So Patch 3.1 is here. Ulduar is here. Let’s talk about it!
Just before the servers went down for the patch implementation I parked both my level 80 characters in Darnassus because 1) it has target dummies, 2) it’s quiet and 3) it has a Druid and a Hunter trainer. I knew Dalaran would be packed as soon as our realm came back online so I was glad to avoid it. People in the guild were confirming my assumption, poor folk!
So I logged on and went straight to my respective class trainers to grab Dual Talent Spec for both characters. After doing builds and glyphs for both ‘geebs (Hunter) and ‘paws (Druid) and, of course, learning Call Stabled Pet, I took both over to the target dummies and met up with a couple of friends to chat about the new specs – due to talent and spell changes – and get some numbers from the dummies.
This was where I found one of the first problems. I’m sure I’m not the only one but it would appear my chat box is not showing me what everyone is saying. I had a couple of friends ask me why I was ignoring them yesterday, but the simple fact it…I had no messages from them. I also had no ‘yellow text’ to tell me when someone had joined or left my group, I couldn’t see rolls (which was annoying in Ulduar!) so that was my first frustration. Any ideas how to get around this? And yes, I’ve disabled all my add-ons and it still does it.
So, Hunter first as I was most interested to see what was happening with Beast Mastery as it was my original build – and I missed my Spirit Beast after being Marksman for a while. My primary build on ‘geebs is still MM because he’s already glyphed so I decided to do a quick burn down on mana to get some initial figures. Self buffed my MM build was running at about 2500dps on a lvl 80 dummy with a wolf for a pet. This I was pleased with, it brightened my day to see an MM build DPSing similarly to an SV build, still a little behind but not bad. I know it shouldn’t have done, but it did get my hopes up for BM. With the new pet talents I was hoping for 2500dps or thereabouts. Change build (I love this!), open Call Stabled Pet and grab Spirit Beast. Re-talent Spirit Beast, check spellbook to see no pet abilities. Dismiss pet and re-call..ooh, look! Abilities! Blizzard, you need to fix this. Anyway, BM put down about 2300dps. I’m going to be playing around with some rotations as I’m not satisfied with that. I want BM to put out about 2500dps or near to, this will be my off-time mission.
With initial figures and thoughts of how to improve them going through my head I popped over to ‘paws to try out Boomkin DPS. 3000-3300dps. *re-reads Recount*
“Blue, does that say 3,000dps to you?”
‘I’m not looking.’
I did another DPS burn down and yes, it was about 3,000dps. Now, I know this is not a proper test but it’s nice to get some baseline test results. In an instance with raid buffs I’m sure the DPS figures will be different. What worries me, though, is the fact a hybrid class in Restoration gear is doing so much more damage than a pure DPS class. I hope it’s not the same for the likes of Mages. I really do think this needs to be looked into by Blizz.
Anyway, let’s look at Resto as it’s my main-spec now. Whilst I’m not overly happy with the changes they’ve made to the likes of Lifebloom, I am quite excited to get back to figuring out the best healing rotation I can for both group and tank healing, whilst being as mana efficient as possible
Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.
Now, pre-patch the way I and many other resto Druids used Lifebloom was to not allow it to bloom and to keep the three stacks running at all times. This, with 700+mana per application doesn’t seem to be particularly efficient at the moment. Aside from the nerf to mana regeneration, which is only out of combat – something I don’t actually understand – and the Lifebloom changes, not much has happened to Resto Druids. We’ve had a few minor changes which are nice but nothing major aside from Lifebloom. See the full list of changes here.
I tried out a new healing rotation without Lifebloom when <Ferocity> went to Ulduar for the first time. We managed to down the first boss (see picture at the start of the blog) but really struggled on the trash afterwards with an issue with damage. There was a lot of raid damage and a lot of tank damage as well. For our usual set up with me on tank healing, I was really struggling to keep him at full health and I think I’m right in assuming I put out the most HPS in the guild so it wasn’t filling us with confidence. One other issue seems to be with swapping talent builds. Blue entered Ulduar and switched to SV spec, which unlearnt all his talents and all his skills. This meant he had to go back to the trainer and re-learn a load of spells he’s already learnt, using all the money he didn’t have in the first place.
We’re off back to Ulduar now to see what we can do with the trash we struggled on last night and to see if we can get any more bosses down. Flame Leviathan was an interesting fight. It was fun because it was different but I fear it’ll be a bit gimmicky and its fun will wear off. I hope not though.
Must dash, healing to do!
G x
Filed under: Druid, Gaming, General, WoW | Tagged: 3.1, druid, hunter, patch, raid, resto, ulduar, World Of Warcraft, WoW
