Honestly, at first I was annoyed by the HotW changes, not because I saw them as a nerf, but because I had often passed on AP/AGI gear in favor of raw STR gear that was only preferable because of the 2.2 multiplier on STR. So the patch bones some Druids to start. But in the long term, it’s going to be a huge buff, especially with the additional buff to Feral AP gear.

What’d be really nice would be to have some Feral AP items that aren’t weapons, but I doubt we will ever see that. The AP change was made because it’s easier to just give Druids proper access to Rogue gear than to invent a whole subset of leather for Druids. I have mixed feelings about that, actually, since it simultaneously provides us with a greater pool of gear and puts us back in competition with Rogues, Hunters, Enhancement Shaman and even the occasional DPS Warrior for gear.

Guess Blizzard just had to pick their poison there. Thankfully, they picked AP.

I’m glad to see the new stats it will have. Awesome!

The added attack power was immediately noticeable in my soloing exploits, and news that it’ll be even higher has me over the moon. Things just fall over and die when I hit them now…. and the extra threat (and rage) when tanking is a sweet boost too.

I see you’re already Honored with Cenarion, so it might be too late to save you, but hopefully I can still save others….

When you are leveling your character, and you wander fat dumb and happy into Zangarmarsh, DON’T do what I did and do every damn quest.

Instead, run normal 5 man instances in Coilfang Reservoir, and collect Unidentified Plant Parts. You can turn in Unidentified Plant Parts at Cenarion Expedition for rep, until Honored. Killing mobs in instances other than Steamvaults gets you rep until Honored. When you turn in those Unidentified Plant Parts, sometimes you get an Uncatalogued Species in return. DON’T TURN THOSE IN until you reach Honored!

Once you hit Honored, you no longer get rep for killiong mobs in Slave Pens or Underbog, and you can no longer turn in Unidentified Plant Parts. However, you can now turn in Uncatalogued Species for rep.

After you use up your Uncatalogued Species, you should be well into Honored, and have all of your quest rep to look forward to.

There are tons of quests in Zangarmarsh, but there are almost as many in Blades Edge Mountain at Evergrove. There are alos tasty rep quest chains in Terokkar Forest, and 3 little quests in Netherstorm that net 750 rep.

After you have exhausted all of the quests, hopefully, you will be VERY CLOSE to exalted, and will only have to run Steamvaults and do Heroic Coilfang instances a few times to hit Exalted. At the very least, you won’t be trying to farm 1000 coilfang Armaments to turn in for rep.

Please, don’t make the same mistake I did, blow through the entire quest line first, and only then say, Unidentified Plant Parts? What’s that?

Conquernfool