by Mimetir

If you do know something about macros then have a read anyway – some of these might be basic to you, but you might pick up something that saves your skin, bark or cow-printed hide.

Paladins

1. Buffs up quicksmart

/castsequence [target=focus] Beacon of Light, Sacred Shield

• This macro will put both of your essential healing buffs up on your focus, which is likely to be the tank.
• TIP: you can use the addon Need To Know in conjunction with this setup. It’ll give you permanent timer bars for those buffs regardless of whom you’re targetting.

2. Easy judging

/cast [target=focustarget] Judgement of Light

• Casts your judgement of light which both does healing and gives you a powerful haste buff
• It won’t cause you to overaggro when casting your judgement as you’re using it on the tank’s target
• Means you don’t have to mess around with tab or mouse targetting a mob to cast it on. You may need to re-target your tank but that’s less trouble than having to target everything manually.
• TIP: you could use the addon Clique, which will allow you to set up mouse and key bindings for anything you could wish. Want to heal the tank? Sure, click the <insert mouse button here> and you needn’t retarget them after using your JoL macro.

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by Thespius @ worldofmatticus

Lord Marrowgar

So here we are, Lord Marrowgar, a very interesting challenge for healers. However, it does give Druids a chance to show off their ability to heal on the run. This can be arelatively hectic fight, so regardless of whether you are tank or raid healing, you will need to be tossing HoTs at some points during the fight.

Tank Healing

This is the easier of two roles against Marrowgar.  During his initial phase and all the ones where he is not spinning all over the place, it is essentially a one tank fight. Since the nerf, Marrowgar does quit a bit less melee damage. So the damage your meat shield will be taking will be fairly minimal. This is pretty manageable for Trees, as we can keep the tank pretty well topped off with our HoTs.

One ability you need to be prepared for though is Saber Lash.  Saber Lash is an ability similar to Koralon’s Meteor Fists, in which two tanks will need to stack in order to distribute the damage. Your healing priority will be the Main Tank followed by the Off-Tank after a Saber Lash. As a tree, you have the added benefit of hitting both with Wild Growth before topping off the Main Tank. Other than dodging the occasional slow-motion blue flames, there is not much to deal with during this phase.

Raid Healing

As stated above, this fight can be quite hectic for a raid healer. During the first phase you will have quite a bit to manage. In 10-player, one random player will be Bone Spiked. DPS will be turning to focus on getting the player down as quickly as possible. This presents two things for you as a raid healer. You obviously will need to be focusing on healing the spiked player. I’ve managed to safely keep them up with Rejuvenation and Swiftmend, though this can also be accomplished with a few Nourishesas well. The other thing is people taking Coldflame damage, as they will often be ignoring the flames to get the person off the spike. Again this is usually handled by tossing some Rejuvenations and Wild Growth, saving Swiftmend for anyone who stands in the fire just a bit too long.

The last thing you will be concerned with during the pre-Bone Storm phases is the aforementioned Coldflame. As the raid healer, you will be responsible for topping off anyone who doesn’t get out of the way of the flames quick enough. The damage it does is not too horrible as long as no one just stands there. Its actually more of a nuisance avoiding it yourself, as you will often need to decide between standing their long enough to finish casting a heal, or cutting it short to avoid taking too muchdamage yourself.

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Author: Jacemora

Trash when entering the Lower Spire…

• Depending on how your raid is ran is how you will DPS early trash. For the most part you can AoE mobs down however we have mobs that can explode in this early part of the encounter so we have a tank peel 1 out of the group at a time for single DPS. Also be cautious of chains CC and positioning if you do use some swipe early in the mobs pull.
• Break people out of webs when they get web wrapped.
• Don’t stand in front of the huge skeleton mobs, you will die.
• Don’t wonder around, there are traps that release the large guys and most raids prefer to find these after clearing all the trash leading up to the first boss.

Lord Marrowgar

• Stay behind the boss. Burn Berserk early (hopefully you get hero early as well).
• Break people out of spikes quickly
• Shift to bear and pop barkskin when he whirls. Run away and stay out of fire.
• After whirls get back to boss quickly… use kitty charge.
• Try your best to get off 5cp rips before switching to DPSing spikes that are on other people.

Trash in the 2nd Boss Room

• DPS trash in kill order.
• Be carefull using swipe here as some mobs will most likely be getting chained up.
• When on the big spiders in the back corners if you get the “mark” run away from other players until it is gone.

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by Allison Robert

Between 41 and 50, Ferals should add 2/2 Improved Leader of the Pack to their builds, this talent is the greatest thing since sliced bread. As soon as you add this, Feral’s mana problems while you’re leveling and grinding just vanish; you’ll be gaining 8% of your maximum mana each time ILotP’s self-heal procs. While some Ferals abandon the talent at 80, a number of raid builds still incorporate it because: a). the 4% self-heal on crits adds up to a lot of +healing done for melee, tanks, and Hunters on fights with heavy raid damage, and: b). You’re likely to be out of form to Innervate, battle-rez, and pop Tranquility unless your guild outgears the encounter. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care what role I’m filling in a raid — you can have this talent when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

The positionally-equivalent Balance talent — Improved Moonkin Form — doesn’t have nearly the same effect on leveling speed that ILotP does; it’s one of those things that’s a lot better at 80 than 41. Owlkin Frenzy is more broadly equivalent to ILotP, more so in patch 3.2 with the addition of the mana return component, but the earliest you can get the first rank of OF is level 44. Because OF benefits only your good self and nobody else, it’s shakier as a raid talent at 80 than ILotP, but an obvious pick for Balance PvP builds.

LEVEL 42

5 upgrades to existing skills, but nothing new otherwise:

• Demoralizing Roar, rank 4: standard upgrade.
• Maul, rank 5: standard upgrade.
• Ravage, rank 2: standard upgrade.
• Regrowth, rank 6: standard upgrade.
• Starfire, rank 4: standard upgrade.

LEVEL 44

A key ability makes its debut here, and it’s one of only two new trainable abilities you’ll get between levels 41 and 50.

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by Matticus

After blitzing through Northrend Beasts and Lord Jaraxxus, it’s time to check out Faction Champions from a healer perspective.

Not a traditional fight

This is the key. There is no such thing as aggro management or threat on this encounter. This is an extremely chaotic, fast paced, arena-esque fight. Players that dual spec into PvP may even wish to consider doing so for extra survival or abilities. Your raid group is going to be facing off against 10 champions of the opposing faction (6 on normal). They’re selected from a random pool of NPCs.

• Death Knight
• Balance Druid
• Resto Druid
• Hunter
• Mage
• Holy Paladin
• Retribution Paladin
• Healing Priest
• Shadow Priest
• Rogue
• Caster/Healing Shaman
• Enhancement Shaman
• Warlock
• Warrior

Ones in bold are your raid’s targets of interest. Isn’t it rather odd that they’re all healers?

Execution

It’s difficult to provide an exact outline of what your group has to do. The best I can provide is a general guideline. Go ahead and move your group under the Alliance (or Horde) section first before activating the NPC. It’s a good idea to take stock of what class combination you’re group is going to be facing so that crowd control can be used accordingly.

In most cases, our raid group initially crowd controls every NPC as much as possible other than healers. For example, this week we had a healing Priest, the caster Shaman along with the Holy Paladin. We opted to zero in on the Shaman first. Our Warrior tank started working on the Holy Paladin just by keeping him locked down and interrupted. Placing a Rogue or 3 on the Priest is also a nice idea.

Our basic mentality is that if we run down the healers first, then the other NPC’s are a cake walk. The next dangerous Champion after healers is the Rogue based on the speed at which it can kill a target.

This is an endurance fight. Expect to invest around 10 minutes from start to finish. Each NPC has around 2.4 million health (some have 1.9 million).

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Currently you’re able to use engineering bombs in Swift Flight Form.
Moderately useful. Mainly for fun and just airbombing people while flying
around. Perhaps the first airstrikes in Wintergrasp. Who knows what
possibilities this has. Picture ofcourse generously included.

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by Allison Robert

New Bear and Cat Forms

Y helo thar, Tauren cat form. I have but one thing to say to you, my stiff-eyed, pinch-hipped, three-phalange’d affront to the natural order:

That’s right, folks. Redesigned Bear and Cat forms go live today, and that sound you hear is the sound of a million sobbing Druids who believed that the game would go to its final reward with the same ugly-ass forms. We’re still crossing our fingers for updated Tree of Life, Moonkin, Travel, and Aquatic forms — and there was a small spark of hope recently from a comment made by Ghostcrawler in the Druid Q&A:

For the official word, do we have plans to update more druid form models at some point in the future?

Ghostcrawler: I know for a fact that the current Travel Form and Aquatic Form are loathed by the artist who redid bear and cat. We do have plans to update additional forms at some point in the future.

If someone meets either Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street or this unknown artist at BlizzCon, please buy them a refreshing beverage or possibly small nation of their choice, and send me the bill.

General Overview

• MOONKIN: Balance of Power was retooled to reduce all spell damage taken rather than the chance to be hit by spells. Owlkin Frenzy has been improved to restore 10% of your base mana over its 10 second duration. And the biggie: Eclipse’s lunar and solar procs are now on separate cooldowns. What does this mean for your rotation? Keep Moonfire and Insect Swarm up as usual, but cast Wrath until you get the lunar Eclipse proc, then cast Starfire until you get the solar Eclipse proc. Lissanna has a more involved discussion here, and Graylo’s run the numbers on the % damage increase you should realistically expect.
• BEARS: The only change likely to have any impact on you is the 15% nerf to the agility-to-dodge and dodge rating-to-dodge conversion ratio. Combined with the 8% buff to parry returns from +parry rating, this has the effect of (slightly) improving parry’s desirability as a stat before diminishing returns. Obviously, that only impacts the tanks who can parry. Having logged onto both the live realms and the PTR to check, I’m seeing a 1.77% dodge loss between my live bear and PTR bear (both unbuffed), which is within shouting distance of the math that Kalon ran on the changes. Enrage is also getting a small buff and will instantly produce 20 rage, then 10 over the next 10 seconds. Also, we’re finally losing that incredibly annoying Pillsbury Doughboy-esque “Poke my tummy!” Savage Defense animation.
• CATS: Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeerfs — but small ones. Most Cat damage abilities are getting a flat, percentage-based reduction, with commenters pegging it around a 2% DPS loss overall. King of the Jungle is also getting the Bear/Cat shapeshifting mana cost reduction currently linked to Primal Tenacity.
• TREES: As is now customary with patches released on days that end in -y, Blizzard is nerfing Lifebloom. Innervate’s functionality has also been tinkered with, mostly over concerns related to Resto mana efficiency in PvP (see below); it provides about half the mana it once did, but its cooldown has been reduced to 3 minutes. If you’re having mana issues past the patch, I’d invest in a Glyph of Innervate, stat. Nourish is once again being buffed by getting yoked to Empowered Touch. If you follow Blizzard’s design trajectory to its logical conclusion, Nourish will eventually become a 0.5-second cast ability costing 50 mana and healing for 8 billion, whereas Lifebloom will be renamed to Just Put The Damn Spell Out of Its Misery FFS. This concerns me.

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by Mike Schramm

Patch 3.2 is here, and there is a whole herd of mount changes stampeding into your stables. Here’s a quick rundown of just what’s changed about all the things you ride in patch 3.2, from updates to when you can buy mounts and for how much, new tweaks to old mounts like the Ulduar Proto-drakes and the TCG items, and brand new mounts like the hippogryphs from the Argent Tournament and the long-awaited Ravasaur.

Mount costs, level requirements, and speed changes

The biggest news is that Blizzard has made major changes to when you can buy your mounts, and how much they cost when you do. When the new patch goes live, all of the mounts will have their level requirements reduced: Regular land mounts will now train at level 20, epic land mounts will be trainable at level 40, regular flying mounts will be trained at level 60, and epic flying will be trained at level 70. This means that you’ll be riding at an epic speed from level 40, and you’ll be able to train flying mounts at level 60 (so you’ll be able to ride around Outland with a flying mount from the first time you step in there. Here are the full details on all of the riding skills and their new costs.

Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)

• 60% land mount speed
• Requires level 20
• Cost: 4 gold
• Mount cost: 1 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)

• 100% land mount speed
• Requires level 40
• Cost: 50 gold
• Mount cost: 10 gold
• Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

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this is what you do, with the state of pvp in wotlk, as a druid you usually have to prehot 2-3 primary targets on your 3s/5s team to have a chance at winning. This leaves you down a lot of mana, and in these brackets (especially 5s) a lot of people just go and zerg so it can make a difference. What you do to get extra mana is you prehot a pet with 3 lifeblooms right before the match starts (if you time it perfectly you will have enough time for 6 hots before these lifeblooms bloom.

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