This blog started out as my way of having a place to get down my thoughts and suggestions on playing a Feral Druid as a tank.

I also love to just ramble on about whatever, but really, I called it the Big Bear Butt because I loved the bearing, and so figured that was what I’d be talking about.

That has remained true, but for other reasons than I originally thought. It’s the only class I really think I know how to play, and the only class I think about and whip up tests and stuff for.

Over the years, I’ve made a lot of characters.

On my main server right now, this be what I’ve got;

• 80 Tauren Feral Druid main spec with a Resto chaser.
• 80 Nelf hunter Beastmaster with a BM off spec. What? One specced for instances, and one for faster flight speed while farming.
• 80 Draenei Shaman Healer main spec with a “beat the face with a mace” off spec.
• 80 Belf Pally Retribution main spec with a Prot off spec that, frankly, is used more often. But I’m a supaflyretpally in training! I swear! Jong is mah hero.
• 75 Human Rogue running as Combat Daggers. Why? I wanted to have the best of both worlds… Combat spec because that’s what Cassie runs as and can advise me, and daggers because I get to play with all the “dagger in main hand” toys when stealthed.
• 73 Draenei Priest Shadow main and only spec. I’ve got this massive mental block agasint playing this character, and I don’t really know why. She’s been level 73 since two weeks after Wrath was released.
• 43 Human Mage – Frost all the way, baby. Only play this with Cassie as a team.
• 41 Orc Warrior – Prot spec all the way, mostly leveled in instances.
• 24 Dwarf Hunter – placeholder for a Cataclysm something or other, have no bloody idea. 
• 1 Draenei Hunter – name placeholder for my Cataclysm Troll Druid. Hee hee hee… “Gummybear”. As soon as I saw the Troll form colors, I couldn’t resist.

So, I’ve got two openings for Cataclysm characters in my list, and 8 characters I really like.

Ignoring my placeholders, I have 8 characters, and of those characters I’ve got 11 spec playstyles to know.

Where am I going with this?

Of those 11 specs, there is only one that, when I log in no matter how long it’s been, I don’t have to ask myself, “How the hell do you play this character again?”

And that’s the Bear tank Druid. Not even Kitty, I don’t kitty anymore. If I’m killing, I’m Bear.

Every other class/spec I’ve got, if I haven’t logged in and played for a couple of weeks, when I log in, I look at my button bars for a few minutes, and even more fun, check out my Vuh’Do settings, and try to remember how I used to play it.

The Feral Druid (not Resto spec, either, just Feral side) is the only one I don’t have to do that with.

To me, that helps explain one of the many reasons that when I talk about classes on this blog, I only really talk about Feral Druids. It’s the only one I grok. The rest I enjoy, I can play, and I like to think I can squeeze some good results out of. I do make a solid effort to learn a class, test things and practise skills and get smooth and natural before I ever join a group.

But there is something about my Feral Druid that I connect with differently than the others.

Just last night, been messing around for two weeks now on Rogue and Starcraft 2, I decided it was Prot Warrior time.

I logged in, loaded up my Warrior, and I had to stop and look at every button to remind myself what they do, and how I’d been using them in battle.

“Where the hell is Charge? Oh, damn, I only get that in Combat Stance. Oh, right, stances, damn. Oooh, when did I get a button that lets me break fear every 30 seconds? Sweet!”

Am I the only one running around with more characters than I’ve got mental capability to stay 100% on top of?

I’ve mastered the Bear tank, that’s for sure. So I’ve got one spec of one class I can claim to have mastered. I’m sure others would disagree that I’ve mastered it, but screw them.

For groups, I’m pretty solid with about ten seconds notice on Resto Druid, BM Hunter, and Ret Pally. That’s it. If I want to play reasonably well, tolerably well by my standards in a group, the Shaman on both Healing and Enhancement, the Paladin on Prot, and the Warrior would all need a few minutes of sniffing around to pick it back up.

The Rogue I’ve been playing in groups, but I still don’t think I’ve done more than scratch the surface of what she could do. That’s just embarrassing.

My Mage, I love my Frost Mage, but she’s never done a dungeon. Strictly a duo team player. And my Priest? Fugedaboutit.

Seriously, am I the only one? The only person that has settled for having fun, and stopped trying to master every character I’ll ever play in a group? Not because I wouldn’t like to master them, but simply from having too damn many to pick from at any given time? No matter how much you play, somebody gets put on the shelf for a while.

At this point, I seriously have just one goal before I take a character into an instance with strangers; be skilled enough to be sure I’m not going to embarass myself or make stupid mistakes.

Master the class? Yeah, pull the other ones, they’ve got bells on.

I dunno, maybe I’m too hard on myself. But when I put my abilities as a Druid Tank up in comparison with the other classes I play, I certainly can feel the difference. 

Prot Pallies shouldn’t have to spend a few seconds searching for the Divine Intervention button when they need it, right? They should just know exactly what to hit and when, where it is, and wham. If I can’t, if I have to search my button bars to remember where I put it, I think that says it all.

Anyone else? Do you play one main at elite level and have others you’re good with? Do you play 10 level 80s all dual specced and you’re master of every single one of ‘em?

Or are you somewhere in between?

I think it’s funny sometimes, coming back to a character I haven’t played in a while… it’s like driving a Yugo for two years, and then pulling the GTO out of the garage for a run. “Okay, which one is the gas HOLY SHIT THIS THING IS FAST!!!”

It’s also one of the reasons I like seeing people who really do master their class. I can see someone take their specialty out on the open road, let ‘er rip, appreciate the skill that took, and admire the hell out of it.

Good morning!

Yesterday was, of course, Tuesday.

Server maintenance day.

For the second week, most servers were scheduled for regular maintenance, while a handful were singled out for 24 hour expansion upgrades.

I know many players are on varied shifts and playtimes, and get screwed by this to a greater or lesser extent. For those that do, you have my sympathies.

For myself, if maintenance is done during the day, well, so long as it’s all over and done with by about 5 PM, I’d never even know it happened.

Having the server be scheduled down for 24 hours was pretty interesting, though.

You see, if it had been up as usual, I’d probably have done a little on my Rogue, trained Inscription, mined some Ore, and then logged off. I’m getting into a rut.

On Tuesdays we’ve also been watching Hell’s Kitchen on Tivo, and there’s a Top Gear to watch for dinner (again, thanks to Tivo, the greatest thing since sliced lunch meat).

Same old, same old.

With our server down, but other servers up and running, and an hour of time to mess around, we could have sat there bitching and moaning, but instead, we saw it as an opportunity for new fun.

“Hows about we randomly pick a different server, make some level 1’s we’ve never tried before, and level together for a bit just for kicks?”

So, we did that for a little bit.

We got on Skype to voice chat, picked a server, and made a pair of undead. Cassie chose a Warrior, and I picked a Priest. Off we went, and had fun bouncing around unfamiliar territory together.

It was a great time. We had a blast together. 

Somewhere in there, Cassie tabbed out, and remarked, “Wow, they released the Ruby Sanctum tonight, according to WoW.com. People on servers down for 24 hours must be pissed they lost their chance at being ‘firsties’.”

We both paused for a moment to visualize the folks we meant. The people who play this video game, pay a monthly fee the same as the rest of us, and who will go on the official forums demanding a refund of something like fifty cents to their accounts because they lost a day out of the month. People who scream if things are denied them that they feel entitled to.

After a moment of such quiet contemplation, I had to reply, “Well, I guess if you’re obsessed with getting to content in a video game before other people do, and you’re going to get angry about not getting to go “I was there first noob”, then I suppose you’ve got plenty of personal problems already. What’s one more thing to get angry about? That ulcer ain’t coming any faster.”

And then we continued on, playing level 5 characters, and you know, actually having fun while our server was down.

Which, from the scope of some comments I’ve seen out there, means we just don’t ‘get’ video gaming. Apparently, it’s not supposed to be about having fun, that shows a carebear attitude, a casual attitude, a ‘childish, irresponsible‘ attitude to the seriousness that proper WoW players feel towards content progression.

It’s about finding something in this virtual life to be better at than other people, and having a title or digital achievement ranking to prove it. Which, and now I’m just reading the subtext here… is necessary because a lot of people feel they have something to prove. In a video game? Really? Well, okay.

Ah well, I guess we’ll just continue to fail at video games by doing stuff that’s fun at the time, and not worrying about any of it anymore.

If my attitude about this, my flippant tone, my judgmental assumptions and stereotyping seem too harsh, or if in this post you find a characterization you take personally and choose to be offended about… please keep in mind, I really mean it. I’m not joking. I really do think WoW is a game, admittedly a great game, and games are meant for casual fun, not as a replacement life for people who find the real world to be too scary to handle, or too difficult to find success or happiness in. 

If you’re offended I feel that way… that’s okay. I’m good with that. Everyone has their own perspective on things, and it’d be a sad, boring world if everyone agreed with mine all the time.

I hope that, however your evening went, in game or out, you found your own way to have a nice, fun, enjoyable evening. Especially with family or friends.

I know this is of no interest to anyone else, but what the heck.

My Rogue is now level 64, and pretty much done with Hellfire. I started at level 60, did all the quests mostly without rested, and had one run each of Ramparts and Blood Furnace.

I don’t know about anyone else, but even with Heirloom Shoulders and Chest armor, I think 4 levels in one zone seems crazy.

As I recall, I dinged 61 in Hellfire when Burning Crusade was released, and was most of the way to 62 just as I entered Zangar.

I only bring it up, because it feels like the accelerated leveling has been changed to go all the way to 70, which wasn’t how things were originally.

When they announced the accelerated leveling program to help new players (and alts) get to upper levels faster than during original game release, it was my understanding that it worked like this;

• Instance quests gave a lot more XP per turn in, to reflect being group quests.
• From 10 to 60, quests provided more XP than before.
• From 20 to 60, it required less actual XP to reach the end of each level.

This meant, and I swear I felt it in action on at least one alt, that leveling to 60 felt fast and smooth, and then you hit Hellfire at 60 and ran smack into a brick wall of leveling pain.

Did this get changed from 60 to 70? It sure feels like it, and if so, what was I doing when this was announced? Waxing my muzzle hair? Trimming my paws?

Weird.

In other news, this morning, hold onto your hats, Alliance managed to win one in Wintergrasp on Kael’thas at around 5:30 AM server time.

So… I’m thinking all the Horde were sleeping off a drunk in Nagrand this morning?

The armor looks cool with the purple engineering Deathblow X11 goggles :)

Not shaken, not stirred – scrambled.

My Rogue on Alliance side reached level 62 a few days ago.

This was cause for some giggling, as I equipped my Engineering Goggles, the Deathblow X11. Which really should be the name of a sports car that footballers would drive too fast in Europe.

You see, I equipped the new epic goggles… removing the previous epic Gnomish Battle Goggles.

The leetness is making me giggle whenever I log in.

On most alts, I mess around a bit, but rarely do I care what gear I’ve got as I level. I haven’t cared about leveling gear progression planning since I leveled my second ever character, my Hunter, ages and ages ago in Vanilla WoW.

Back then, I spent hours planning out the progression of Blue (Rare) quality weapon upgrades, bouncing from Bows to Guns and back again depending on the level range, all the way to 60.

Lil Timmy’s Peashooter, the Hi-tech Supergun, debating the merits of Ironweaver vs Glass Shooter, all the wonderful BoE possibilities in each leveling range I wanted to choose from. I did my best to plan out a new weapon to hunt down to changeover to about each 5 to 7 levels.

What, armor? I was a Hunter, what did I care about armor? Slap any silly old thing on, I don’t need armor, that’s what traps and my kitty were for!

Ahhh, don’t bullshit me, sometimes you get more fun out of thinking and planning what you intend to do, and what gear you intend to look for, and where it drops from, than you do from playing the game. It’s okay, you can admit it.

I prowled the Auction House like a fiend for those shiny new upgrades, but my true lust was reserved for scoring the ultimate BoE prize, the perfect weapon for my gun toting Hunter badass… the Dwarven Hand Cannon.

It was big. It was bad. It was EPIC.

Well, it wasn’t that big, really. Kinda small. When they said it was Dwarven, you thought they meant that’s who made it. Nope. It’s an itty bitty little gun.

And it wasn’t that badass, either. Sometimes you had a chance to get flaming balls. Whoo. Hell, Jong has those every weekend. I hear he has a big problem when he eats while he dances, too.

But did I mention it was, like, EPIC? It was a PURPLE, man! WOOOOOO!!!!!!

No, this post is not going to descend into any more “back in the day” nostalgia stuff. That’ll do for now.

The point is, it’s been years since I’ve gone really hog wild over gear planning for alts at any time before max level.

Until, that is, my Rogue.

My Rogue is one of those alts that never seemed destined for playtime.

She had a great name I didn’t want to lose, she looked like a hot Buffy the Vampire Slayer in tight leather, I’d leveled her AND her Engineering up high enough that I felt it’d be stupid to delete her, but I’d lost interest in playing what was, and let’s be honest, a Feral Druid that can’t self heal or tank.

Stealth, check, good melee DPS, check, fun abilities like stuns and stuff, check.

Tanking an instance in the future for friends…. not so much. Healing someday for fast queue times? Ummm… no.

Hell, I already HAD a max level stealthy melee DPS. If I wanted to go ninja some bastard, I could go kitty form and eat peoples. Right?

But then… a few weeks ago, I had an epiphany (type 2).

There was a reason to level my Rogue… Rogue armor sets look cool.

Well, that’s all it took. I had a mission in life. To level my Rogue to the point she could solo level 60 instances, and begin to collect the Shadowcraft pieces in order to build what is, for me, the absolute best looking armor set in the entire game; the Darkmantle set.

I’d never attempted it before. To build a complete class appropriate Dungeon Set 1, then upgrade ALL of it to the Dungeon Set 2 by following the insane quest chains, instance procedures, and hoop jumping.

After all, as I mentioned before, my Hunter’s attitutude to armor was ‘piffle’, and my Druid… ahh, my Druid.

My Druid collected the Dungeon Set 1 Shadowcraft set. I was Feral. It was the perfect Feral Druid set.

But those bastards at Blizzard… did they admit Druids were allowed to do anything other than heal? HELL no! No, our set that WE got to upgrade to Dungeon Set 2 was the Feralheart Raiment.

Sure, there is a mix of stats there now (and I sure as heck don’t remember them being that nice to hybrid specs; I think it got tweaked) but it didn’t come close to being yummy for a dedicated kitty/bear. Not like Shadowcraft did.

So. Feralheart? Bah.

But my Rogue… hmmm. I could actually DO it. I could fill out Shadowcraft and get Darkmantle. MmmmMMMmmmm.

So, my Rogue went from 43 to 62 pretty darn fast, thanks to chain quests and a friends’ sudden interest in getting Argent Dawn rep on their level 80 main.

“Want to run Scholomance and Stratholme Undead a few times?”

Who, me? Want multiple fast runs through Scholo? Whyever would I want that?

I dinged 60, and I thought I was pretty badass.

I had three pieces of Shadowcraft already, the Bracers, Boots and Belt. Those Gloves never seem to show up on our AH.

I had my epic Gnomish Battle Goggles.

I had the inevitable Heirloom Shoulders, Chest, dual trinkets, dual daggers (with +15 Agi enchant), and a bad attitude.

I felt pretty righteous.

Hell, I even had my Engineering leveled to 375 max already. Sure, I couldn’t actually train to the ultimate level until I hit level 65, but here I am at 60 able to use the Dalaran engineering Auction House, able to make my own Deathblow X11 Goggles, use the Gnomish Army Knife to rez people… yep. Badass.

Then I dropped into my bank to offload some stuff.

There, in my bank, lying there for God only knows how many months, was a pair of Bracers.

The Nightslayer Bracelets.

oooh! i can has moar epics!

I think I picked them up from a Molton Core run eons ago, and just tucked them away for “someday”.

Someday has come at last… but wait! What other goodies are just lying out there to be picked up?

I rooted around, and remembered another of my ancient goals for my Rogue.

I wanted my Human Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rogue ninja to ride a special mount. The Black PvP Kitty mount.

Don’t I recall in a recent patch that you could now buy PvP mounts with straight honor?

Why, yes I do!

Hold on there a second… furthermore, they changed things so that Stone Keeper’s Shards could be sold, 30 a batch, in exchange for a Wintergrasp Commendation. And Wintergrasp Commendations, when used, grant the user 2000 Honor a pop!

And they’re Bind on Account faction transferrable.

I know they did this, I traded some Stone Keeper’s Shards in for Commendations just a little while back to buy some PvP rings and necklaces for my super lowbie Orc Warrior alt.

Do I… Do I have any of those left?

Omigod… I have a shitload.

Which, for those in the audience that might not be familiar with the term, is ranked accordingly in terms of counting enemy targets; one, a couple, a few, several, a bunch, lots, a shitload, THAT’S IT WE’RE SCREWED. (For those of you truly salty, you know the word ’screwed’ gets replaced with something else if ever actually used.)

Quick, send those Commendations to my Rogue, STAT!

Five minutes later, instant mount gratification. The Reins of the Black War Tiger are mine, for a measly 50,000 honor.

Looking good, Billy Ray! Feeling good, Lewis!

But wait, there’s more.

As I stand there in Stormwind, in front of the PvP mount vendor, I glance over at that rarely used door that leads to all the PvP vendors.

Mayhap there might be something else inside upon which I can spend all this honor that’s burning a hole in my pocket?

I peek inside, and see right there by the door two vendors, listed as ‘Legacy Armor Quartermaster’ and ‘Legacy Weapon Quartermaster’.

Now what might THAT be?

Why, lookie lookie thar. That be the old PvP level 60 Field Marshal set of gear.

Holy shit… it’s dirt cheap, too.

I had enough Honor left on me to buy the Marshal’s Leather Footguards, Marshal’s Leather Handgrips and Marshal’s Leather Leggings.

And on Alliance side, I had more than enough Stone Keeper’s Shards to easily buy enough Commendations to get all three other pieces as well! Wow! How cool! I might even get the two big ugly swords!

How awesome would that look for my “cruising Ironforge shopping in the AH” set?

So, all that was left was to wait for Alliance to win Wintergrasp, and off I’d go to get those Commendations.

Yep. Just gotta wait for Wintergrasp.

Yep.

All I gotta do.

Pretty cool.

Just gotta get that win.

Yep.

Okay, for the love of God, since when did the Horde on Kael’thas declare the Alliance to be their bitches and just flat out decided to OWN Wintergrasp?

Un-be-f’ing-lievable.

Everything I have related happened, mostly, on Friday.

I have since waited, oh so patiently, checking nearly hourly except when sleeping or at work, for Alliance to, miracle of miracles, have Wintergrasp.

Ain’t happening.

All I wanted was to be able to cap this post with a wicked evil-looking screenshot.

Instead, my fascination with the utter hegemony of Horde Wintergrasp mastery grows by the hour.

How do they do it? How in the world have the Horde on Kael’thas set themselves up as the supreme rulers of those frozen wintry reaches?

At what point will the Alliance finally say, “Hey, we’d like free epics from VoA too… this is bullshit, let’s get ‘em!”

It’s awe inspiring.

It’s a pain in the ass is what it is, but applause where applause is due, the Horde PvPers on Kael’thas are badass by the only definition that has meaning in the game… they have denied the Alliance a chance at raiding for epics for 5 days straight.

Hat’s off to you, folks, that’s amazing.

I’m certainly not going to complain about it… I am far more interested in playing my Rogue than in fighting in Wintergrasp for an Alliance victory every two hours. I’ll take the hit; I’ve done nothing to help make a victory happen.

It’s not like I want to USE that Field Marshal gear to PvP, either. It represents a pretty set that you don’t see very much anymore, and that I would wear in honor of my wife’s cousin Jason, the best and baddest assed PvPer I know, a man who actually EARNED the Horde side High Warlord title back when 60 was the cap, and it was the hardest possible PvP challenge in the existence of the game. And the most grueling.

I already look at the pieces I have, and think back to my own attempts at PvP in Vanilla WoW in the old days with the honor/kill rules with the ranks, the sliding scale, and the individual player ranking charts broken down on the Worldofwarcraft.com website updated weekly.

That’s right. This post went from a nostalgic look at alts and gear progression, to current alts and a rediscovery of gear sets and progression, and back to nostalgia.

Cosidering the server is still down, and I can’t check to see if Wintergrasp is up so I can buy the rest of my set…

DEAL WITH IT!

Let’s have us some fun, whattaya say?

Suppose, just imagine for a moment, that when Cataclysm comes out Northrend vanishes into the sea… and the entire world reverts to what we had in Burning Crusade, trash mob groups that flat out require the precise application of Crowd Control to achieve success.

Oh, you think Blizzard couldn’t bring Crowd Control back into importance? Really?

Look, I’ll prove it to you.

I’ll suggest one simple, fast situation where the developers could easily create trash mob groups that would require solid CC to reliably win. See if this sounds familiar.

1) A trash group of five mobs. Two normal melee types, one ranged healer, and two big giants. The two giants are both high armor/health types; both hit really hard, of course, but one applies an undispellable bleed debuff DoT for big damage, and the other does triple damage to bleeding targets. For extra fun, the one that applies the bleed debuff DoT does triple damage against poisoned targets, and the other giant applies an undispellable Poison DoT.

Wouldn’t that be fun? “Sure, you’ve got great health and armor, and you can put out great threat. You’ll hold ALL the mobs on you as long as you’d like. Just run right on in there, sunshine. You can assuredly tank either of these, no problem. But if you tank both of these giants at the same time, you’re gonna go down too fast for any healer to keep up with the big hits PLUS double DoTs. Oh, and did we mention the healer keeping them both up?”

I’ll admit, adding the ranged healer is just being mean, and probably unneccessary. Especially if it was a powerful healer with a short cast time.

We could always swap him out for a warrior-style mob that casts a group Fear (Intimidating Shout). Yeah, that would be fairer. And make sure this is in tight quarters, lots of other groups to get feared into, right?

Can you say the return of ranged line of sight pulls, Misdirecting into traps and keep chain trapping, or Saps and then traps, or whatever ingenuity the players bring? So many classes have CC, after all. Keeping one giant locked out of the way, and the healer or caster tied up so you can finish off the second giant? It’s not rocket science, but it would require a group to bring some CC skills. 

I bet Shamen would love to use Hex in an actual group environment. Froggie!

So, let’s accept that if Blizzard wants to, all your fancy gear isn’t going to change the fact that they can make you learn CC to advance.

Suppose that this brave world was here. Now.

Would you be ready?

How many of you remember how to use crowd control effectively? How many of you understand the new diminishing returns rules for Crowd Control? (PvPers, please refrain from cheating on this, we know you’ve got the skills).

How many of you Feral Druids use Kitty Form to Pounce on and then Stun your prey, so you can nibble on them for a while? Or, even more fun, how many Druids know the effective uses of Hibernation? Or Cyclone?

If you just said “Hibernation? What’s that?”, spend 5 minutes wearing the Shame hat of doom. But I wouldn’t be surprised.

How many Rogues practise Sapping? Do you even remember what happens when you Sap one mob in a group? Do the rest pull, or not?Are you still up on your emergency Vanish techniques?

How many Hunters still retain their chain trapping skills? Better question. How many Hunters out there never had to chain trap for real? How many don’t know how, and haven’t ever worried about it because it wasn’t needed?

How many Priests out there know the principle behind using Focus targets to keep one mob easily chain CC’d while healing or attacking other targets?

Imagine a world where you know, when you log in to do a random heroic, that the tank is going to ask for skilled crowd control, and that means you.

How hard will it be for you to prepare? Need a refresher, or are you gonna freak?

And finally, seriously, the biggest question.

Would you really be happy with the return of CC? Knowing what you do now about how much longer the old instances took to run compared to today, and the “go go go” mentality that says 15 minutes for a heroic is too damn long, and what kind of people you meet right now in Looking for Dungeon?

Big Red Kitty taught me how to chain trap, with his exciting series of videos. It’s where my experience with other blogs began. I dinged 70 in Burning Crusade on my Hunter alt, and wanted to know how to chain trap, because that was the quintessential mark of skill for a Hunter. I was not only prepared to be asked, I was begging to be asked to Chain Trap in instances.

Can that kind of intensity be brought back without drowning in a sea of QQ?