Farewell, Dear Second Job....

Like many loveable furballs before me, like Karthis, another retired feral druid, I too have discovered that World of Warcraft had become more of a second job than a pleasurable form of entertainment. Certainly it is fun and rewarding to group up with friends who are almost like family after hanging out almost every night with the same people for over 4 years now... but it is also frustrating and disappointing to come together to accomplish things, but discover that they can't be done due to a missing healer, or some other missing person or people who are necessary and basically irreplaceable for end game achievements and goals.
I'm just not one of those players who feels the need to have a dozen alts that are all level 80 and decently geared up. I just can't invest that much time into characters I don't feel really attached to. I pick just one... and that is my one accomplishment... I might play around some days on alts that are fun to play with, but they never get the love and attention my single main does.

But alas... I have many fond memories of all of my friends, and the nights that we spent working together.. the glee from watching good players pull off what would usually wipe a group, or giggling at noobs who think they can tank... and all of the friends who asked me for advise, or simply just liked hanging out... I'd sing an Ode of farewell to them... I was just too shy to sing to them for real... Eventually I felt shoved aside by my guild because I was a simple feral kitty, and my guildies did not appreciate the abilities of their ferals. I offered suggestions for some roles a feral can do to help on strategies, but whoever the guild gods may be.. would decide in favor of some other mechanic from some web page somewhere else. I was left out and lonely and that was when I just couldn't put any more of my time into raiding... and without raiding.. there really isn't anything else for me. I was one of the courteous WOW players.. putting other's needs and desires before my own, sitting out for people who wanted to see new things first... enjoying hearing their happiness when they experienced new and challenging things... knowing that I would be included in it later because I was a member... but... it hurt me in the end. I passed too much on some of the things I needed to let others gear up... and I sat too much to let others get into my spot in the raid... I was then forced to sit for raids... and was just no longer needed...
At one point, I was one of the main tanks... but I was doing pretty good damage as cat form when we only needed one or two tanks, well.. how about I just go pure dps? Kitties can really kick out some damage right? So I did, and retired from tanking... but... I basically retired from wow in the end... because kitties were doing so well, we have to get nerfed, and the raid only needs a single feral... The feral tank can offer the same buff as the kitties... the kitties aren't even really needed at all... unless they do more damage than the other dps... But they were fun to play.. and I had a lot of fun playing Tallyswift...

Farewell Tallyswift... your paws are no longer needed to claw the trash for people so some players can sit back and watch TV while waiting to get to a boss fight... Your thick hide is no longer needed to off tank on Thorim when our main tank can basically solo tank everything in Ulduar on hard mode now... Tally was never a moonkin... Tally levelled up as a healer and was left in the dust then too.... But feralie goodness was embraced and Tally was reborn as a bear...
and a bear Tally was... for the whole experience of being in the end game guild of Hat...

The stars are calling... The dog is whining... The sunsets are gleaming... just behind those curtains and blinds... The moon waxes, then wanes again... and Orion dances overhead all winter, while Hercules watches protectively from above all summer.... I didn't get a tan again... My skin is so sensitive now I'm not sure I can get a tan anymore... I let my hair grow out... I colored it back to the color I was born with... I withdraw back into my small world.. my home, my kids, my future....

I'm not sure how my blogsite got linked with Asian forums, but it makes me giggle to see comments in half english and half characters that I do not recognize. I hope I didn't offend anyone, I hope I didn't upset anyone. I'm a very giving little person and try to accept and help all those who cross my path... I'm still the child who wants to bring home the stray cats.. the child who stops to untangle the bird caught in the bushes... the lone dove who sings her quiet little song in the evenings even if no one is listening anymore...

But my origami talents are improving, and I have numerous fans who come to see what critters are occupying my display box in my quiet little lab at work...

We always have to come to a point where we must re-define our self image and who we want to be. Step away from the image that others have painted of us, when their pictures are no longer very pretty... just paint the picture yourself...

Life, The World, and Why?

Time has passed.
I have learned some new things... I have wandered in my thoughts...
I entrusted the feral mechanics to our second and more superior Feral Druid, Aydrian.
He is extremely knowlegable regarding Feral Druid class mechanics, and keeps up on all
of the Elitist Jerks posts and updates. I followed him around like a lost kitty sometimes.
I'm still lost though...
It is true, my guild is almost like my family. They call me the "guild mom" because I have
children and have a maternal aura of caring for others and wanting to help people when
the have illness or are sad. I have a sleeve full of remedies that I gladly share with anyone
who wishes to listen.. Speaking to those who wish to listen, or those who are afraid to tell
me the don't want to listen.. has gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion...
I attempt to spread good will and understanding between others, but if the end result isn't
wonderful, I am apt to blame myself in the end.
The guild ends up being a very delicate mechanism of numerous intelligent and yet sensitive
individuals all trying to find their place, and earn respect, yet have fun in their own way at the
same time. The diversity in personalities has led to cliques who feel comfortable with one another, and a few loners who prefer to just do their own thing, as well as the rare person who is laid back and kinda gets along with everyone, but doesn't want to join any single group.
Over time, I have learned to reach out to people in a kind and playful manner to simply attempt to raise spirits of both parties. On other occasions I just talk in druid chat, or melee chat, or raid chat to say something playful and entertaining to just be fun loving like I try to be... As far as progression goes for our guild, we have managed to kill all of the bosses in 25 man Icecrown Citadel on Heroic to unlock the Lich King (Heroic Mode) but have not yet been able to put in a lot of serious progression to down him. We have TOC heroic on farm for trinkets and cloaks, and we
are attempting to get a Mimron's Head mount for our guild members from Yogg Seron with Zero Keepers. Priority is given to members with the highest lifetime guild attendance. It's actually a very nice reward for dedicated raiders. So we manage to get things done in a rather timely manner each week, but if for some reason, things don't go so smoothly (and things never run smoothly all the time), some of our loving guild members may begin to lose their happy-go-lucky sense of Go-Get-Em raid attitude. Alas, if we try and try to complete a task that eventually is accomplished, the officers evaluate the hardships and try to iron them out for the next time. If the task is left unfinished, the officers evaluate the situation and develop a new strategy or plan to hopefully become successful on the re-visitation. But how resilient are the members? Do they log off angry blaming others? Do they switch to another form of entertainment and not worry about it? Do they ponder their own small errors or ways in which they can themselves improve? Do they just chill out with friends and talk things over? Perhaps the mode that each player handles their daily activities.. accomplishments and failures... will also be a factor in how the guild itself will progress and evolve over time.

I prefer when the officers speak openly in our vent channel evaluating the events to help us
understand our individual rolls and the importance of each part of the strategy. Our raid leader
is superb in detailing our rolls and the overall strategy so that, for the most part, everything does
run very nicely. We only have problems if a member is unclear of their roll and doesn't say anything, or if people just stop paying attention... We probably have the most problems arrise from members feeling uncomfortable speaking their thoughts to the individuals involved... rather they will go around them and tell someone else who is then burdened with this dilemma and what to do about it?
Luckily most of our members are good natured and want to get along and work together as
a team so that fixing problems isn't too hard... but Life is like this... Learning to get along...
Learning who you can talk to who will just let you vent, and who you can't talk to who will feel
like they need to fix your problems when in actuallity you just wanted to get some frustration
off your chest...

More Feralie Goodness

Here is another link to extremely useful information! This page contains a whole spreadsheet for calculating all of your druid gear, buffs, raid buffs, talent points ... everything!

And you don't have to spend gold to use it! ;D

You can plan out your enchants, gems, glyphs, gear, and types of food to carry ahead of time!

http://druid.wikispaces.com/ToskksDPSGearMethod

Thank you again, brilliant gamers of the world!

Oh here is another link containing a list of Best in Slot feral druid dps gear:

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/05/05/hey-what-are-you-wearing-a-revised-ulduar-loot-list-for-cool-cats/

The Armor Penetration Mystery....

http://projectlore.com/blog/melee-dps-101-armor-penetration/

End of Mystery...

Feral Druid goals: Hit cap: 295, Expertise rating: 26-30, Crit: at least 50 percent. Gem Strength, don't bother with armor penetration.

Okay.. more on that...
If you depend no your rip for dps, it is affected by attack power, and not armor pen. If you switch your dps more in favor of Melee hits and Ferocious bite, armor pen helps a lot. If you go for the 4 piece T8 set bonus, it increases Savage Roar, and you can fit in more Shreds and FBs, and stacking armor pen would benefit this dps.

Link to information:

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/05/26/bonus-wickit-examines-t7-and-t8-armor-sets/

---boggle----


Then again... here is an opposing view!

http://www.unbearably.net/2009/06/02/how-to-get-the-armorpenetration-your-pussy-deserves/

Druid-Kitty Observations....

Druid feral dps is a ponderous thing...
It is a unique combination of 3 debuffs and 1 buff that must be kept constantly up with the burst of 2 bonus abilities that should be used as frequently as possible. Here is my rotation: (Of course this "rotation" is only used on mobs that live longer than a few seconds ---> bosses).

RAKE,
MANGLE,
SAVAGE ROAR (2-4 combo points),
TIGER'S FURY + SHRED to 5 Combo points,
RIP.

Okay, scratch that... It has been shown that starting out with the Mangle is much more dps efficient than the Rake. Rake is actually the lowest priority kitty ability. It should NEVER be clipped and can remain down for numerous seconds for higher priority abilities such as Rip/Savage Roar/and Clearcasting Shreds! So instead the initial sequence should go:

MANGLE
SAVAGE ROAR
RAKE
SHRED (to 5 combo points, use Tiger's Fury if needed)
RIP

All Clearcastings = SHRED

Note*** In order to alert me of the clearcastings without missing them, I have Power Aura's installed. I LOVE that addon! I also have it alert me when there is a Trauma on the mob or a mangle already up from another druid. It is SO useful... and it can have pages and pages of cool popup alerts for you for anything you want! /love My clearcasting also makes a noise too so I won't miss it if I'm looking at all of the other chaos on my screen in a busy fight like Hodir.

Then refresh Savage roar with 5 combo points and alternate stacks of 5 combo points with Rip. If your crit is high enough to stack up the combo points quickly, you can afford some Ferocious bites in there before both Savage Roar or Rips fall off. Whee :D

After this point, each debuff is then re-applied just before it drops off, and Savage roar and Rip are top priority. Some druids will pop their Berserk right at the beginning because RIP is so important to get up with 5 combo points as rapidly as possible... Of course any good druid dps kitty will have a cooldown timer specifically for each of these important fur ripping abilities..
If it's going to be a long fight, I always pop Beserk early so I can hopefully get it in again after it's cooldown.

The rotation is not the biggest challenge though....
The gear accumulation and gemming is much more challenging to perfect...
Of course this is the point of most games.. get you interested in developing your character to the point of hours and hours of game play to put more months of your money into their Blizzard pockets... But we do get a lot of hours of entertainment out of it...

Regarding gear. Currently I have this combination: 2 pieces of T7.5 for the 2 piece bonus. (Increase in RIP duration). In addition to this, I also have the RIP idol that increases the periodic damage. Because RIP ends up being the largest portion of my total dps, the more I can buff it the better. The rest of my gear is basically Rogue dps gear. First priority - Hit cap 295, (note: 295 cap is only for bears, CAT hit caps out around 263, and is not actually crucial!---> See Toskk's discussion forums). Second priority - Stack as much Agility, attack power, and Armor penetration as possible, Third priority (which has proven to be very crutial) Crit should be at or as close to 50 percent. This key factor is what makes it possible to stack up the combo points as time efficiently as possible.

The idea of stacking armor penetration is still a point of contention among kitty druids. If our bread and butter is the RIP and RAKE periodic damage, and armor penetration will not affect this type of damage, should we forget about it and select attack power and agility instead?
Armor penetration seems to be a staple statistic included in most of the high end leather gear, it is actually more and more effective the higher it gets. It doesn't


Not being a math wiz, or a 17 year old boy with plenty of time on my hands, I honestly don't have the time or motivation to work out each calculation of white/yellow hit vs. periodic damage ticks... I have a tendency to try to maximize each piece of gear I have to it's fullest potential rather than selecting specific stats to try to stack... I like to look at a piece of gear overall when deciding to upgrade. Of course there are things like RAWR for this purpose so that individuals with time restraints like myself can still work things out. Thank you genius computer scientists and hard core gamers!

Unfortunately, I find it very difficult to efficiently maximus my kitty dps while constantly on the move. For example, in Hodir, the best dps will result from 1) maintaining constant dps on the boss - this means the tank must keep the boss within range of safe melee locations 2) being able to have the super Storm Power buff - which is pretty easy for melee considering members are required to bring this buff to the main tank, and melee can then share it, and 3) being able to stand in a light well buff while being behind the boss - This is very dependent on the tank dragging the boss close to these rays of light. Between all of these 3 important dps boosts, and running around to avoid falling ice and staying in one place gathering freezing debuffs... A feral druid will need to have expert fingers to maneuver and maintain a perfect feral dps rotation!

Up until yesterday, my computer was the bane of my dps existance... I was only able to achieve about 3-6 frames per second in 25 man boss fights like Hodir. Today is a new beginning for me. Since upgrading, World of Warcraft has a whole new crisp look to it and flows so smoothly! I now notice tiny sparklies and can see long distances.. Things are no longer a complete mist to me. Of course I had these settings because of my terribly out dated hardware so that I could move without being lost in time with each refreshing frame....

I guess we must keep up with the times as always... and upgrade our out dated equipment to the new and improved technologies. If we don't, we get left behind in the dust... not to mention.. game playing experiences becomes 90 percent frustration and 10 percent enjoyability. My upgrade has shifted the enjoyment factor back in to the 90 percentile again. :D

-Tallyswift

Journey Through Ulduar

Well my guild HAT managed to actually defeat Yogg-Saron this past Sunday, April 19th. It was very challenging to defeat the last boss. Our melee dps had to squeak out every last little bit of dps on the brain below...

My roll as a feral druid went like this:

Phase 1: Gasseous clouds with adds spawning - Tank in my full feral dps gear and spec.
Tanking these was slightly tricky. The biggest thing I learned was to always go behind an oncoming cloud.. because if you try to beat the cloud, you end up halfway around the circle and could get out of range of heals, and it just slows the whole process down. Slowing processes down on this end boss is a bad idea. Other than that, we had melee dps stop attacking adds that got down to the 50 percent life mark, then proceded to drag the add into the center for range dps to finish off when it was next to the boss in the middle. We had 3 tanks picking up the adds, each of us would mark our specific add and "claim it". If we performed this first phase optimally with zero clouds producing extra adds (other than the very first cloud that we intentionally activate), we would have only 2-3 total adds left by the time the second phase dawned upon us. Oh.. yes, I also talked my lead tank into letting me zoom into the room in kitty dash mode to activate the first cloud.. which is rather fun!

Getting the optimal phase one took numerous attempts.

Phase 2.... DPS down the remaining adds and pull them away from the raid before they blow up on people. Then we focus fired down the small tentacles, (I switch to kitty mode from this point on)... and the other two tanks work on de-activating the large tentacles that the range DPS focus on. There is approximately a minute and 10-20 seconds from when this phase starts to when the portals to the brain appear. The key to this fight is having every single melee dps ready to take those portals as soon as they appear. Usually I was one of the last ones to enter because I have kitty speed, and let the slower ones in first knowing I can easily catch up once I enter. I hardly could get in enough hits to hit my Savage Roar, but I do get it in before: Fairy Fire the Brain, Feral Charge the Brain, DPS rotation the Brain, exit through the portal when the melee leader tells us when to exactly get out!

Don't pick a portal with a translucent brain tentacle over it... you can't click through the tentacles or waste extra seconds trying to click it....

Phase 3: Only took us 2 tries. (because our lead tank Katrina is insanely awesome). I would look for any non picked up adds and pull them toward the raid to dps down. Of course they hit like a freight train the moment you pick it up, so I hit all of my "don't die" buttons. The other two tanks kept the rest of the adds on them for the full duration of phase 3. The tanks never faced the brain to avoid excessive insanity and could tank for a prolonged period. My pick ups in the begining basically gave them both a chance to grab an add and fully charge their sanity and then get into position for full time tanking.

We got Yogg-Saron down with zero people going insane, and only one combat rez I believe...
I sat rather stunned once it was over. Usually we take more learning attempts to get down an end boss that what that took us. It was a lucky night for us, and we also got the Server first kill on that boss as well as several of the other bosses in Ulduar.

After Tuesday, the nerfs started... and we notice some significant nerfings of the medium mode bosses we managed to get down before Tuesday. We actually tried Council on Hard mode first, but it seemed getting the DPS to kill Steelbreaker (the huge dwarf) at the end was unreasonably demanding and probably impossible for us at this point before our tanks are destroyed.

I assume the other larger percentage of players who are able to complete Naxx.. even pug Naxx sucessfully... complained about finding "Easy mode" Ulduar to be "not so easy" and complained... And so.. thank goodness there are multiple levels of difficulty for the smaller percentage of players who are not drunk or drugged during our playing experience who enjoy the strategie and the challenges of HARD content.

Preparing for Ulduar

What can we do to be prepared for this upcoming exciting new challenge?
First, we can educate ourselves with the actual bosses and possible strategies.
Second... Attempt to experience these things first hand!
Hat guild requires attendance on the PTR to get in on this Ulduar goodliness. We all copied our characters over stacked with our best gear and stashes of consumables to burn through with great anticipation of being able to see new content and new challenges... Unfortunately, the Realm is riddled with connectivity instabilities. Hundreds upon hundreds of players are all attempting to connect and zone into the new instance simultaneously, and you're lucky if you aren't stuck in a zoning screen. Unfortunately, this pre-Ulduar preparation method seems
to be getting even more popular making it even harder for a full guild to assemble at all on the PTR at open test raid times. Our only option around this instability is to keep on trying to get through, or... our guild can rent a meeting room in California next to the test server with T4 servers hooking us all up through a LAN. YEAH! Let's Do it! Okay, so I guess that's just a
wow-head fantasy. Back to option "Try try again till you get into the instance" method.