Comments on: You made the Bear cry!

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:32:13 +0000

Not sure if this was mentioned before – only skimmed the responses.

However as for minor glyphs – I do not have rebirth as a glyph. not because I’m cheap… Hell I just finished insane on my druid, and lemmie tell ya, that darkmoon fair didn’t get any cheaper with the launch of cata.

the minor glyphs for druid are amazing! I personally use dash, challenging roar, and aquatic form.
-I’m a sucker for movement speed. and carrying reagents isn’t bad for me. Granted I do have them at all times, but I’ve run out once or twice.

Long story short – the lack of the rebirth glyph isn’t that far fetched. our minors are much more then cosmetic.

By: Kemonojin

Kemonojin — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:50:37 +0000

I actually main tanked in Vanilla up through UBRS as moonkin. No taunts, but between thorns (back when it was worth casting) and hurricane, as well as a guild that understood it’d take me a moment to get enough aggro to keep it, I did ok. There’s always the greatest single AOE threat spell in the game, too, tranquility.

I do the same thing; in a dungeon if I’m all ZOMGKITTIESMEWMEWMEW and the tank bites it, I’ll ninervaet the healer, switch to bear and RAWR! … they may get me anyway, mainly because I don’t have the bear bubble, but I’m going down on the bounce and swinging. Or if the tank loses one, I’ll shift, growl at it, swipe and thrash to keep its attention and lead it back to the tank. My DPS isn’t always the best because of this, and that most of my gear is gemmed, enchanted and reforged for bear (I’m not super high DPS, buit I am one damn hard to kill cat…), but several times when I’ve gotten a bitching for being the low DPS, the healer will then point out the reason WHY… at which point the tank will shut up and I’ll be able to stay in cat for the rest of the dungeon.

By: Ursa

Ursa — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 07:19:15 +0000

Long before dual-spec, I used to swap specs on a regular basis (funded by the guild <3) – sometimes several times in one raid. I maintained 3 separate sets of gear. and filled whatever role was needed. Now I'm working on my second 85 druid =P. It's just a fun class to play given the tremendous flexibility. Druids have too much utility to not take advantage of it when the situation arises. Even a weak innervate can save a healer. A well-timed battle rez can save a group/raid wipe. Cyclone, skull-bash, etc. to shut down a caster for a few seconds.

In the case of the anonymous cat? There's no consequences – and he was taking advantage of that. As a pugged member, he can get away with pretty much anything, and no one could do anything aside from a vote kick. Bad show on his part? Totally. You can add him to ignore while in the instance though, so you never group with him again. My ignore list is so long =(.

By: Perdissa

Perdissa — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:59:39 +0000

Exactly. If you have never switched to bear form before, ever, the hotbar is empty. My kitty bar was empty from disuse, since I spent most of Wrath in bear or moonkin. I’ve since come to realize the OP-ness of kitty in leveling (but I looove flight form for collecting-type quests).

By: Russ

Russ — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:29:04 +0000

This.

My girlfriend, who played a resto shaman at the beginning of Cataclysm, used to get mad at me when I would heal, decurse, etc. as a kitty in dungeons. It was like I was stepping on her turf. But seriously, at that point dungeons were pretty tough. And the lock we usually ran with was doing gobs of damage, and I wasn’t, and the tank was usually taking tons and tons of damage. My 23k mana wasn’t going to allow for much, but if throwing a Healing Touch or two would help, particularly with a free proc, I did it. And if Mr. Tank died, I was there in ‘bear’ to pick up what I could.

Fun stuff, shifting is. :)

By: Tsudrats

Tsudrats — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:52:39 +0000

Given that Heroics means either lvl 80 or 85 … and given the author BBB talks about his lvl 85′s a lot, i’m going lvl 85, it’s probably not a new character. I’m usually in tree form and I’m not always that good at remembering to shape shift, but I do have my reagents (on my unglyphed druid) and the glyph on my other.

By: Tsudrats

Tsudrats — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 12:43:44 +0000

hahah … that was me today going through my dk’s spell book going ‘oh crap’ brez … where is it … only to be told when trying to cast it … ‘insufficient blah blah blah’ I didn’t read the rest I was dying inside having read bbb’s post not that long before!

By: Azwing

Azwing — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:16:12 +0000

This should never be an excuse. Switching from cat to bear automatically brings up a new hotbar. So, unless someone literally never switches to bear (and doesn’t know that there is a bear-specific hotbar), the player should have already populated the hotbar with bear abilities.

By: Azwing

Azwing — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:08:39 +0000

Leveling is actually a really good time to practice switching forms.

Pick a group of mobs, say 3-5 mobs, to practice on. Stealth in to attack the first one in the group. Switch to bear and go to town (combo of swipe when off CD, and single target abilities). When you get the pack down to 1 or 2 left (depending on your comfort level) switch back to cat and finish the fight.

There are details (which abilities to use and when, using combo points before switching to bear, etc.), but those can change with levels. But, the basic tactic outlined above can be practiced at early levels, even before you get the high-end feral abilities.

After a while, switching forms to match what’s happening in a fight becomes second nature.

By: Moonstalker

Moonstalker — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:15:46 +0000

Sad to say, I’ve seen this story before. Only worse. Same situation – tank dies, no brez and no bear. After we all ran back to our corpses, the kitty then won the roll on the battered hilt.

/smack forehead