Owlaf's Troll Gear

After many runs through the new Troll instances, Owlaf, my night elf Druid, had gotten hold of almost all the gear from those new instances. She's missing at least one item for the moonkin offspec, but my feral gear is pretty much complete. As you can see, it's all green, so for this armor set I've traved out my Precious' Ribbon for a green linen shirt to add to the green effect. I likes!

Behind me, to the left of the image, is my voodoo doll, a non-combat companion (pet) that I made through troll archaeology.

So far, Owlaf has the best gear she can get from heroics. Now it's only a matter of farming more points to buy the better gear, which at the moment isn't too much better, but still... what else to do? ^-^

Pre-Patch 4.2 Thoughts

Firstly I'd like to thank the folks who visit my pages. Glancing at the changes to the moonkin on the forums, I'm not sure how this will effect me and/or my rotation. Usually in a fight like in Baradin Hold during the fire phase I'll be strafing around the room spamming moonfire since, as you move, you have a buff that reduces mana cost and increases damage of moonfire. It's an awesome tool, at least I think, so this new thing they're implementing in the upcoming patch might be interesting or challenging or both...

I'll include the Druid patch notes here, but not much else...

From Blizzard:

Druids

    Druids now gain 1 attack power per point of Strength, down from 2. They continue to gain 2 attack power per point of Agility while in Cat Form or Bear Form.
    Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.
    Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.
    Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
    Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.
    Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
    Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.
    Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
    Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.
    Talent Specializations
   
        Balance
       
            Earth and Moon's duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
            Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
            Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).
            Solar Beam has a new spell effect.
            Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.
       
       
        Restoration
       
            Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.
       
       Glyphs
   
        Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.
        Glyph of Ferocious Bite has been redesigned. It now causes Ferocious Bite to heal the caster for 1% of maximum health for each 10 energy used.
        Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate's base effect.

• • • Back to Owl • • •

Well, I'm wondering how the Solar Beam will look, especially since I got a new graphics card and can play the game on ultra visual settings without lag or disconnect issues (or so far I've noticed). Definitely worth the investment, I'll consider it my own birthday present to myself. ;-)

I think I like the idea of entangling roots no longer doing damage. It wasn't like it was doing any in the first place, but often times if you did deal damage to the snared target it would break, which was annoying when I was leveling back in the day, although leveling it was almost pointless unless I used nature's grasp so it would snare on the attacker and hold them still while I got away in cheetah form.

But now it seems that it will work much better as a crowd control mechanic in groups. No damage means it won't be breaking prematurely. I can only imagine how polymorph would work for mages that are leveling. Imagine you come across a chest you can open and there's one humanoid near it. You sheep it and then you go and loot the chest and run away? Might work. I'll probably test that theory sometime and if I remember I'll post about it.

As far as crowd control goes in groups, I can't tell you the number of times I've cast entangling roots only to see my target turn into a sheep and then a toad. Sure enough, the mage and the shaman in my group targeted the same thing. If I got a gold for every time that happened, HA! Well, when patch 4.2 comes out, hopefully it won't cause anymore bad pulls. Imagine sheeping a target and the tank had just gone afk and you didn't know it. As a mage you'd be squished... unless you're a night elf mage then you might remember to shadowmeld. Same story for a night elf druid like myself. As Owl if I were to root a target and nobody else was there to save me, I'd shadowmeld and let the mob reset itself.

With this change, there could be fewer tears when in a pug that is new to crowd control. Something I'm looking forward to. Imagine in Grim Batol for instance. As a bear tank I could hibernate one target, root another, buff myself with thorns, go to bear form and start attacking. Sounds like a lot, maybe so, but if I was the only one with CC abilities, I'd try to use it if the group needed it.

--OWL

Reigns of the Raven Lord, at last!

Owl has finally gotten it! The Reigns of the Raven Lord. This mount functions just like a raptor mount, and it cannot fly, but I have been waiting for this one for a very long time.

The lore behind this mount is probably what makes it unique in all of wow, at least to me. The quest chain in question was available only to druids and it involved their long quest to obtain their swift flight form. Now though the quest has been removed and the skill is taught to players at the appropriate level.

But I had gone through the quest line myself. I still have the moonstone. Basically it started out with me going to Zangarmarsh, which is a blue swamp that had giant mushrooms for trees. Originally the Druids of the Talon were given the task of teaching druids the mastery of flight (turning into a stormcrow so they can fly), but now not many druids from the Talon remain. There is one though, and he accepted me as his apprentice. But the relic that was used to teach this form was entrusted to another for safekeeping, and this person's body slept while his spirit walks in the Emerald Dream. So I had to gather ingredients to make a potion...

Then I traveled to Moonglade, back on Azeroth on the continent of Kalimdor, and once I found the druid in question I gave him the potion, and he stirred from his rest. In his spirit form he gathered the relics I needed while I defended him from the nightmares that lurked in the Emerald Dream, including a large raven that seemed intent on dominating the dream. Retrieving the relics, the guardians of the dream return to the defensive battle that seems to be waging inside the Dream, and I return to Outlands and report to my master of this turn of events.


At this point we decide to try and help the Cenarion Circle by seeing if there is a connectiong between this mysterious Raven and the problems in the Emerald Dream. So I head off to the Bladesedge Mountains, where the Cenarion Circle has been hearing rumors of a bird-like people called the Arrakoa, and that one of their tribes in the mountains worships a raven... So off I went.

Once there a druid gave me a spell to disguise myself and speak to one of the Arrakoa spirits, which mistakes me for one of his own. I ask him about the book of the raven, and he told me, "The true believers have lived in shame since the day our treacherous cousins in Skettis stole the book from us, shattered its tablet, and buried the fragments in their wretched city! Pray that the raven will choose you to restore it, my son. Be faithful and remember always the prophecy, "From the dreams of his enemies shall the raven spring forth into the world.""

Returning to the druid, we decide to find this book before the Arrakoa does, so I head into the green lands of Nagrand and speak to yet another soul there in the hopes of harnessing avian sight. We capture a sparrowhawk and cast a spell over it, and then tell it to fly over to Skettis and wait for my signal. Then the bird flies away, and I head out to do my part. Once I reach Skettis, I whistle, and the sparrowhawk finds the prices of the book for me. Once I found them all I returned to Arthorn Windsong in the Bladesedge mountains, and the story unfolds:

"This is it! This is really it -- the Book of the Raven! It's all here... how the raven's followers captured and subdued the spirits of rivals, trapping them forever within stone statues! The tablet even mentions the raven god's name -- Anzu. I'd thought it was lost to history! There's something else here, too. After a description of a bloody battle and the downfall of the raven, there's a prophecy. Anzu will haunt the dreams of his enemies, twisting them to affect a return to this world... 

"The tablet has the confirmation we need, just as I thought. Now, we have to use this information to draw out and defeat this Anzu before he can do any more damage to the Emerald Dream! Since the sparrowhawks have proven such a success in hunting down the raven stones, Watcher Elaira has trained another one to relay my voice at great distance. He can help us communicate as you investigate the bird spirits revealed in the tablet!"

 So now, since the Raven's rivals have been trapped in stone, I have to go free them. Each statue was guarded though, so I had to fight for each of them; the Hawk, the Eagle, and the Falcon. Once I get their essences, I take them to my master of the Talon and tell him of what I had discovered. Now I have to find a way to contain all of them together so I can use them to summon Anzu and destroy him. The answer is a moonstone. I head off to Azshara and obtain a very rare moonstone, yet just as I'm about to grab it, a little goblin comes along who steals it and heads down the southfury river! Furious as can be, I chase after her and in the end she gives up as long as I don't hurt her. I wish I could have kicked her though...


At last I return and the moonstone absorbs the essences of the Hawk, Eagle, and Falcon, becoming an [Essence-Infused Moonstone], which I could now use to summon the raven lord and defeat him.


For that, I had to be able to access the Sethikk Halls on heroic difficulty, then I had to clear the location of all that were in it. Once I was ready, I placed the moonstone on the raven's claw (a kind of stand that was shaped so it would hold the moonstone), and Anzu appeared. Once I defeated him, I returned the my master, and had thus proven myself worthy to be one of the Druids of the Talon. I was given the swift-flight form shapeshifting ability, and I took to the skies like never before as a violet stormcrow.


I completed this quest chain back in November of 2009. After you've completed the quest you can talk to the Druid of the Talon again, and under concern that the Arrakoa might try to bring Anzu back again, he gives you the Essence-Infused Moonstone to keep forever, that way you can go back and kill him again.


That moonstone was the druid's key to unlocking this optional boss in the Sethekk Halls heroic instance in the Outlands. Druids could solo-farm this boss at level 80, and I tried doing that myself when I had the time and remembered to go attempt it. As Wrath of the Lich King progressed I got better gear and stood better chances at killing Anzu quicker.


Now with Cataclysm released, I can kill Anzu much faster. It's been a year and a half since I completed the quest to gain this key so I could farm the mount day after day. There were times when I'd become discouraged and would stop farming him for a while, and then I'd see another player riding on one in the city and start farming again. Off and on, I headed into the dungeon to try for the mount, without success.


Finally, this morning after I had won three pieces of leather armor in the heroic Zul'Aman instance, I prepared to head back to the Outlands. My friend Hammy asked what I was up too and offered to come along. I invited him to group and finished flying out there, and just outside the instance I used the guild perk which allowed me to summon him to me. It was worth the cooldown. We blaze through the instance, two level 85 players, blasting everything that stood in our way, not looting a thing. We get to Anzu and kill him before he could banish himself a second time...


And that was when the reigns of the raven lord dropped. Hammy passed, I rolled NEED. At long last, after a year and a half of attempts, I got him. It had taken so long that I lost count of how many times I had gone into that place to try and get this mount.


Now I have no other reason to go back to the Outlands again. Maybe for a reputation grind, but no... I have what I've been searching for at last. My face was tingly, I was so ecstatic!


Of course, everybody can farm it since Blizzard had removed the quest chain and made it so druids didn't have to be there to summon the raven lord to fight him, but I still have my moonstone. No way am I going to delete it. =)

Children's Week!

Well, they revamped the Azeroth versions of Children's Week in World of Warcraft. The Outlands and Northrend versions of the quests have not changed. In Kalimdor for the Horde, they have taken over the zone of Azshara and the goblins built a sort of track that lets people go from one place to another in rockets. The Horde orphan quest involves taking your orphan for a ride in a rocket. He of course pushes all the buttons and makes the rocket go off the track, spinning wildly, and the last button he pushes ejected him from the vehicle. James Bond like, no?

The Alliance equivalent is riding in a chopper (motorcycle with a sidecar, which the orphan sits in). Unlike the orc orphan, the human orphan sits in the sidecar and doesn't hit any buttons. Since he's such a good boy, I have the vehicle wobble from side to side for fun, and the I jump over some of the cracks in the ground with it. A little mischievous, we go down into a chasm and he gets a slime creature on his head, but we knock it off with a whirlwind, which carries us way up into the air. Good thing we got seat belts. If it was the ejector seat, I'd have a parachute.

I had started doing the quests on my laptop, but then I thought about making a video of it and the horde version to see what they were like and post it online, so I did. Unfortunately the music I chose was copyright protected somehow, so I had to chose another track that the website had. After narrowing down the search results to match the video length, I settled on Sinclair C5.

"Go for a ride, in my Sinclair C5."

Seems to fit. So go grab and orphan and take him out on a ride, whether its a chopper or a rocket, you'll love it. Children's week lasts, well, a week, so it ends at 11:59pm this Saturday, May 7th, this year. If you take orphans out to see things and play and such, they give you rewards. See if you can get them all.

Children's Week in World of Warcraft is based on the Japanese holiday Children's Day. From Wikipedia:

Children's Day (こどもの日 Kodomo no hi^?) is a Japanese national holiday which takes place annually on May 5, the fifth day of the fifth month, and is part of the Golden Week. It is a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness. It was designated a national holiday by the Japanese government in 1948.

 

Koinobori : The black carp (Magoi) at the top represents the father, the red carp (Higoi) represents the mother, and the last carp represents the son, with an additional carp added for each subsequent son with color and position denoting their relative age.)

Oh yes. I love that. =)

-Owl