has updated, but I still need the capabilities of status hots. I did get an update for GridStatusHots, but it won't actually work when I turn the buffs on. This is very sad, because the hots plugin uses colors in the corner dot indicators to show when the hot is about to expire, which I find more visually useful than a numerical display. Grid itself will show the hot buffs, but as one uniform color for the entire duration of the hot, and without regard to who cast it (even if I specify "My Hots").

Because Lifebloom is now single target, I've set it to central icon display. It shows stacks, and very dimly duration (the icon is rather small). If I can get PowerAuras to load without crashing everything I might make a duration alert for myself (to be fair, it could be any number of things causing me to crash, including but not limited to: addons, mobs, instances, usable items, unusable items, logging in).

I'd love to have it show me who is affected by Efflorescence. I never had space for a WG indicator before, but I added it to my buff indicators this week and it's really surprised me with the range of affected targets! Sadly, Eff. doesn't appear to create a buff when standing in it, so I'm not sure how or if I could get Grid to recognize it.

Standard UI vs. Grid

I opened the Blizz raid frames to check them out. I like a lot of what they are doing, and there are indicators for useful things like range, offline, dead, mana/energy/etc, and buff indicators. It even shows my hots - although the countdown is still not clear enough. My biggest complaints are that the buffs obscure the health bars sometimes, which makes me nervous, and the frames are enormous. I have them set to the lowest possible size and a ten man raid still takes up so much space! I'm curious to see if mod authors will (can?) make addons for these new frames, and if that will make them worth switching over to.

Other Patch Comments

It's Hallow's End now, so I've been spending lots of time taking my various alts around for their candy buckets and trick or treating on Aka to try to get A Mask for All Occasions. I've also been taking advantage of the Invocation of the Wickerman reputation gain buff by turning in my junkboxes for Ravenholdt and inscription decks for Darkmoon Faire. I'm still doing ZG and MC regularly and also working on my Ally priest, who just got shadowform! Yaaay!

Addon updates are coming in slowly but surely; I haven't lost any major ones fortunately. However, there has been a huge change regarding buff mods - you can no longer right click to cancel buffs using any mod! If you use the extremely limited standard Blizz buffs you will still be able to right click to cancel, but that's it. The idea is to prevent addons from auto-cancelling buffs, but that's a far cry from looking at your list of buffs and manually removing one that you don't want. I've read some semi fixes to get around this change but I'm hoping that they will fix it so that even if mods can't cancel something without your input, you will still be able to right click it off yourself.

Who would accept a druid who could not change her shape?

Akabeko slipped under the surface of the water, holding her breath and looking around at the waving plants on the lake floor. Her armor lay at the base of a tree on the bank, carefully lashed together. She let herself sink, holding her breath instead of shapeshifting as she normally did. The water was cold but still bearable. Snow would not come to the plains of Mulgore for a few moons yet.

Something is wrong. She felt different, strange. Not necessarily less powerful; she could still feel the Earthmother and still sense her spells. She cast one experimentally, feeling it curl around her like a comforting embrace. Still potent, still effective.

Expelling the last of her breath, Akabeko kicked to the surface. Now floating on her back, she stared unseeing at the clear sky and began to cycle through her spells. Lifebloom, rejuvenation, regrowth, swiftmend, wild growth, nourish, healing touch, tranquility. The air crackled with energy while the water was lit from within and above by the spells.

Then she tried to shift, as she always did, effortlessly into tree form. It didn`t work. Her heart stopped cold. The power, that indescribable ability that let her change her physical form as easily as breathing, was blocked. Shifting forms hadn`t been a conscious task for her for many seasons, but now she concentrated, focused as she had when still learning. The residual effects of her spells surrounded her and twinkled out.

The knowledge was there. Buried deep, but accessible. Akabeko struggled towards it, trying to remember the path to her bark, her leaves, her roots. The seashell necklace she wore, originally a token used to connect her to her tree form, lay lifeless and heavy on her chest. It was like swimming through thick honey or forcing a too-large button through a tiny hole. She pushed and swam, mentally cramming herself through the buttonhole, taking great powerful strokes through the honey.

And then she changed. There it was: her body, her bark and leaves and roots. And with it, power. Energy. Almost uncontrollably she began to cast, the spells exploding out with such force that she was rocked by both exhilaration and terror. Staring into the infinity of the sky, suspended weightless in her horizontal world, Akabeko cast spells so powerful that the water sloshed and churned, the air snapped, smelling of ozone, and her branches quivered in exultation.

As soon as it had begun, it stopped. She returned unceremoniously to her tauren body, to her normal abilities. The power she had gained evaporated like mist, and she felt too exhausted to seek it out again.

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Have I lost my body? she thought, unaware that she had also whispered it mournfully aloud. She could still feel her spells, knew she was still as strong a healer as before. But... Am I no longer a druid? Is the Earthmother punishing me? A profound sense of loneliness welled up within her, and she shut her eyes against the sky. Who would accept a druid who could not change her shape? She rolled over suddenly, shifting into a seal and surging towards the bank. On the bank she flowed into a cheetah and sped off across the plains, vainly fleeing the emptiness where her body had been.

Goblin Journal 4

05.10.10

I found the rest of my associates. A few had managed to break free, but most were still completely out of it, slaving away mining kaja'mite in the volcano. You know, the one that was erupting. Exactly how, I ask you, is it profitable to lose your entire workforce and stock to a natural disaster that you can avoid? As it turns out, all my associates needed was a quick shot of Kaja Zero to get their minds back in working order. I had a bit as well and feel fantastic! We busted out of the volcano in no time after we got our thinkin' on.


At the base of the volcano we discovered where Gallywix had gotten off to. In addition to sabotaging his plans, Izzy talked me into killing Chip. To be honest, I had all but forgotten about him. I mean, I haven't even seen him since the beach! And even before that, we barely interacted except for that fashion advice he gave me for the party... I guess we had really grown apart. But as Izzy pointed out, Chip also started working for Gallywix. We had a contract, and it didn't end just because Kezan blew up!

From there it was time to deal with Gallywix's slave pits. I rescued as many captured goblins as I could find, and took out even more Steamwheedle thugs. Also, Sassy wanted me to kill Candy Cane. I don't know her all that well, Journal. Sassy kept telling me that Candy stole my man away, which I guess is true, but I couldn't understand how killing her would be profitable for me... Then Sassy reminded me that Candy now works for Gallywix, and as my formal rival and current nemesis, it's practically my job to take out all of his associates!

While I was dealing with the slave pits, they got a footbomb uniform rigged up to take on Gallywix. Hehe. I'm really, really good at footbomb. Marching up to Gallywix and kicking his weenie little rig's can made my day! I felt like a million macaroons. The only thing that really stung was Thrall believing that sniveling weasel and reinstating him as Trade Prince! Hellooooo? What about me? I've pretty much shown that I can make a buck while still saving the collective lives of my associates! What more could you possibly want in a Trade Prince?

Eat footbombs, Gallywix!

So, this is it, Journal. I'm back to being just another goblin. Thrall has given me some paperwork to deliver to some Garrosh character in Orgrimmar. We are just about to set sail and find out how we can fit into the Horde. It's time for me to get my empire back in order!

Goblin Journal 3

03.10.10
I made it safely to the next island and we got our Town-In-A-Box all set up. Everybody's starving so I've been running around finding bigger and better eggs to feed them with. We started with clucker eggs from the wild cluckers on the island, upgraded to raptor eggs, and finally tried a giant egg from a giant chicken on the island. I think that was definitely a net loss. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Gallywix disappeared somewhere with some of our supplies. How rich.

Easy, little fella

From there it was really just problem after problem. Vicious naga infestation on the island? I get to be the one to deal with it. Take out the big ones, replace some of their flags with the Cartel's, oh and kidnap some of the young'uns. I'm not particularly proud of it, Journal, but I lured away some of the baby naga (cute little tykes, really), to use as a bargaining chip for a peaceful surrender. I would have much preferred to use cold hard cash, but as you may have noticed we are fresh out, and I don't even know what the naga consider valuable. At any rate, me and Ace headed out with the little guys and ended up in a heap of trouble when we discovered that some creepy faceless guy was controlling the naga in the area! Yeesh.

Ace: "I...gotta go!"

Then, just when I think I can take a break, as I'm getting back to the T-I-A-B, there's an invasion of pygmies!! No--really! And they have been carrying off other goblins and turning them into zombies with some weird magic! So then I get to run up the volcano, strap on some flamethrower boots, and incinerate what used to be my business partners! Well, I burn through all the zombies and take out the leaders of the pygmies. But do I get a break? Ohhhh no.

I'm blasting off again!

Now I get rocket boots to launch me up into the caldera of the volcano. Hobart's got some plan to destroy the big volcano-turtle that the pygmies have been feeding goblin sacrifices to. Naturally, it involves rockets. In the caldera of a volcano. Well in case you can't do the math, when I blew up the turtle the volcano decided to blow as well. Fortunately, Sassy came to the rescue (What did I tell you? Best investment I ever made) and got me out of there.

And do you know what we found when we got out of there, Journal? All the surviving goblins back at the T-I-A-B were missing, captured and enslaved (AGAIN!!!) by Gallywix. So we met up with Thrall and his orc buddies on the coast, and instead of getting to take a break, I got to deal with the Alliance. In the most explosion-y way possible. They promised me I would get ride to where my associates are being held, but it's gonna have to wait until I've had a good long rest.

Goblin Journal 2

20.09.10
That rat! Gallywix took everything I owned and put me to work as a slave. Somehow he managed to find some goblins loyal enough to protect his stash. I couldn't even get close to his coffers and it wasn't for lack of trying!

He got his, though. We were fired upon and wrecked on the shore of the Lost Isles. Many died - I nearly did - and with our resources in shambles everyone's free, although we are still working towards common survival. Except for Gallywix, who of course has done nothing. Oh, and that slimy cheat Chip is relaxing in the sand with Candy Cane. I knew something was up! Whatever, got that freeloader out of my hair.

Jerk!

So far, I've helped to rescue other survivors and clear out fierce or otherwise irritating creatures on the islands. Later on I'll head down to the new mines to see what can be done.

24.09.10
The Kaja has been driving the local monkeys mad. They have become violent at the mines and killed several goblin miners. While clearing them out I photographed some mysterious and potentially lucrative cave paintings.

But none of that compares to to my other discovery. In the mine was a dead orc holding a field journal. I was able to read the entries and learned that a group of orcs also shipwrecked on the Isles and are camped nearby. I'm going out there to find any bargains to be had.

26.09.10
I found the orcs. Been pretty much singlehandedly saving them from everything. They couldn't even deal with an endless forest of constricting, freezing, carnivorous plants! Sheesh, how did they survive anything? The payment isn't all that good, but they are fixing up my gear at least. And maybe a little face time will open up some more opportunities.

The Alliance is crawling all over the island. I think the orcs have lost something important and are trying to find it without telling me what it is. I feel like there's money to be made here - in reward or ransom - but I just can't get myself to think right!

27.09.10



You're not gonna believe this, Journal. That thing the orcs were missing? Yeah. The Warchief of the Horde. I stumbled across him in the hold of an ally ship. Briefly I considered ransoming him off to the orcs, but I had no way to transport the cage off the ship. That, and as soon as he escaped his cage he transformed me into a tempest and asked me to zap some humans. I don't think the payout is nearly the same.

I'm waiting in line now for a rocket off this island. Someone found a Town-In-A-Box, so we're gonna set that up across the way. Gallywix is here, unfortunately. I hope his rocket crashes and burns.

Goblin Journal

14.09.10
Trade Prince is nearly mine, Journal. I`m way, way up in the polls - and in wealth, too. Sassy Hardwrench was the best investment I ever made. She`s an invaluable assistant and has really coached me to the top. With her people skills and my knack for raking in the macaroons, there`s no way we aren`t destined for greatness.

Lately I find myself seeing to smaller matters - loose ends, mostly, and ones I am taking care of personally. I popped down to the kaja`mite mines to check on some disturbances and it did feel good to let loose a few fireballs here and there. If I can swing a few more cheap contracts down there the situation should be under control in no time.

My amorous, leering, and eternally-shirtless squeeze Chip suggested I expand my wardrobe and throw a shindig. Bless his heart, he doesn`t have a whit of business sense, but his fashion sense is bar none. While I`m out and about running errands I`ll use my flashy new wheels to make a scene and be noticed. Think I`ll have a glass of Kaja to celebrate!

16.09.10
I`ve got good news and bad news, Journal.

It`s a little-known fact that I played a mean footbomb in college. While I was out...collecting debts...earlier, Coach Crosscheck begged me to step in for the big footbomb game against the Steamwheedle Sharks. A celebrity appearance couldn`t hurt, I thought, so I agreed to pilot his rigged shredder and win the game. The only problem is...I launched the winning goal all the way into Mt Kajaro and maaaay have caused it to erupt. Or awaken a murderous dragon.

Well, it flew away and you know, "Out of sight, out of mind" and all that. So I downed a Kaja and went to my party. It started off wonderfully; I was rubbing elbows with all sorts of important goblins, schmoozing like I`ve never schmoozed before! Just when I think I`m drumming up some new investors, some pirates showed up and crashed my party! I took a lot of them out, but the damage has already been done. That, and the volcano isn`t looking too good...

17.09.10
Everything`s gone bankrupt! Mt Kajaro is on the verge of erupting. The mines are lost and we`ve salvaged all the kaja`mite we can. Everyone is looking to me to solve this. I`ve had enough Kaja to power an invention factory, but now it only soothes my jitters. I need ideas! Bah, I`ve just spilled it all over the desk and onto my lap.

Gallywix beat me to the punch and is offering wildly expensive life boats off the island. I don`t have nearly the resources to compete with that, so I`ve been forced to break into my own vault and liberate my life savings. Sassy ran the numbers and calculated that I need the insurance from my house and some, ah, extra treasures from Gallywix`s estate. Like he`ll even notice.

It hurt to see my pad go up in flames. At least the resulting explosion was soothing. Gallywix`s goons were easy enough to fool, so I waltzed in and acquired some supplementary wealth. I`m going to head down to the docks with Sassy and see about booking us a trip off this island. I don`t know where the rest of my associates have gotten to.


My money...Journal, it`s bittersweet to hold my macaroons in my hands and physically behold my immense wealth while knowing that I`m about to spend it all. Handing this over will be the hardest thing I ever do.

Finally!!!

 After another unexciting Coren Direbrew daily, I zoned out and idly checked my Oracles egg to find...

A green proto drake!

After many many months of buying eggs from the Oracles, I am now the proud owner of a green proto drake. That's one more thing to check off my farming list!!

Yeaaahhhh