Posts with tag symbiosis

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Pact for affliction, demonology, and destruction warlocks. This week, Megan O'Neill muses about tanking, healing, and why she really does play a DPS.

I have a confession: I was once a tank. Technically I could have been half a tank, because I think I healed just as often, but once upon a time I rolled a druid with the intent of getting a melee DPS perspective.

One night in Wrath of the Lich King, my first guild had some trouble with kiting the adds on Gluth. So we upped the tank count to 3: the paladin tank moved to the back for holy tag with the undead while the former-bear warrior walked me through my feral spellbook as I sat in bear form on that pipe. I think it was the extra Mauls that hooked me. I became a bear tank with a branch-waving offspec.

I have fond memories of alt or PUG raids where I had cooldown-busting health pools and hero-bear resurrections between Gormok's death and the arena entrance of Acidmaw and Dreadscale. But as my guild tore apart in the beginnings of Icecrown Citadel, I've been back to pewpewing from the back as a warlock. My bear is merely an alt.

But my bear has made my warlock a little stronger.

I knew this was going to happen. I tweeted about it back in August, suggesting that Heart of the Wild was far too powerful for both balance and feral druids; when combined with a weapon swap, the damage potential was significant. Several others warned about it on release, but to no avail, Bosses fell, DPS meters were topped, and all the non-druids complained bitterly. The cry of "Nerf druids!" was heard throughout the land, though most of us were too busy playing PandaFarm to notice.

Each week, Blog Azeroth hosts a Shared Topic for bloggers to answer on their own blogs and then link to in the forum. This week, Arvash from The Crimson Hammer asks:

In the new Mist of Pandaria expansion, Druids will be getting a new spell called Symbiosis, which will allow them to "trade" a spell with another player, based on the player's class and combat role and the Druid's specialization.

So my question is, if you could have any spell you want from any other class, current spells or new ones in MoP, what would it be? How would you work it into your rotation, gameplay, etc.?

Arvash gives a good overview of Symbiosis, but here are some details for those who don't already know:

• The druid doesn't get to choose which spell to receive or trade.
• The Symbiosis recipient also doesn't get to choose the spells.
• You can't use it on enemy players or any NPCs -- just one member of the party or raid.
• Wowhead has more details and the spells that get traded.

The spell distribution follows after the break -- first, the spells that other classes receive from their druid friends.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here.

In the original WoW beta, rogues were designed to be off tanks. Complete with a high dodge coefficient from agility and a buckler, rogues could survive quite a beating. Evasion was a tanking cooldown, and Vanish was a useful tank-swapping ability. Hunters worked similarly, also sporting bucklers and using Feign Death to lose aggro. Obviously, the developers scrapped both of these ideas before launch.

During The Burning Crusade, Gaeowyn broke the combat table by achieving unhittable status with 102.63% avoidance and using it to successfully slay Illidan. After that, the crew slew Gruul with just five people while it was still relevant content. In Wrath, Jider abused Shadowstep and our amazing damage output to solo several Naxxramas bosses. The upcoming Mists expansion looks to again revitalize rogue tanking, with the advent of the druid ability Symbiosis and our bonus ability, Growl.

I don't know what class you play. I don't know if you're any good at it. If you're looking for gold, I can tell you I don't have any. But what I do have is a very particular skill -- a skill I have acquired at level 87 after a long career of pleading with Blizzard for relevance. This skill makes me a nightmare for people like you. If you let the contents of your action bar go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will take everything you hold dear.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Symbiosis -- or as we like to call it around these parts, the reason you need to be nice to druids in Mists of Pandaria.

Or as we also like to call it, the endless, numb suckhole where raid balance goes to die.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, one of our specs appears to be faring better than others. Much, much better.

Certain people have it made. For example, a relative of mine phoned the other night to let us know that she's thinking about buying a beach property in Costa Rica and that in order to supplement her six-figure commodity broker's salary, she'll probably rent it out whenever she isn't there to surf and drink mojitos herself. "Gotta go," she said. "I think the Mercedes dealership is trying to call me back."

Now, this is a fairly soul-destroying thing to hear, and not just because you had to interrupt a shouting match with your family over getting a real job in order to go look up Costa Rica on a map. But let's be fair: Nobody gets that lucky by accident. Does it involve hard work? Yep. But it also involves the ability to zero in on a path in life that pays out like a broken slot machine, and then tireless effort to keep your boxcar hitched to the gravy train. Let's not blame the folks who are simply more astute than we are at picking one of life's better roads.

After a little more than a week in the Mists of Pandaria beta, something has become horribly obvious: If this relative ever picked up WoW, she'd be playing a resto druid.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first: We've already lost Path of the Devout on beta. The good news is that in its place, we now have Feathers From Heaven, a talent that allows priests to lay out a little track of speed-boosting feathers. Think of them as those little speed arrows in Mario Kart, only they're feathers, and you can put them wherever you please.

The individual feathers have no expiration that I can tell, so you can lay them out in advance on one end of the room for special tactics in your raid encounters or PvP, if it suits your fancy. The ability has no mana cost at the moment. Instead, it is limited by charges: one feather per charge, and you can have three charges at a time. You can place one feather right after the other, but it takes 10 seconds to restore one charge. This allows you to spam three of them on the ground in succession if you like (something you can't do with Body and Soul) or spread them out gradually ahead of you in your path. They can be used by any friendly target, not just party members, so be mindful of people's stealing them if you're using them while leveling to snatch up quest items. Oh yeah, and the feathers can be used on top of water with Levitate.

So, you're excited about Mists of Pandaria now, right?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, it can happen to you.

Back during The Burning Crusade, I knew an extremely disgruntled warrior tank (not Matthew Rossi) who was generally mad at the world about everything (again, not Rossi) and considered the universe to be implacably biased against his good self (may I repeat, not Rossi). While summoning raid members to Tempest Keep one evening, we were having a nice chat, by which I mean grousing about the hassle of tanking Al'ar in the age of the missable taunt.

"&%*," he said. "Bears have it so easy. I have to &%($*% macro Shield Block to every $#$(%* ability in my &%()#@ action bar so I don't get ^%$(#( crushed. Not like you. You just sit there and ^%*#%( live through everything."

"I'm sorry," I said, although I wasn't really. I envied warriors for many reasons, but Shield Block spam was not among them, and I was privately glad that despite the bear's many issues, I didn't have to keep hammering one button every few seconds just to stay alive.

(Beta players are already reaching for the Valium. They know where this is going.)

I'm not yet in the Mists of Pandaria beta, but while reading through the news emerging from the servers, I had to spare a thought for my Angry Warrior Tank friend of yesteryear and how &%#(%* pleased he'd be to hear that we now know his #$^@%# pain.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, sum durids is covetous of others' skills.

SCENE: A 25-man raid of Lord KillMeIHaveCandy in Mists of Pandaria. The raid is buffing before the pull while class officers discuss strategy. Allie opens the bidding war.

Allie: Alllll right. Who gets Symbiosis? Let me think.

Paladin: Me!

Allie: Last time I gave it to you, you blew my Rebirth cooldown on the guy who dies every fight. You are now my mortal enemy, and I will remind you of this on your deathbed.

Death knight: I could use it.

Allie: I don't know what I get from you yet. Bug off.

Warrior: Me me me!

Allie: Oh, come on. Enrage isn't that great.

Monk: I could use it.

Allie: You roll on my gear and want a favor from me. You're funny.

Priest: Oh, look! I accidentally tripped over 5,000 gold on the ground for which I have no earthly use. Would you like it?

Allie: Let's talk.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. Welcome to our feral cat edition, brought to you by Chase Hasbrouck, aka Alaron of The Fluid Druid blog. Let the face clawing begin!

So, last week, I said I was going to start talking about 4.3 this week; of course, Blizzard decided to release its official talent calculator a couple of days ago. Oops. I posted my snap reactions to the new stuff on Twitter, but let's dive in and take a more in-depth look.

Front and center in the discussion is our new ability, Symbiosis. Teased by the developers during Blizzcon, we finally have a tooltip, and the possibilities are potentially mind-blowing (if you have a priest).

"Symbiosis: Creates a symbiotic link which grants the Druid one ability belonging to the target's class, varying by the Druid's specialization. In exchange, grants the target one Druid ability based on their class and combat role ..."

A few days ago, Blizzard launched its official Mists of Pandaria talent calculator, which also contained a full list of abilities for each class, complete with the level learned and tooltips. Several new abilities were revealed, as well as changes to existing abilities. Some of the highlights:

• Druid: Symbiosis (level 87) Creates a symbiotic link which grants the druid one ability belonging to the target's class, varying by the druid's specialization. In exchange, grants the target one druid ability based on their class and combat role.
• Mage: Alter Time (level 87) Instant, 3-minute cooldown. Alter the fabric of time, causing the caster to return to their current location, health, mana, and conditions after 4 seconds. Effect negated if the caster dies within the 4 seconds before the effect occurs.
• Paladin: Blinding Light (level 87) Instant, 3-minute cooldown. Emits a dazzling light in all directions, blinding enemies within 10 yards, causing them to wander disoriented for 6 seconds.
• Rogue: Dispatch (level 70, assassination) Instant, 30 energy, melee range. A vicious strike that exploits the vulnerability of foes with less than 35% health remaining, causing 200% weapon damage plus 766 to the target. Requires a dagger in the main hand. Awards 1 combo point.
• Warlock: Demonic Portal (level 88) 70-yard range, 5-second cast. Create a demonic gateway between two locations. Stepping into the gateway causes any party member to be instantly transported to the other gateway. Limit 5 charges.

Ths possibilities behind Symbiosis are incredible. A moonkin Heroic Leaping to safety in PvP? Bears borrowing pally shields to finally get their ranged silence? Resto shaman begging for an Innervate? (Wait, that happens already.)

Alter Time is also super cool and really increases the Arcane flavor of the class. "Hi, I just hit you with a cooldown-boosted stacked Arcane Blast ... and now, I will do it again." I see mages figuring out just how far they can fall in 4 seconds, in order to troll their raid leaders.

Check out the full list of changes and new abilities at Wowhead News.

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World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria is the next expansion, raising the level cap to 90, introducing a brand new talent system, and bringing forth the long-lost pandaren race to both Horde and Alliance. Check out the trailer and follow us for all the latest MoP news!

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Shifting Perspectives for cat, bear, restoration and balance druids. This Tuesday, we've returned from the Angry Dome.

Well, after pissing off Blizzard for the millionth week in a row, today we're going to turn our attention to slightly less explosive concerns. By the way, "Tank Q&A sucks" is a top search phrase for last week's Shifting. Just thought I'd mention.

As long as we're on the subject of the developer Q&As, I might as well make an uncomfortable segue to observing that Blizzard's now taking queries for the Q&A on healers. Go ask questions! Personally I am very interested in hearing if they're going to update Tree of Life form, or make Innervate a baseline ability rather than the 31-point talent in the restoration tree.

Ha ha! I kid because I love.

On the off chance that patch 4.2 hits today (which it probably won't, but eh), this is a quick and dirty guide to the patch notes that'll concern you if you play a bear or tree druid. If the patch hits next week, we'll keep ourselves occupied making daisy chains or something. Or, if the healer Q&A gets published sooner than expected, I'll write another enraged diatribe for everyone to enjoy.