The Story of Truth

Gather around, My Children, fore I must speak.

There are some things that I have come to KNOW. These things have always been permanent and were basically set in stone.

This no longer applies.

I'm not sure if I am the only person out there who noticed the change when it happened but it made me remember being on the other side of the same situation many moons ago.

To understand this story, we must go back to the beginning. Back before Arthas sent a horde of flesh eating zombies to ravage our beloved homes. Back further than the days when Illidan was still conquering our brothers' and sisters' ancient homeworld and turning its people into demonic slaves and sacrifices. Back to the days of an old wound that will soon rip itself open visiting a deadly and life changing cataclysm to everything we hold dear.

Many years ago, there were a group of Dwarves who for one reason or another turned their backs on their brethren. These lost souls sought to form an alliance with the evil Black Dragon Flight. Their goals were to bring back their evil overlords and send the entirety of Azeroth to a burning and smoldering ruin. Back in those days, we were all fighting in the depths of the Molten Core to stop these nefarious plans from coming to fruition.

As we brought down the evil Black Dragon Flight, we were accosted be an evil force living beneath our very homelands. Bugs. Enchanted by the whisperings of the Old Gods, the Silithid grew strong and believed that by delivering the Old Gods back into our world, they, in turn, would become Gods. We fought long and hard in those days. But, certain truths were just that. Truths.

Warriors were our tanks. Priests were our healers. Warlocks used Soul Shards and summoned her allies to her feet. The idea that a priest would veer away from the light and turn to the darkness was utter rubbish. No druid would ever dream of standing before the hordes of darkness to protect his fellow heroes, they also healed us in our times of need as they were. There were no trees in those days. The idea of flying was dismissed as heresy and druids were dismissed as the bastard children of Elune for their inability to resurrect someone from the edge of death.

I had an acquaintance who longed to reach beyond the holy realms of the priests and tap into the darkness within. We went to our Commander and requested his acceptance. It was denied. The truths spoke for themselves. No Shadow Priest could ever, EVER, contribute enough damage to assist our forces in full on war. No Druid could ever, EVER hold an enemies attention long enough to slaughter his troops nor to allow us to fell him. Paladins were Alliance and Shaman were Horde. This was a simple fact and I was thanked to keep my rebellious ideas to myself.

In the face of the Legion, however, all this changed. Opposing factions embraced the ideologies of each other and came together to destroy a common foe. Flying became accepted as truth, aliens and outcasts were accepted as equals, Priests turned to the darkside, Druids grew brave enough to put themselves in harms way and believed in themselves enough to bring a soul back from an otherwise permanent sleep. These became truths, regardless of how fanciful they were deemed before. Some new truths came about.

Death Knights were evil and brought only horror and misery. Arthas was NOT a threat any longer. The two warring factions were further split by inner turmoil that ran amok in our sanctuary, Shattrath. Kael'thas was dead. The legion was defeated.

This set of truths would turn out later to be a falsity and the ground upon which these lies revealed themselves, also unearthed the hatred between the two opposing factions once again.

Then it happened. Everything we knew was shaken again. Arthas WAS in deed a real threat and he intended to mark this point by trying to destroy our entire world with flesh eating zombies in a full on invasion. The Alliance saw their long lost king returned to them, only to find he was more bloodthirsty than any horde. The Horde saw their leaders fighting amongst each other. Old Gods returned to destroy our souls, spiders clawed their way from the ground up and yet, new truths became as they are now. These truths stand on the verge of collapse. Why then, have I fought so hard to deny these new truths?

I know that within time, the darkest force our world has ever known will reenter our lives. He will succeed in the destruction of our beloved home. Peace will be a distant memory. The prophecies speak these truths.

Azeroth will weep in pain and suffering. Our darkest foes shall rise again. The earth will erupt in pain and fire. The oceans shall rise and swallow the surrounding lands. New alliances shall be made, and the heroes of our world will rise to the challenge. When they rise, it shall be as new heroes.

I have to accept these truths, as do you. Death Knights, having served their purpose, will remain amongst us. We will fight our way through the destruction and learn new Paths that we must walk. The dark and mysterious Worgen and the crafty and financially savvy Goblins will both be a part of our wars. Gnomes will embrace the light, dwarves shall embrace the earth which bred them. Tauren will embrace the light as well and there will be many trolls.

There may come a time when we no longer shapeshift into a tree. There may be a time when we may no longer shapeshift into anything. A day may come when we are no longer needed. I must accept these truths, as do you, but not as truths. Oh no, my children. We must accept these things as life. An ever changing life.

As a druid, it is my duty to embrace the entirety of life, all its glorious moments and all of its darkest tragedy. The world in which we exist, is a living, breathing world that changes on a whim. The future that was once so certain, has no longer remained that way. As druids, we MUST adapt to these changing times in kind. As our forms shift, so must our minds. Do not dismiss things because the truths have always been as such.

Truth is not a constant. Truth is just as changing as the winds in our leaves.

Remember this, My Children, as this is the most important lesson of life:

The only constant, is change.

Busy Blah Blah Blah

Been busy lately. Here's a rundown:

Started up my guild, so far it is just two of us, but the idea is to build up a Casual Hardcore guild. What IS a Casual Hardcore guild, you ask? It is as it sounds. You take all the requirements of a HxC guild, Min/Maxing your gear, Class Knowledge, Strat Knowledge, Punctuality, Proper Gems/Enchants/Gear, Desire and Ambition. Then you take a Casual approach to raiding, 3 nights @ 4 hours. You basically have a guild full of people who play for fun, like to have a good time, joke around, but when it comes to raids /serious face. To make sure we hit the casual part on the head, we've basically decided on a Tue-Thur raid schedule, leaving people their weekends to go out, have fun, RP, PvP, w/e they want to do, Kirin Tor IS an RP server after all, and people do like their time off.

Working on dailies, mostly Argent Tourny stuff, its a helluva way to get city rep. Guess I never noticed on Notabear since he was an Ambassador before they added the title. Rep is still a pain in the butt.

Working on my gear. Trying to tackle two specs at once is tougher than I thought it would be. I usually make sure that I'm the only leather melee in a group and that Tenjo is the only caster, that way we get the loot we want if it drops. I pass on all healing gear unless she doesn't want it or has it. I use drops to build my kitty set and badges for my healing set. As you can imagine my healing set is superior to my melee set.

Here's what I have noticed. Bring a resto druid and a kitty and filling the group with a tank, ret pally, and another melee makes the runs fast and easy on everyone. We ended up farming heroics and I'm almost 2 piece bonus. (^_^)

Babies are BoP

Saw this on WoW Ladies and thought I'd share.

Drama Llama Visits Hoshiko

Woohoo! Recently 80 on my newest server and already I gots teh drama!!!!!!!

Oh drama, how I have missed you.

So, my g/f got invited to a pug Sarth+1 after an exceptionally executed ToC. I got jealous.

So I joined a pug Naxx. Mmmm Puggity Goodness.

Anywho, The Forethought Talisman dropped and My G/F who I got invited (Brownie Points to me) Rolls off against a priest. No big deal. Right? Wrong. The priest immediatly throws a fit because she won. "Do you even HAVE direct healing spells?"

Later it drops again, but the ML afk'd to a D/C. Everyone stays to wait, he doesn't come back so the RL has people roll. I win with the only roll. 30 minutes later the ML D/C's completely. 5 minutes later the priest says, "OK, I'm back. Did I win the Trinket?"

Me: No, I did. 32 minutes ago.
Him: WHAT?!?!? /bitchfest
The Raid: You weren't around for loot.

The next two hours were involved with GM tickets, the Priest who randomly got the RL AND ML spot from the D/C, inorite?, randomly kicking people who disagree with him and are on my side, which is everyone.

Here's A proper Breakdown:

Mytheral: I should get to roll since I wasn't around when YOU decided to do loot rolls.
Me: Um, no. See everyone else stuck around to do loot. You decided to afk during loot.
Mytheral: The ML Afk'd so that's not my problem, Its only fair I get to roll.
Death Knight: Who the fuck goes AFK during loot? What if he had come back before you did? Then what?
Mytheral: /kick DK
Me: great. You're a sore loser in hit gear >.<
Mytheral: I didn't lose. You guys didn't wait for me!
Me: You went afk for 28 minutes. 2 more minutes and you would have D/C'd. No RL in their right mind would hold up an entire raid for one single person who can't be bothered to be around for the loot they want. If it was THAT important to you, you should have waited like everyone else.
Mytheral: *Insert 20 minute complain session interspersed with a 10 minute fight in General with the people he kicked*
Me: You Have Mail. You have received Forethought Talisman.

I love idiots. They create drama. And me? Yeah, I'm like TNT.

ToC and Instance Servers Fixed.

So they finally fixed the instance servers. Thank God. Seriously.

So we decided to do some heroics like in the good ol' days. Turns out after doing the chick in ToC, heroics are fuckin' easy sauce. I'm talking rolling mobs left and right, and while I have some epics from ToC, I'm in mostly quest rewards still and not a damn thing is gemmed. Or threaded. Or meta'd. I mean I got enchants cause I do that sort of thing, but mostly, not a thing.

I have been filling out my resto set while going all cat claws to the face, mostly because my girlfriend does the healing. When I raid, it'll be as a tree, but for 5's I can be a kitten.

NOTES FOR NEW TREES ON TRIAL OF THE CHAMPION.

Learn to do the joust BEFORE going into ToC.
If you get knocked off your mount, quickly heal yourself on the way to a new one.
Champions can do the same, stand on them after they fall.
Verify with your group first if you are going to run out after the dismount or not.
Remember where the door is >.<
Remember to reequip your weapons.Kill order should usually be:
Rogue, Shaman, Warrior, Hunter, Mage. There will only be three.

Easy as Crumb Cake.

Second fight.

You get 3 trash groups. Healer, Pally, Monk. Usually in that order.
Go Left to Right so noone gets lolrolled by the boss.
Paletress or Eadric. Paletress is the chick and she sucks.

Eadric:
When the warning says shield your eyes, do that. In game obviously.
Hammer of LOL. Dispell it. PvP trinkets. Cleanse.
If you don't its easily a 15k hit.
If you do Button 1 on the quickbar throws the hammer back.
That's it.

Paletress:
Nuke her to 50%.
Ignore her.
An add will spawn somewhere.
Fear wards, tremor totems, etc can stop the fear.
Cannot be interrupted.
Renew can be dispelled.
Back on her.
This fight is the hardest of the bunch. Her renew is insane and the fear can cause problems. Her bubble reflects damage ala Disc Priest.
The add reduces cast time >.<

the Black Knight:

Group up for Wild Growth.
Barkskin, Nature's Grasp the ghoul.
Stay out of Desecrate.
/yawn

P2. Stay away from Army of the Dead.
/yawn

p3. Watch who has Marked for Death, they'll take lots of damage.
/yawn.

Collect Loot.

Regular ToC is the hardest Regular on par with Heroic Nexus.
heroic ToC is the hardest.

Instance Servers and You

Now that I'm gearing up my new druid, there have been some things I've taken notice of. Namely, this Too Many Instances nonsense has GOT to get taken care of. I could be in Ulduar gear already, but no, I have to spend 20 minutes humping an instance portal just to get in. Gearing up for Raids has never been harder. At least you can "Usually" get into Trial of the Champion without too much hassle and the gear there is fantastic for the budding tree, however, there's only 5 loot items available and of course, we share them with everyone.

How the TMI issue works:

Every battlegroup shares an instance server. With Wrath, a lot of people returned to WoW. With 3.2, they gave us reasons to farm certain instances for pets that are worth quite a bit of money. Everytime someone farms an instance locks 1 single instance slot. Assuming you have 5 people farming at least 1 instance per server, be it for ZG mounts, Dino pets, Raven mount, whatever, that means 5 locked instances PER realm. There are 18 realms in my battlegroup. 18*5=90 instances being locked out. Assume you have at least 3 major raids going on per day and you add 3*18=54 instances to the lockout. So now we're at 154 locked instances. Double that for the other faction for 308 locked instances. Now you also have to account for the heroic daily and the reg daily, which although they can be the same instance, we'll assume they are separate. We'll go ahead and assume 5 groups running one of those two dailies, times the realms and the factions, brings us to 398 instances being run at the same time. Heroic ToC and Reg ToC also add in because they are more likely to get you in, we'll assume 5 groups doing the heroic for another 180 instances being locked and then assume 5 groups for regular, even though everyone is farming the instance for drops/rep double that to 360. Bringing our grand total to about 758 instances. Throw in a few lowbie groups, runthroughs, solo runs, rep grinds, 10mans, and VoA runs, and you can hit well over 1000 instances being run per day.

1000 locked instances. Blizzard is in the process of upgrading their instance servers to handle the increased usage, but their timeframe is pathetic to say the least. 3 months? I'm supposed to gear up for raids when I'm fighting for instances for 3 months?

So what is a tree to do? How can YOU get the gear you want without the headache of 20 minute waits? The answer is as easy as TBC. Three little letter: P V P. I know, I know. Not everyone likes BGs, BUT, you can always get in them, even if you lose, you still get honor, and you can use that honor to buy PVP gear, which isn't as good as the PVE gear, but it is MosDef better than quest rewards. So, unless you want to farm up the money to get you some nice crafted gear, which is still an option, unless you are saving for epic flying, start hopping in those battlegrounds and make sure you hit up Wintergrasp every 2 hours.

5 more points and a treekin?

Keeva has a really good write up on Resto talents that most people ignore or otherwise say mean and dirty things about here. On her heels:

The contemplation as to what I will do at 85 has me perplexed. I don't get any new spells, only new talent points. Okay, I suppose, but I already have more points than I REALLY need. Or do I? 5 more levels means 5 more points. That means I could max out CF AND still get ET and NP, or maybe put more points into TS. I could even get IT if I wanted or IBS.

Then another thought dawned on me, with the proper spec setup you could be a boomkin AND a tree. You could swap to boomkin and help on trash without using Dual Spec. Sure, your boomkin may not be epic leet and all, but it just makes things go faster. You lose a DPS and now you aren't going to beat the enrage? /boomkin /pewpew.

You may lose some of your other talents, but with the upcoming changes to the talents overall, you may not notice. Though it does make one wonder as to what they are going to do to our trees. Too much speculation. Makes my leaves get all frizzled.

As a side note, they are nerfing 4pcT8 by 50%. It makes sense. Kinda stupid to have a 4pc so good that you don't stop wearing it. Ever.