Because Vidyala and Zelmaru are Awesome...

So, I've had a mild running joke in my years of play about using post-it notes to block out peoples' health bars in raids. I had noticed the addon GridStatusIgnored, but the "success of the raid/party outweighs my personal opinions of pugger assholes" has kept me from seriously considering downloading it. Maybe if I were still in a larger, more casual raiding guild I might consider it.

In a bit of wonderful satire, Vidyala of pugging pally has spoofed a guide about the (mythical) addon, GridStatusStupidity. You must go read it.

(Edit: Is a guest post by Zelmaru, but Vidyala is still awesome :) )

Spell Use Changes: Resto

While we haven't learned any new spells, many of our healing abilities have changed significantly. I'm not exactly pleased with what has happened to my quick-fire Nourish, but as Regrowth has sped up, I'm not going on a rampage about it ;)

Rejuvenation:
It has a talented insta-tick when you cast it, akin to the tier 8 bonus. No major changes in use.


Swiftmend:
Talented, now applies a puddle of green goo under the target. It's like a light well they don't have to click. What this means is that, when WG is on cooldown but Swiftmend is up, you need to target your Swiftmend kinda like you do a Wild Growth, hoping to bomb a group of people with it. There is still the consideration of targeting the person who needs the direct heal the most, of course, so don't just treat it like a weak Wild Growth!


Wild Growth:
Longer cooldown. When you're in tree form, you can hit up to 8 targets with it (glyphed).


Lifebloom:
One target only, gone are the days of rolling it on two (or more) tanks regularly. When you're in tree form, though, you get that back: remember that, in case your ToL needs to be used to save multiple tank deaths. You can pop ToL and stack LB on two (or more) tanks. Lifebloom in ToL has a different spell ID, so these lifeblooms will continue to run even if your ToL buff wears off. Additionally, casting a lifebloom will proc replenishment on up to 10 raid members.


Regrowth:
Quicker cast, but the HoT is now one of our shortest, on par with Wild Growth in duration. When you're in tree form, it is insta-cast. It costs more mana than it did before, though! It is one of our most expensive heals. IMPORTANT: by cast time, it is replacing the original use of nourish as our quick casted heal. If you're having problems with hitting nourish instead by habit, I suggest swapping Nourish and Regrowth on your bars.


Nourish:
Longer cast. This may take some getting used to, if you are like me and used it fairly regularly as a quick top-off heal. It's not really worth the cast time if there aren't many HoTs on the target, so remember to go to regrowth first! However, if talented, you can use nourish to refresh Lifebloom on the tank: at 18% less mana to cast than lifebloom, this makes it far more efficient for rolling a lifebloom stack and not going OoM. Just remember that you need to begin casting it around 3/3.5 seconds (haste/lag/talents all impact it) to make sure it casts before the lifebloom falls off.


Healing Touch:
Still super-long (3 seconds), and 38% base mana makes it our most expensive heal (note: tooltip incorrect on wowhead as of posting). NS+HT, macro it, use it as an emergency. Yes, I have talented NS still: I like my emergency buttons, I am not a blanket raid healer. ;)


Tree of Life:
Tree form is what will take the most getting used to. Think of it as an emergency button that lets you:

• RAID EMERGENCY: Rapid-fire regrowth over the raid, rather than rejuv, in addition to giving you two more targets on Wild Growth. If mobs are overwhelming, your entangling roots is also now insta-cast as a tree, so use that CC!
  
• TANK EMERGENCY: Quickly pop regrowth back on the tank(s) and then stack lifebloom on multiple targets.
• BOREDOM EMERGENCY: rawr, I hassa Wrath spam! It synchronizes well with Fury of Stormrage's mana-reduction to wrath and free starfire procs.
  

Oh gods. Look at this. /facepalm. Well, we will be getting a remodel to it, but it's... decidedly "meh."

• Kae's hubby: So...happy or not happy with the new tree of life models?
• Kae: "Meh." They have more color than the old form, but only by race. They're still grumpy old tree men.
• Kae's hubby: Well...I think they are less grumpy and more ummm...ambivalent?
  

Have any more tips/tricks on spell use, for our changed spells?

Kae's 4.0 Druid Macros

In an update from my PTR post, I have found that not only have they fixed the OP kitty death pounce of ravagey doom, but also fixed lifebloom for macro useage. Both good things.


MACROS

The following macros are 4.0 updates to the macros I currently use. Healing didn't change much, in terms of spells, so most of these are feral. It is likely I'll be tweaking these macros as I grow accustomed to the new abilities and grow away from my old bind habits. It is also likely that you may find a different arrangement of abilities to be useful: feel free to hack these macros apart and replace things with your own preference. That's what macros are for :)


- NOTE 1: if you are not a primary-spec resto and secondary-spec feral, you will want to look at all instances of [spec:1] and [spec:2] in these macros to replace them with your appropriate spec.

- NOTE 2: I use an old-model G15 keyboard, which offers me at least 4 "easily reachable" extra keybind keys for pinky reach. You might be a little more pressed for keybind space if you don't have or use one of these, and have to rely more on mouse-click actions.

- NOTE 3: Bindpad has a working version here on WoWInterface.

---

Generic Macro Templates

Cut and paste in your abilities where you'd like. If in doubt, click them out of your spellbook to get the correct name.

Mouseover Heal or Cleanse:

/cast [@mouseover,help] [help] [@player] Spellname


Mouseover or Focus Harm:
(attack your mouseover, or otherwise your focus target, such as with CC)

/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] [@focus,harm,nodead] [@focustarget,harm] [] Spellname


Mouseover or Focus Harm Toggle:
(hold shift to attack or assist your focus target, such as with CC, otherwise mouseover)

/cast [mod:shift,@focus,harm,nodead][mod:shift,@focustarget,harm,nodead][@mouseover,harm,nodead] [harm] [] Spellname


Focus-assist or Target Harm:
(set a main tank as assist, for example)

/cast [@focustarget,harm,nodead] [harm] [] Spellname


Mouseover Help or Target Harm:

/cast [harm] DPSspell; [@mouseover,help] [help] [@player] Healspell


Modifier-toggled casts:

/cast [mod:shift] Spell1; [mod:alt] Spell2; Spell3


Modifier-toggled Helpful Mouseovers:

/cast [mod:shift,@mouseover,help][mod:shift,help][mod:shift,@player] Spell1; [mod:alt][mod:alt,help][mod:alt,@player] Spell2; [@mouseover,help][help][@player] Spell3

---

Custom Macros

My Skull Bash Key (G12):
Skull bash is our new feral-form spell interrupt. While the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars (besides the mouseover portion of Wild Growth), I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad.

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form); [form:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form) /stopmacro [spec:2] [form:1/3] /cast [@mouseover,nodead,exists] [@player] Wild Growth

• Cat: Skull Bash
• Bear: Skull Bash
• Caster [spec:1]: Wild Growth (mouseover)

My Stuns Key (G18):
This key used to be my remove curse macro; my cleanse has been consolidated and thus freed up this button. As above, the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars (besides the targeting portion of Cyclone), I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad. You could throw warstomp in there, but I prefer having access to that straight from feral forms.

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Maim; [form:1] Bash; [harm][@focus,harm][] Cyclone

• Cat: Maim
• Bear: Bash
  
• Caster: Cyclone on enemy target, else on enemy focus target, else normal.
  

Mushroom Toggle:
Casting mushrooms (up to 3 at a time) and detonating them requires different casts. While we won't learn this spell until level 85, it is good to plan ahead and map out where you'd like to put this ability in your binds/bars, and consolidating the two into one toggled macro is a great way to save space.

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift] Detonate Mushroom; Wild Mushroom

• Shift: Detonate Mushrooms (boom them)
  
• Normal: Wild Mushroom (place them)
  

STAMPEDE (~):
While we won't learn Stampeding Roar until level 83, I wanted to save a spot for it. While yet again the following can be done by placing the abilities on your respective stance bars, I prefer to just macro it in Bindpad. /shrug

#showtooltip /cast [form:3] Stampeding Roar(Cat Form); [form:1]Stampeding Roar(Bear Form); Hurricane

• Cat: Stampeding Roar
• Bear: Stampeding Roar
  
• Caster: Hurricane. Because. THUNDER AND LIGHTENING, VERY VERY FRIGHTENING!
  

My feral AOE Key (q):
Swipe gets spammed a lot, as a cat. Swipe has a cooldown as a bear, but it used to get spammed a lot. We'll be getting Thrash, another bear AoE, at 81, so we have to plan for that. I like binding tons of stuff to my q and e keys :)

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift,form:1] Thrash; [mod:alt,form:1] Mangle(Bear Form); [@mouseover,harm,nodead,form:1][form:1] Swipe(Bear Form); [stealth] Pounce; [mod:shift] Rake; [@mouseover,harm,nodead][] Swipe(Cat Form) /startattack [nostealth]

• Cat:
  • Swipe
  • +shift: Rake
  • +stealth: Pounce
  • If you'd like to add [mod:alt]Mangle(Cat Form); then you'll need to kill the #showtooltip and some blank spaces to make room.
    
  
  
• Bear:
  • Swipe,
  • +shift: Thrash
  • +alt: Mangle
  
  

My feral "E" Key:
Pulverize is an important new bear tool you need to include in your rotation. It is a "CP-user" of lacerate stacks, so binding it to your lacerate key makes sense to me. As for cat form, I haven't changed any of my old binds, but will probably replace Maim with something else down the road, once I get used to my new stuns macro.

#showtooltip /cast [mod:shift,form:3] Ferocious Bite; [form:3,mod:alt]Rip; [form:3] Maim /stopmacro [form:3] /cast [nomod:alt] !Maul /cast [mod:shift] Pulverize; Lacerate

• Cat:
  • Maim (because it's where I'm used to it. If you're using a combined stuns key elsewhere, you may consider replacing this with something else).
    
  • +shift: Ferocious Bite
  • +alt: Rip (you might consider making this the default by removing the red text, if you don't want Maim here)
    
  
  
• Bear:
  • Lacerate and Maul,
  • +shift: Pulverize and Maul,
  • +alt: hold alt to not use Maul

My T Key:
An update to my "t" key. It's got a bunch of random but useful stuff in it, including my ToL shift. As a note, if you are feral, you might want to consider a cast-sequence instead for catform which is in the next macro down, as you can now use unstealthed Ravage after using feral charge.

#showtooltip /cast [form:1,btn:2][form:1,mod]Enrage /cast [form:1,btn:1][mod,form:1]Frenzied Regeneration /stopmacro [form:1] /cast [mod,form:3]Savage Roar;[form:3]Feral Charge(Cat Form);[mod,spec:1] !Tree of Life; [@mouseover,help][@player]Nourish

• Bear:
  • Frenzied Regeneration
  • Right click: Enrage
  • +Shift: both Enrage and Frenzied Regen, together
    
• Cat:
  • Feral Charge
  • +shift: Savage Roar
• Caster:
  • Nourish
  • +shift: [spec:1] ToL
  
  

My Catform Charge+Ravage Key (t):
The improved feral charge talent makes your next ravage usable while not stealthed, for a short period of time after charging in cat form. Note that if your ravage misses or is a failed attempt due to positioning, it still consumes the buff.

#showtooltip /cast [mod] Savage Roar /castsequence reset=8 Feral Charge(Cat Form), Ravage

• Feral Charge and then Ravage (two presses);
  
• +shift: Savage Roar

OT: Sintel

Sintel is a short film produced using open source 3D software (Blender). Short, sweet, and sad, it was released at the end of September and made its way to my feedreader, where it impressed me greatly. Some of the animation could use more work (the blood pooling on the rooftop, for example) and I really wanted MORE to what felt like a predictable story in a world I wanted to explore in more depth, but I still loved it.



The dragon design reminds me of the wyrms in WoW, mixed with demons. Gargoyle-wyrm-demons. :)

Highlight: Postcards from Azeroth

Every few days as I'm checking my RSS feed reader, a simple postcard will pop in. A screenshot from a city, or quest, or NPC, or some event in World of Warcraft; a relic of the past, a memory that makes me smile. Sometimes, a place I have never seen. Things I may have walked past and met with a blind eye, things I may have never taken the time to admire, things I may have taken for granted and then forgotten.

Many of them things that may not be there, come Cataclysm.

These are pictures that tell the story of us all: the quests we have run, and in turn, the times we spent there and the people we saw it with. That first victory over Ragnaros, or Illidan. That leveling buddy, or the girl who was working on Loremaster with me. That applicant who whispered me for information while I was questing around the downed balloon in the marsh, who later became a fellow healer and blogger. That time I stealthed all the way into Orgrimmar, and saw their sights for the first time, then died to a few dozen spitting enemies. The time my guild posed around that skull for a victory screenshot. The time I spent playing against the Warlords team in Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch, getting bored and trading HKs and caps; then waiting around the Arathi Highlands or Ashenvale for the next queue. Getting my first bug mount, and the joke about it matching my elf's blue hair, and that other druid who was color blind or something saying he wanted a blue one to match his (green) hair. That crazy feral druid I met at level 15 and died to Westfall's Defias with, 5 years ago, and you still keep in touch. That dance party I had with my first raiding guild in that empty inn in the Dwarven District. That ship at the docks that I've never really fully explored. That quest chain that tugged at my heart-strings as I watched an NPC die, myself unable to help.

Postcards from Azeroth. Rioriel does an amazing job of capturing the world we play in, and reminding us of all that the game has to offer.

4.0 and Imp Feral Charge (aka Stampede)

A new "bug" I found while playing around on the PTR while I was sick yesterday:

Talented Stampede may not be "working as intended." Sometimes it won't allow ravage to be used; others, you can cast 6-8 unstealthed ravages for free and rack up the CP. The text of the talent states,

Stampede 2/2: Increases your melee haste by 30% after you use Feral Charge (Bear) for 8 sec, and your next Ravage will temporarily not require stealth for 8 sec after you use Feral Charge (Cat), and cost 100% less energy.

"Next" Ravage would usually mean only one free ravage within the next 8 seconds, rather than all ravages within the next 8 seconds, so I'm going to guess it is currently bugged. I think it's also a safe bet that the handful of times that it refused to let me cast ANY unstealthed ravages after a feral charge was also a bug, and I'd estimate that happened about 25% of the time while I was testing it in Orgrimmar.

Regardless, I did come up with a handy castsequence macro that let me ravage away to my heart's content (when the game let me).

#showtooltip /cast [mod] Savage Roar /castsequence reset=8 Feral Charge(Cat Form), Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage, Ravage

Binding it to my T key, I was able to just spam the key to charge and immediately begin my Ravagey chomping. Holding shift in the middle of the spam would use up the quickly-earned CP in a quick Savage Roar buff, and I could easily return to my ravagery without much in the way of keystroke changes. Amusingly, I also have T bound to one of my mouse's buttons (15 button mouse) giving me freedom of motion at the same time.

Scawy kitty. And to think that, glyphed, feral charge only has a 28 second cooldown, and the ravages cost no energy. This is why I suspect a possible bug... it seems a little OP :)

4.0 and Macros

I took some time this weekend to dive into the PTR, looking specifically at what changes I would have to make to my setup. Beyond a respec and many broken mods, the most notable thing I needed to update was my macros.

Possible Bugs:

• Lifebloom refuses to be cast via macro, insisting it isn't ready yet.
  
• Insect Swarm is not being learned properly from the trainer. Trainer insists I've already learned it, and the spellbook insists I need to speak to the trainer.
  
• ADDITION: talented imp-feral-charge may not be "working as intended." Sometimes it won't allow ravage to be used; others, you can cast 6-8 unstealthed ravages for free and rack up the CP.
  

Ability Changes

• Dire Bear Form becomes Bear Form
• Maul has a cooldown, but does not trigger the GCD still. Will require some error-cleanses to keep from spamming "that ability isn't ready yet," or else creating a new macro for it.
• Abolish Poison and Remove Curse become combined as Remove Corruption; frees up one keybind slot as well.
  
• Remove Gift of the Wild. The original Mark of the Wild becomes a full party/raid-wide buff.
  
• Mangle becomes Mangle(Cat Form) and Mangle(Bear Form). It is still feral-only; non-ferals will still use Claw in cat form.
  
• Feral Charge becomes Feral Charge(Bear Form) and Feral Charge(Cat Form). It is still a feral talent.
  
• Swipe becomes Swipe(Cat Form) and Swipe(Bear From)
• Put Soothe back on your bar; is not "Soothe Animal," just Soothe, and is now used to dispel enrages. It can only be used in caster form, so priority on casts should go to restos (and maybe moonkin, didn't test if it deshifts them) first before cats and certainly least by your bear tanks.
  
• Put Insect Swarm on your bar (though the ptr wouldn't let me learn it from the trainer)
• Put Skull Bash(Cat Form) and Skull Bash(Bear Form) on your bar, most likely as a macro.
  
• Put Pulverize on your bar (feral only)
• Ravage does not always require [stealth], if talented as a feral.

Personal Keybind Changes

The addition of several new and important abilities into the feral rotations has me combing across my keybinds to figure out how best to map them. Skull Bash, Bash, and Maim all share similar use so could probably be macroed together into a CC button, along with Feral Charge if you can reach the modifier keys easily from the keybind. Something along the lines of:

/cast [mod:shift,form:1] Skull Bash(Bear Form); [mod:alt,form:1]Bash; [mod:shift,form:3] Skull Bash(Cat Form); [mod:alt,form:3] Maim; [form:1] Feral Charge(Bear Form); [form:3] Feral Charge(Cat Form); [mod:shift] Entangling Roots; [mod:alt] Hibernate; Cyclone

...but I'm not sure I can comfortably use such a macro, personally, as it'd require me to drastically alter my current keybinds.

I'm rather happy that my main spec has rather limited changes! I am just hoping that the lifebloom-in-a-macro bug is fixed by the time the patch is released ;)