Daily Crusade

Well, if you’ve been doing any work to save up gold than you have more than likely been doing the dailies that take place at the Argent Tournament Grounds. Blizzard figured that they needed one spot to group their dailies [much like Shattarath and the likes] And they decided that Icecrown would be the perfect location to host their island of dailies. But a lot of folks still aren’t able to do them in a timely manner due to a couple of things. First and for most most folks have trouble fighting the champions in the ring. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen the words “Perhaps you are not ready” while fighting in the ring, which leaves me to wonder if its Lag or if folks really don’t know how to do it. If its lag I can completely understand, because of the weird way these mounts / vehicles work, I’ll get massive lag spikes that have me off position so I can’t charge / shield break the enemy but they can constantly charge me.

A druid Comic

I was bored last night, and I manged to get my copy of Photoshop cs2 Reinstalled, needless to say I took the opportunity to play around with some artsy related things. One of which being a comic [which I wish I was better at]. For the most part its just me playing around with Photoshop, Using My Paladin to take pictures of the landscape, and than adding them all as layers to a PSD the following is the result I hope you guys like it

For Druids by Druids

Feel free to let me know what you think or what I can fix

Tier 9 Set Bonuses

The Daily Druid has managed to get a hold of the datamined info for what will be the new tier 9 bonuses with all the related sets.

• Feral
• Druid T9 Feral 2P Bonus – Decreases the cooldown on your Growl ability by -2.0 sec and increases the duration of your Rake ability by 3.0 sec.
• Druid T9 Feral 4P Bonus – Increases the damage reduction granted by Barkskin by 10% and increases the critical strike chance of Rip and Ferocious Bite by 5%.
• Balance
• Druid T9 Balance 2P Bonus (Moonfire) – Your Moonfire ability now has a chance for its periodic damage to be critical strikes.
• Druid T9 Balance 4P Bonus (Starfire) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Starfire spell by 5%.
• Restoration:
• Druid T9 Restoration 2P Bonus (Nourish) – Increases the critical strike chance of your Nourish spell by 5%.
• Druid T9 Restoration 4P Bonus (Rejuvenation) – Your Rejuvenation ability now has a chance for its healing to be critical strikes.

What to do with all those flowers?

Wordpress, Now Feature A WoW UI

Well, if you’re anything like the rest of us, and you started on all those quest for the Midsummer Fire Festival, than you have collected a large assortment of flowers, and you’re really not sure quite what to do with them. If you started on Sunday Night, and managed to get all the Bonfires in Azeroth before the Reset, you could very well be looking at having a 1100 flowers to plow through just from Bonfires alone, this doesn’t include the 100 extra that you could get from doing the quest involved in stealing the flame from the Horde cities, and the close to 200 you could get from doing dailies, and all the other quest that are involved with the MidSummer Fire Festival so far. All in all you are looking at so many flowers that it might just make your head spin. And this really begs the question of “What in the world do I do with these flowers?”

Solo Ahune

About 3 post back, when the whole “Mid Summer Fire Festival” thing started, I said that I would take a shot at actually solo’ing Ahune, this is so you guys out there can get the achievement and not worry about having to find a group to do it in. I assumed it would be easy to do given the whole nature of the Druid class, and in addition to that we can nearly solo every opening Northrend Instance that is out there. I should note that while I wasn’t able to get Ahune down in a single surfacing, that it was a pretty easy fight overall, and for most druids this shouldn’t be anything to worry about. Thanks to our “Leader of the Pack” and “Savage Defence” ability with bear form, this is a pretty easy fight. I would note that while I don’t advice it in resto [that would take forever], that doing it in Feral as DPS spec was easy enough.

I know I'm a clicker =(

New Idol with the 3.2 Patch for Resto

There are several idols for Druids out there, and most are aimed at 3 of our 4 possible job rolls [there are 3 trinkets, 1 for each level (ie 7.0, 7.5, 8.5... 8.0 went missing as it needed to cry). The newest set appears to be coming out with the tier 9 gear and may or may not be part of the Colosseum [It looks like it was data mined, and not found on the PTR yet, so I'm not sure where it is actually at]

[The Idol of Flaring Growth]

The idol is interesting for several reasons, the first of course that it seems that Blizzard would like to make it quite clear what direction they are pointing us. Somewhere like this:

This is your new bar, and you'll like it

Healing in Ulduar

I see a lot of guides on line about how to tank, or how to DPS a boss in Ulduar, and while this helpful for the DPS and tank, it doesn’t do much to let you know about the kind of damage that you can expect from a boss. I also have a lot of druids that I’ve seen ask for what the approximate level of spellpower you need before you can step into an instance.

The following is a start of a series to provide a handy guide to both, and hopefully someone will take interest and I can answer some questions for druids out there.

Midsummer Reset

About 7-8pmish EST it would seem that Blizzard reset the quest related to the Midsummer Fire Festival. This seems to include all the quest in Kalmidor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands [I'll check Northrend once I've got all my flowers from the other 3 continents]. Note that if you did the quest Sunday you will not be loosing the achievment, you just have access to the quest again. This is nifty because the quest in total add to your “The Seeker” title, and they also serve to take care of gold and flowers as well.

The whole trip usually takes about 2 hours to make the circle around Eastern Kingdoms and Kalmidor, and this time you don’t have to worry about sneaking into all the Capital cities, you can simply go to each point, collect your flowers and gold, and move on. This will make for a quick and nifty 300-500 gold depending on how many fires you choose to revisit, and will almost ensure that you have enough flowers to get really anything that you need from the Festival. Now, the downside to this is that if you didn’t do the quest Sunday, than you don’t really get a chance at the reset, as the quest giver won’t be giving you two quest, they’ll still only be giving one.

This looks like one of the situations where they assumed that most players had already done the event in previous years, and simply thought that the best thing was to to do a global reset for all chacters rather than only for those who had done it in previous year. And if you’re like myself and concerned that you weren’t supposed to have access to the quest again even if you did them Sunday, Blizzard GM’s have confirmed that the reset is global, and we just got lucky, so please enjoy a second trip and go out there and get your pet scorchling.

Also this includes the “A Theifs Reward Quest” so you can get a second crown if you managed to get it Sunday. And as I said none of the Achievements have been reset, so if you just don’t feel like it, you don’t have to deal with it.

In the meantime, check out the nifty ball of fire spirit or something…

Northrend Fires

Sorry for the poor craftsmen ship on that map rework, I’m still working on getting Photoshop CS3 back on my computer, I just can’t find the copy I own right now [its buried somewhere in a pile of system software]. That aside, despite the fact that there are no achievements for it, there are actually Bonfires all across Northrend. They’re in rather predictable spots once your realize they are there [Save Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord]. You can start at Fizzlecrank Airport and work from there to make kind of a stretch around Northrend before finally ending in The large horde base in Dragonblight.

This map purposely avoids flying over Wintersgrasp for the pure and simple fact that right now, you can’t without paying for a gryphon ride, and let’s be honest here folks, who in their right mind [save being lazy or fetching a burger] has actually talked to those Northrend gryphon masters since level 77?

That aside, the Red Dots on the Map are actual Flames, I made a twist in Icecrown, but there are no fires [that I am aware of, looked for a while] that are actually up there. This is great because each Alliance fire is worth 5g some change, and each horde flame is worth 13g and some change. This is an easy way to replace a round of dailies [or add to it]. Also if you were having catching up on Flowers, this should put you much closer. I had 150 after buying the entire Outfit [400 Flowers in all] to do the pole dance achievement. This should put you back up around 250-275 so that it will be much easier to do the dailies and get enough flowers to buy your scorchling or Flame Brazier. And as Blizzard Stated, they are working on trying to get the fires in the old world working again.

Also, because I’m so very happy with myself, here is that new Netherdrake that I worked for 2 weeks to get a hold of
That aside, as a note to druids, if you want to play it safe, I’d do this series in Flight form, with the horde quest flagging you, you will be able to put out the fire without ever actually touching the ground [vs. a 3sec mount time for everyone else]. If you’re on a PvP server you should know very well already that if you have an excuse to use flight form to avoid combat, than you should.

I’m going to take a shot at Solo’ing Ahune on Normal [my theory is that this shouldn't be difficult, but you never really know]. I should have the results of that tomorrow.

As a side note, when you are doing the catch 10 torch quest, I highly suggest finding some place quiet, I tried doing it in Darnassus only to discover there were way to many people and torches in the air. I found that Exodar works well, no one likes the place, and it’s got a pretty stable floor color so you can track the shadow.

Flame Warden Event

The Flame Warden event started last night, which is rather enjoyable, because it is easy money to walk around the continent for new characters, or those who didn’t do it last year. The Achievements aren’t all that bad either, so adding it to your collection shouldn’t be to tough as long as you can get the set of clothes or had the set of clothes at some point. That being said, the really tough part of this whole thing is the silly daily the involves chucking 10 torches / hitting 25 braziers. The 10 torches one I found could be solved if I went to travel form, and set my camera something like what is pictured to the left there. That having been said, that’s really the only tough part of this meta achievement, much like the Elders, this one just involves a lot of walking to get all the spots on the map.

Although I did find it kind of hard to believe that they would let me do the Ribbon Poll dance in tree form, something just didn’t seem quite right about that when they wouldn’t let me do the same dance in cat form. but all things aside, I suppose that isn’t to much of a big deal, and it is quite funny to think of tree form voluntarily lighting itself on fire for amusement. The great thing about this festival is you’re going to be in all the old zones, so take the time to set your old quest tracker on if you’re going for Loremaster.

All and all its just another achievement towards getting that violet proto Drake [I messed up and won't be getting mine till what looks like next "Love is in the Air"], and should be a fun time for all, gather a group of friends and make your way around the old continent. A fair warning to you folks leveling on PvP servers, all the 80′s especially those who usually are busy just raiding northrend are back in town and will be all over the place.