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Chase Hasbrouck

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Shifting Perspectives: The potential return of Insect Swarm for balance druids

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we go hunting for mosquito nets.

A few weeks ago, I talked about the impact of removing Insect Swarm from balance druids' toolboxes. I was pretty positive about the change; in my view, Insect Swarm was mostly superfluous, as the times you would use it independently from Moonfire were few and far between. Removing it was a welcome simplification to the rotation. Several commenters took an opposite view, however. To them, removing IS (along with some of the other changes) took things too far, and made the spec boring to play.

Well, if you were one of those commenters, you're in luck. Take it away, Ghostcrawler!

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Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

An introduction to the Diablo 3 economy for WoW players

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Are you a WoW economy titan, or do you simply dabble? Either way, you'll be in for a treat in Diablo III. Blizzard has created a virtual economy that mirrors WoW's in many ways, giving you the ability to gain (or lose!) a fortune. Before you dive in and lose your virtual shirt, though, it wouldn't hurt to review some of the basics.
Gold is king

As in WoW, the primary resource that makes the world go 'round is gold. There's no silver or copper here, though; it's gold all the way down, and lots of it. If you're still in the WoW mindset of "Gee, a couple of thousand gold is a lot of money," then you'll want to recalibrate. You can expect to have several thousand gold by the end of the first Act. Your primary source for gold will be drops. Monsters, chests, objects -- most everything drops gold, and the amount increases as you progress through the game.

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Shifting Perspectives: Honey cat don't give a ...

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we gem +10 in awesome.

With apologies to Isaiah Mustafa ...

Take a look at your cat. Now look at me. Now back at your cat. Now back at me. Sadly, your cat isn't me, but if you stopped playing that silly rogue and switched to feral, you could have a cat that looked like me. Look down, back up -- where are you? You're on a boat with an armored cat, the cat your cat could look like. What's in your hand? Back at me. I have it -- it's a clam with patch notes declaring ferals to be epic. Look again; the notes are now the tears of all the classes who wish they could look like me. Anything is possible when you roll feral. Forget horses; I'm a stag.


Yes, I was tempted to end the column right there --but we've got so much good stuff to talk about.

Armored cats

A few weeks ago, Ghostcrawler mentioned that Incarnation would have specific art for cats, bears, and moonkin; in the latest patch, a datamined model showed us what is likely the first example of that. At first, I wasn't too sure about the idea of putting armor on a feral form, but it's really grown on me over the last couple of days. It's obviously difficult to do cosmetic effects for a class that revolves around shapeshifting, but I'm grateful that Blizzard's continuing to add something for forms. I can't wait to see the bear and moonkin armor. (Do moonkin even need armor?)

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Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Mists of Pandaria Beta: Certain PvP maps may be blacklistable

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In the latest Mists of Pandaria beta patch, Wowhead has uncovered some quite interesting new client strings that might herald a change in the way you choose which Arena or Battleground to fight in.
  • ERR_PVP_BLACKLIST_CAP = "You have already blacklisted the maximum number of maps."
  • ERR_PVP_MAP_NOT_FOUND = "Blacklisted map not set."
To me, this seems like an excellent idea for Arena players. There's always lots of controversy about the random damage and LoS components found on some maps (hello, Ring of Valor); this would let you avoid that entirely. Of course, that means you can no longer use it as an excuse, either -- so you may not want to reach for the blacklist too quickly. While I don't do much in Arenas, I certainly wouldn't mind a way to ensure not getting WSG three times in a row.

One concern, though, is if Blizzard allows too much blacklisting, that could make matchmaking much more difficult. A smooth matchmaking process has been one of the highlights of WoW compared to other online games, so any algorithm tweaks have to be made carefully.

It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

Filed under: News items, PvP

Breakfast Topic: If you could de-level your main, would you?

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I've been playing a good bit of Disgaea 2 on my PSP lately, and I'm frequently impressed by the depth of some of the game's mechanics. As a strategy RPG, it features the typical characters, levels, items, and so on. However, it also offers you the option to reincarnate a character at level 1, retaining a portion of his or her stats. A player with enough patience can repeat this multiple times, eventually creating characters that are godlike (and yes, you have to do something like this if you want to complete all the game's content).

This type of mechanic has been kicking around in RPGs for a long time. Kingdom of Loathing allows characters to "ascend" after defeating the final boss, and several classic text-based MUD's allowed characters the option to "remort" or "immort" (return to level 1 and start the game again, or become an immortal and help develop the game) upon reaching maximum level.

Obviously, the stat thing wouldn't work very well in WoW (how long would it take before raids started requiring X number of reincarnations?), but from a purely character-driven perspective, it'd be nice to let my night elf see the old zones again. Sure, I can go there as a level 85, but much of the fun and mystique is lost when you can one-shot enemies and fly to all the quest objectives.

What do you think? If you could de-level your main to level 1 and start again, would you?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Shifting Perspectives: An easier rotation for balance druids in Mists of Pandaria

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we teach our treants how to charge their lasers.

Last week, we covered the issues that moonkin were having in Cataclysm. Happily, I'm able to say that the new design for Mists of Pandaria has corrected many of the glaring issues that I identified. While numbers remain fluid, of course, there's been some large quality-of-life fixes that have made moonkin much easier to play for the newcomer. I'm afraid, however, that somethings still remain that could use a tweak.

A simplified rotation

DoT abilities reworked First, while the mechanic of Moonfire becoming Sunfire while in a Solar Eclipse remains, both spells now have separate timers and no longer overwrite each other. This means that you can cast a Moonfire before entering Solar Eclipse, then cast Sunfire (with the same button, yay) and have two DoTs ticking for damage on the target.

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Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Breakfast Topic: What game mechanic will WoW borrow next?

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One of the most fascinating things about World of Warcraft is its wide variety of minigames and nods to classic games incorporated into the traditional narrative. The original game had an entire quest line dedicated to The Legend of Zelda. The Burning Crusade gave us chess and a flight simulator. Wrath of the Lich King added mounted combat in a big way, from drake fighting in the Oculus (boo), to storming the gates of Ulduar in steam tanks (yay), and finally medieval-style jousting (double boo). Cataclysm, of course, brought the absolutely sublime Plants vs. Zombies homage, and Mists of Pandaria will bring us the don't-call-them-Pokemon Pet Battles and FarmVille.

So, dear readers, come 2014 (or so) and the next WoW expansion, what new minigame will we all be discussing? I'm leaning toward a miniature fictional world, where we hop from place to place persuading the inhabitants to unite against a greater force. That could be cool -- or maybe not, as it likely wouldn't end well. What would you like to see?

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

The Heart of the Wild controversy: Should players be allowed to change specs in combat?

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In a recent Mists of Pandaria beta build, the tooltip for one of the currently inaccessible druid talents, Heart of the Wild, was significantly rewritten and updated. The full tooltip is long, but the key assumption is that every six minutes, a druid of any spec can click a button and automatically be able change to another combat role for 45 seconds, with little drop-off in effectiveness. Restoration druids can start dealing damage, DPSers of either persuasion can throw around some heals or tank an add, and guardian tanks can even spread around a few HoTs without having to leave Bear Form and turn into paste. That's the theory, anyway.

As you can imagine, this idea generated some heated debate in the druid blogger community. The noted Lissanna of Restokin called it "(likely) the the least used talent out of any talent tree in the history of the game" Murmurs also agreed, saying "HotW has a pure functionality problem. It can never truly fulfill the position that it is attempting to grasp."

In opposition, Tangedyn, the co-creator of the Mew feral druid simulator and frequent contributor to The Inconspicuous Bear, wrote "... there's no reason to deny druids that want the versatility the capability to perform to their best of their abilities."

So who's right? Well, let's take a closer look at both sides of the argument, since this debate brings up several important issues to any WoW raider.

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Filed under: Druid, Mists of Pandaria

Shifting Perspectives: 5 moonkin issues that need fixing

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our DPS edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. This week, we go fast and furry.

Well, it's happened again. Once more, I intended for this week to be a first look at balance druids in Mists of Pandaria, but as I wrote the article, I felt that much of it was lacking the proper context. Since we haven't had a moonkin post around here in some time, I'd like to step back briefly and discuss some of the issues with the specialization that were identified going into the new expansion. Next week, we'll discuss the changes Blizzard is implementing on the beta and how they fix (or don't fix!) the issues I've described here.

Overpowered AoE/multitarget rotation For the majority of the expansion, balance druids were one of the best AoE DPS classes in the game. This was due largely to two factors, the relative strength of the moonkin DoT abilities plus Wild Mushroom and the ability to remain in a Solar Eclipse nearly indefinitely during AoE phases to buff those two abilities (aka solarcleave). Even for non-AoE fights, it was still very easy for moonkin to supplement their damage on their primary target with DoTs on a secondary target. Heroic Morchok and Warmaster Blackhorn are excellent examples of this for this tier.

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Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Chi: World of Warcraft's new resource for monks

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Secondary resource systems are all the rage in World of Warcraft these days. Gone are the days of simply energy, rage, or mana. Now, the majority of classes in the game have an additional resource that must be managed in order to do their role well. From the traditional (combo points for feral druids and rogues, or runes for death knights) to the new (Burning Embers for warlocks, or Shadow Orbs for shadow priests), it's clear secondary resources are here to stay.

Chi is the secondary resource common to all three monk specializations in Mists of Pandaria. It is conceptually most similar to paladins' holy power, as a stored 4-point pool. Through his level 30 talents, a monk can choose to buff chi generation in one of three ways, either increasing the maximum pool size via Ascendance, increasing the rate of generation via Power Strikes, or enabling an ability that can periodically completely refill chi (Chi Brew). For all monk specializations, chi is required in order to use the majority of abilities.

Before I move on, let's make one thing clear: Chi and combo points (CPs) are very different systems. CPs are stored on a single target; if a rogue or feral switches targets and uses a CP-generating ability, any CPs stored on the previous target are lost. Chi, in comparison, is stored on the monk, making target switches much simpler.

Second, most abilities that consume CP scale with the number of CPs used; for example, a 5-CP Ferocious Bite hits much harder than a 1-CP Ferocious Bite. All of the monk's chi-consuming abilities have a fixed cost, though this may change later in the beta.

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Filed under: Monk, Mists of Pandaria

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