The missing stats.......

Ho Hum. Well, we knew it was going to be tough to get a top 5 finish with the quality of some of the other dps. Boomdaddy is a tad dissapointed not to break 3k dps across all the bosses but that cant be helped when we are completely useless at Heigan. When i say completely useless that may be an exageration, we do have one use. Designated dead body. For the good of the raid we lie down quietly in order to show everyone where the lava burst come up from. True story. We do also have to admit to being a little pissed for the second half of the raid, as the wine was tasting rather too good. Bad Boomdaddy.

On the good side, we did like 58% crit on wrath and the whopping 79% on starfire. When we finally get the fourth piece of T7, we can add another lovely 5% crit across the board on top of that. Yummy scrummy. With regards to the new spec we think we need a few more raids to see if its any better. Improved faerie fire, is just a pain in the chocolate starfish at the moment, as it screws my rotation to buggery. We will give it a proper go though and see if we can click our way through it.

Naxx 25 second leg is in an hour and i have put 3 sticky notes on my monitors saying "TURN ON COMBATLOG YOU KNOB-END", we shall see if that was subtle enough to get through the Boomdaddy's thick skull.

BoomMummy Gloats

Hmmm, well! Its looks like the Boomdaddy has finally come over to my way of thinking. As I was saying in my last entry, crit = boomlove, and it seems to message has finally got around!

The Boomdaddy’s spec is now very similar to mine, with just a couple of minor differences. I don’t have the 5 points in the Resto ‘Furor’ (instead, I have my 5 points in Balance ‘Genesis’). I also have 3 points in ‘Brambles’ rather than Improved Faerie Fire. I tend to use my dots a lot, and try to keep both up in raids, so Genesis is quite useful for me. I could quite happily swap Brambles for Improved Faerie Fire – but I do love my little trees! Any chance to get them doing a bit of extra damage I’ll take (even if they miss too much on bosses, the naughty little buggers!).

I never went for the resto-mana-regen spec – wanting to try to maximise my mana through crit. Even on the early raids with the guild, this worked out okay (although I did have a couple of pieces of big mp5 kit, which kept for fights where I knew mana would be tough – hey, they dropped, no healers wanted them – who was I to say ‘no’?). Even before I was hit capped, I was whacking out a good bit of damage in the raids with this spec.

Now I’ve got 4 pieces of T7, and along with a few other nice purples, I have enough crit to keep the mana going and I never use the mp5 kit anymore. For some odd reason I’ve managed to get over 300 hit and haste without trying very hard (must have been on the vodka when I did that). So the Boommummy is generally feeling quite pleased with herself! Well, I would be feeling very pleased with myself if I could get my hands on those bloody illusive kit upgrades. Things seem to have dried up for poor little me recently. I still need the T7 helm – 7.5 would be lovely – still need something to replace the blue Kirin Tor dagger… I just don’t seem to get the drops. Ah well – roll on Ulduar! Let’s hope there’s lots of gorgeous things in there I can stuff under my feathers!

p.s. Boommummy will get back to raiding soon – she’s been busy dyeing her feathers and varnishing her beak! Looking this gorgeous doesn’t happen by accident you know... XXX

Fandabydosey, its Friday

Naxx 25, post match report. Well there would have been if I hadn't only just remembered to turn on WWS before the Widow fight and then not got dc'd straight after...sigh. I thought the report was still running and was looking forward to some serious data from 2 wing clearances +2 bosses, but alas all i have is the poxy Widow stats. Im annoyed, as we were very interested to see if the new build was raid-tastic, but also due to the fact that guildies were pumping out some serious pain to all the Naxx inhabitants and it would have been a great report for thr guild forum. A few of the bosses went down in record time and there was a minimum of fuck ups...all in all a very decent show from the finest hardcore social guild on the planet. Below is the overall dps for the one fight.

Fourth place for the Boomdaddy, its not top 3 but its not bad. Bloody rogue was top again,if he wasn't lovely he would be on the shoot in the face list. Sneaky, thats what they are, sneaky. As you can just about see, the elemental shammy came in just behind me. He's high up in the guild, so we let him hit stuff on his own and get ahead on the charts so that he feels special, bless him. 3205 dps is getting there but again it would have been necessary to have had all the boss fight data in order to make an informed decision on the new build.

Now this, the Boomdaddy likes. 55% crit rate on wrath and 79% on starfire. Thems the onions alright and no mistake. No misses, just shows that 275 hit is fine if you have a spacegoat and a priest of shadowness in the party. Moral of story this week, is to get a tad more hit for 10's and stack other loveliness for 25's....job done. On the crit/mana regen scorebaord we estimate 6325 mana cash back in the 2 minutes 32 second fight. That would get the BoomMummy moist for sure.

Edit 1. The lovely hunter in the raid managed to succeed where I failed miserably and captured all but the first fight on WWS. Webmistress is working on the pictures now and should be up in the next hour or 2. As far as our estimate of 6325 mana regen from crit goes, we suck the sweat off a dead man's balls when it comes to maths. Having studied WWS further, the actual figure was a whopping 17,868! That will help take the OOM out of Boom, for sure.

Pre Raid Reshuffle

Naxx 25, looks like a goer for tonight. Yay, as no real raiding in a while has made me grumpier than ever! With a heavy heart I have to share some very serious news, yes I'm respeccing. I'm dropping the super cool Boomdaddy mana -regen build in favour of something with a little more bang for your buck.

Good bye to best mana raid build money can buy 55-16

and say hello to my new fwend 64-7

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating of course, but there are some very heavy hitters on the raid tonight and the Boomdaddy doesn't like to me made to look a douchebag. The main reason is though, that on the last few 25 man raids, I have finished with a very full mana bar and not enough dps. We may even goto 66-5 as there are 3 other droods in the group all with 2pts in IMW.

Master stroke, or Mongolian cluster fuck? 5 hours and we will know.

Patchy Mcpatch 3.1.0

There is alot of buzz around about the ptr and about patch 3.1.0. As usual the list of tweaks and modifications to the Boomkin class is nose-bleedingly long. God knows how blizzard developers get so much thoughtful, incisive and big brain work packed into the half hour on Fridays between their 5th Kryspy Kreme and scratching their balls.

Balance

Owlkin Frenzy is now properly considered an Enrage effect. Now also does not trigger from spell hits, only physical ranged and melee attacks.

Hats off to them. One possible change listed and its a bag of bollocks.Good work fellas.



Owlkin Frenzy
Rank 3
Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form have a 15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, increasing your damage by 10% and causes you to be immune to pushback while casting Balance spells. Lasts 10 sec.

This talent has really always been for the PvP specced Boomkin, as its application in PvE is limited at best. This change however will solidly stick it in PvP only builds for good, if it gets through to the live realms. As Gray pointed out , the only time in Naxx that any Moonkin could benefit from this talent, would be if they consistently stood in the lava AOE during Sartharian. Even then the healers are probably going to be thinking "BBQ chicken on the menu tonight then" if you pull that kind of nonsense.

Are we bothered? Yes and no. No, because we are a raiding Boomster and do not use this talent in our build. Yes ,because it further nerfs balance druids in PvP and as I wrote the other day, things just aint rosey in the Boomkin garden of BG's.

I suspect that they will scrap it before the patch goes live, but only if the developers got sprinkles on the last doughnut. Otherwise their response will be "You have THE dance ffs, what more do you want?".

One other nugget that may have slipped through some druids fish-nets , is this quote by Ghostcrawler regarding mana regen changes in 3.1.

Mana Regeneration changes in 3.1 and effects on Innervate

I don't think it will suddenly make druids regem from Spirit to Int. We'll see.If you mean these changes will nerf Innervate, yes, it will. On live Innervate can be 120% of your bar, say 25,000 mana. Historically it was more like 75% of your bar, and it should be closer to that with these changes.


I'm going to leave this one for a full post on mana regen changes but I'm feeling a little edgy.

One for the fodster

Some times we all have bad days, so there is nothing like a meaningless achievement, nudity and certain death to warm the cockles. Extreme angling, Boomdaddy style, with my lovely assistant foddy. This ones for you hun!

Sartharion 10 man

Okey dokey. So we mooched over to Sartharion Tuesday night, as frustratingly we didn't get the numbers to finish off the last 4 bosses in Naxx 25. My much needed T 7.5 head piece will have to wait another few weeks, I guess. The Boomdaddy isn't the most clued up technocrat on the planet but I have attempted to post the WWS reports from the final fight of last night where the big guy went down quicker than a crack whore. "Final" fight? Yes I said final.We had a few tries at keeping one drake up, which whilst did not furnish the gang with rewards, it certainly gave us a few giggles. Moral of story, don't all jump through the portal.

Ok...the pictures have come out too small, my web mistress is working on it.*Edit-well done mistress*. Anyhooo on the boss-death fight the Boomdaddy did ok, second place to our lovely rogue is never a terrible fate. Sneaky stabby slag. 2625dps feels a little light, but I know I'm lacking 4 pieces of professor plums before the BoomDaddy is back at his fighting weight.











Soooo...what do we see that we don't like? 4% miss on Wrath is livable with but doesn't make me happy. A hit rating of 278 obviously showed tonight for sure. There was also no benefit of a Spacegoat 1% to hit nor a shadow priest 3%. 10 man's are still posing gear questions with regards to caps depending on group composition. Eclipse only procced 7 times in the 3min 17 second fight but did give a 59% crit rate.That the Boomdaddy likes.

37% crit rate on Wrath is interesting me, in terms of crit based mana regen. Mana was always an issue for me in 10 man's, I will be honest. Last night , though, I was in good mana shape all through the fight.I'm no stato but I figure that the following simple maths might not be far off the mark.

Wrath hit 44 times, critting 37% of the time, Boomkin form gives us 2% instant mana regen per single target crit...so

0.37*44=16.28 occasions where we get back 2% of 17000 (total mana)

thus (.37*44)*(.02*17000)=5535 total mana regained by wrath crits. In my book that is two pots worth.

I'm not jumping on the BoomMummy's caravan of crit love just yet, but the Boomdaddy will be watching this stat closely.

BoomMummy reporting

Well, goodness me!

It’s so nice to have you all sitting here waiting for me to speak up at last. I love you all, I really do! I felt so privileged to be asked to contribute to this blog, I almost wet myself and made a mess of my feathers. But that's a story for later!

I have a terrible confession to make –me and the Boomdaddy have a terrible disagreement….. I like crit, and I like it a lot. I like crit more than I should do…. I’m beginning to think that the only thing I can think about is crit. CRIT CRIT CRIT!!! And there in lies our difference, as he is all hung up on hit.

You may think Moonkin are all the same, but that is not true. They can be played in many different ways. Me and the Boomdaddy spar on the damage charts, arguing about the best way to play. We both have very different specs but both push the other dps to their poor little limits. Who are we to decide what’s right? We are just two, lonely Moonkin, crying into our‘please-be-a-back-up-healer’ soup.

Night night, all you young Moonkin, I'll be back soon!

Keep your Feathers Bright! XXX

The Nicest Things

Stormwind, late in the evening doing God knows what. We get a whisper out of the blue which in Stormwind usually means beggars. No but not this time, no sir-ee. It in fact was a brief moment of Moonkin magic.

Grasshopper: hey.

BoomDaddy: err hello......

GH: I'm a druid too.

BD: Good man, good man....but the answer is still no.

GH: No what?

BD: No you cant have any gold.We appreciate you have chosen wisely to become a druid but don't let the side down by begging. That's for lesser classes, like Mages.

GH: Oh. But I don't want money.

BD: That's good then. Nice to have met you then. Cya.

GH: I just wondered if you could help me a minute.

BD: (wracks brains...lvl 17.....sea lion quest) Well I'm a bit busy to do the sea lion quest right now....

GH:I did that. I just wondered how you did that.

BD: Did what?

GH: That.

BD: What??

GH: That thing your doing.

BD: OK mate I'm not sure what I'm"doing"

GH: The BIG thing with horns. It looks cool.

BD: Ooooh Moonkin form. Well, you get to chose what kind of druid you want to be. Healing druids can become trees, feral druids are bear tanks that hit things with their head or sneak around as cats pretending to be rogues. Balance druids go Moonkin. And we call them antlers not horns btw.

GH: What do Moonkin do?

BD: We top the damage charts.

GH: Oh.How?

BD: Through skill and determination we blast the bejesus out of things with mighty Wrath and Starfire onslaughts, carefully ensuring we don't cause wipes like lesser classes. Well, unless we hit the "oh-fuck" button, of course.

GH: Whats that?

BD: Starfall. Its like an AK47 in the hands of a toddler.

GH: Coooool.

GH: When I am big I am gonna be like you.

BD: (teardrops forming) Bless you my boy, bless you..../hug

Sunday Bloody Sunday

We like Sundays. Fresh coffee brewing in the Krupps and plenty of time to kill, messing around in battlegrounds. Since Wrath was rolled out, the Boomdaddy has been very quiet on the pvp front. There are three reasons for that I guess. Firstly, since hitting 80 all my spare WoW time has been spent raiding Naxx, Voa, EoE etc etc. Fill in time has to be spent making the money to pay for the luxury of raiding three or four times per week. With potions, elixirs, repairs and the such like I think we all rarely get change out of 750g per week. Being a crappy leatherworker does not unfortunately line the pockets with oodles of gold but that is a post for another day.

The second reason would be related to this damn achievement system. Again, my personal view of achievements can be left for another day but needless to say I'm not entirely happy about the whole system. Going back to the days of vanilla wow and TBC, pvp and arenas were an integral part of being a Boomkin. There simply wasn't the gear around to make us effective without spending huge dollops of time battering horde in AV. God bless that season 2 battle staff, merciless gladiator's shoulders etc etc. I did my time, got geared up the best I could and killed my share of wrong'ens. Knight Lieutenant is still the title I am most proud to display over my lovely shiny antlers. I WAS THERE MAN, I WAS THERE!!!! Sorry, flashbacks. Anyhow, with the achievements debacle, it appears that I am back to being a newbie in terms of pvp,after months of pvp the ignominy of having a big flashing achievement pop up displaying my first victory in AB was too much to bare. Hence pvp has been put back up the shelf until this last week.

Thirdly, we are feeling a bit crap at pvp. I dont know if it is that other classes have got much better at it with all the changes, or Boomkins have simply got much worse but back in the day being top dps in a bg was a fairy frequent occurrence. Now I feel like a seven stone weakling getting sand kicked in my face by death nuggets and even shaman. Warriors were always our favourite target dummy, so easy to root and nuke...but it appears not any longer.

Enough is enough though, and i cannot resist the urge to plunge nut deep back into some serious pvp, I've spent some time getting new shiny pvp things, resilience is at 670 and I'm going to try and reclaim the Boomkins rightful place back near the top of the pvp tree. I'll let you know how it pans out....28,215 wrong'ens down, which one of you hordies wants to be 28,216?

Mage-tards the new Huntards

Huntards are huntards. The poor things can't help themselves. Unless they have been well versed in the teachings of BRK or Liennas , then in which case the boomdaddy can give them a pass. The others that cannot be arsed to learn their trade can be resigned to the tissue I wipe on my boomkin boot.

Mage-tards, now thats another thing. Mages have always had it so damn good,they were always THE ranged raid dps to beat, but now always cry more than a prostate examanee. Huntards are crap because they were used to solo'ing and no one was there to tell them how to play nice in groups.They were not invited, so they did not learn. Mage-tards, on the other hand, just think they could translate wham bam into thankyou mam and screw the rest. Well you can't, you pointy hat wearing freaks.

Picture the scene, lovelies.Malygos 10 man/person/mage pond life....after a few tries. Get the big guy down to 34% after first phase. Boomdaddy's feathery sack is jingling like its christmas."Melee get on the discs " says raid leader, but oh no , on hops leiderhose wearing magetard for an achievement instead of allowing the melee. Wipe again , after the prick gets his achievement.Boomdaddy sighs a throaty, feathery sigh.

Do I blame blizz for making achievements, in order to fill the void in content, or the magetard for putting them before the raid?

Both are on the boomdaddy's shoot in the face list.

A new dawn, a new day, a new blog...hopefully

Having blogged in the past (in a purely navel gazing fashion) this is my least favourite post to make. It always feels like some form of justification has to be made as to why I feel I'm eminently qualified to write a blog at all, let alone one concerned with the highest evolution of druids, the Moonkin.Truth be told, I don't feel like the most qualified author of Boomkin musings but considering the apparent lack of Moonkin reading matter out there in the blogosphere, I do not feel that this little venture can hurt.



What I hope this blog will be........



Well, my aim is to share my Boomkin musings on a regular basis.The goal is a simple post each day but having blogged in the past, I know this can sometimes be a pipe dream. I hope that it will be possible to build a small resource here for all balance druids to talk, laugh and qq together, with useful links to balance druid information and the wider World of WoW. I will be asking for input from some fellow collaborators, such as the Boommummy who is a fellow artistic balance druid in my guild, but also from up and coming druids who can give focus to issues not only pertaining to level 80 boomers.Eventually, all being well, podcasts and other such loveliness will be forthcoming.



What to expect........


Humour and grumpiness. Occasional mage -bashing. Shameless links to eminent blogs that we read in order to become famous.


What not to expect......


Elitist Jerk number crunching, I am simply not that bright.


Welcome, from the Boomdaddy and the Boommummy!