I am also going to start finally adding some new features to the site, while trying to tidy up the layout a little bit. I’m not sure I’m going to overhaul it completely since people have told me they like it simple, but I’ll try to add in some features people have been asking for.

I appreciate everyone that has still been able to find some use in the guide, despite it being a little bit out of date in some areas.

The short version is work picked up a lot and I realized how frustrating raiding was becoming and how difficult it was becoming to deal with people on the game (none of you of course ).

At the moment, it’s tough to say when I’ll be back, or if I’ll be back. I’m looking for some motivation to get back into it, so if anyone has some, feel free to share it! Continuing to maintain this website and my guide is some motivation, but unfortunately I’m competitive. So if I can’t be raiding (while enjoying it), then I largely don’t want to be playing.

In the mean time, while I decide what to do, I’ll do my best to keep the guide relevant. The only section that will fall behind is the gear section, as that’s tough to keep updated without being in game.

I do appreciate all the comments and emails, and I’m hoping I can get back into the game eventually.

As I said in my post before this, once I have the new blog out, I can look into hosting these things myself. Though right now I have a lot on my plate with work and the new blog. So it has to take a back seat for now.

If you’re not comfortable downloading files from places like that, you can email prales@balancedundergrowth.info, and I will send you a .zip of the UI.

• More reader friendly guides. Instead of all one page, I will have separate tabs on the page for each section
• Better social network integration. This includes making Facebook & Twitter accounts for the blog, along with better sharing options for each page
• A better comment system that allows signing in through a variety of other services (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc)
• Better ad placement (a necessary evil). So the ads aren’t intrusive, but also aren’t invisible. This site became way more popular than expected, so hosting costs are something I need to keep in mind now.
• Updated Resources page
• A more “modern” feeling web design overall, this one I have now feels to me like it’s stuck a little bit in the 90′s era of web design
• Mobile-friendly version of the website
• Better hosting for addon packages (hopefully self-hosted, depending on the costs)

If you have any suggestions that you would like to give me, please feel free to leave a comment. This re-design will likely take a month at least, but I think it will be well worth it in the end. As always, I appreciate the continued readership and all of the suggestions I’ve been receiving up to this point.

06/28/11
4.2 updates are rolling out, check back often today
Updated the mastery/crit sections
Updated Tranquility spell section
Updated all spell sections to reflect how mastery benefits them
Updated Major Glyphs to reflect no more Innervate trading
Added an Innervate spell section (not sure why I didn’t have one before)
Re-read some of the guide for grammar, typos and general readability. Will check the rest soon

Still to Come
Pre-raid gear list updates for old Valor items that are now Justice Points
More talent specs (not particularly related to 4.2, but still something I want to do)

I’m still not sure what the intent of this change is, for some reason I’ve been having problems wrapping my head around the numbers. Though from what I can tell by comparing tooltips, this will be a 15% nerf to Innervate trading (at least on paper).

Right now, when two druid trade Innervate, they are effectively getting 30% of their mana back, as opposed to only 20% when they use Innervate on themselves. Of course, the actual amount of mana varies depending on the maximum amount of mana each druid has, but for the sake of this I’m going to compare percentages. With the new Innervate in 4.2, druids can only get a maximum of 15% mana back from trading Innervates. Basically you get 5% back from the Druid who Innervated you, and then 10% back when you Innervate the other Druid. So presently, it looks like it will no longer be more efficient to trade Innervates. I can’t even think of a good hypothetical situation, like having a lot of +intellect procs up, where trading Innervates would be worth it. No matter how much maximum mana you have, 20% is always more than 15%.

Then just to clarify on the Glyph of Innervate change, it actually still gives the same percentage of mana as it does now, it’s just worded differently (and arguably more clearly). It’s my understanding that the “in addition to Innervate’s base effect” means in addition to the 5% mana the person you cast it on gets (as it works now), and not that the casting druid gets back 30% mana when you cast Innervate on someone else.

I think this is more a quality of life change than anything. It gives us more time to to effectively use our Omen of Clarity procs, instead of just dumping them because the time is almost up or losing them because we had to move. So, I have no complaints, but nothing to really expand on.

This is what I’m picking for the “game changer” this patch. Currently, our mastery is okay at best, but not something any resto druid was really crazy about unless you were tank healing all the time. The new mastery is leaps and bounds better for all aspect of our healing.

First, we have a direct buff to our big, direct heals, which will presumably be a buff to our tank healing. While I always felt druids could tank heal, I did feel like they were the weakest tank healers when it came to delivering truly huge heals. This should definitely help a lot.

But, the thing I’m most excited about is the buff we get to our heal over time spells from using direct heals. It will be interesting to see how difficult it is to keep the buff up just by using Omen of Clarity procs, or if I’ll have to make time outside of that to cast a direct heal and refresh the buff. I’ll no doubt want to keep the buff up as much as possible. Even the base 10% increase is pretty large and well worth it. This change also lays to rest the crit versus mastery debate that was going on at the start of Cataclysm. I would be hard pressed to find anyone (even myself) that could make an argument for crit now. I’m incredibly excited about this change, since it keeps me from having internal battles about crit versus mastery all the time. Plus it’s a nice little buff. (But don’t tell anyone!)

I like these set bonuses quite a bit. I like that they still included a set bonus that awards the consistent use of Lifebloom, because I feel it’s important for Druids to do. The 4-piece is also very nice, and should be a very good bonus heal in tight situations. Especially because you’re either using Swiftmend to help save someones’ life in a tight situation, or using it to drop Efflorescence on a group of people. In either case, the extra heal should always be finding some use. The fact that it sounds like a smart heal to me makes it even better. So it should never really be going to waste. Now, if only the bonus heal would proc a second Efflorescence.

Overall I’m excited for the patch, and I hope that it reinvigorates my interest in the game. Which I’ve steadily been losing due to guild issues and slow progression.

I’ll be working to make sure we didn’t lose anything really important update wise. So far it just looks like my 4.2 patch post. Which I should have back up tomorrow.

Sorry for any problems this caused.

Here are some quick screenshots I took in a battleground. I’ll be adding more soon (from raids).

[Show as slideshow]

Feedback would be most appreciated, so please leave a comment on the UI page.

4.1 Guide Updates
Pre-raid gear list updated
Talent specs updated
Mastery/Crit sections updated
Other small spell and stat changes to reflect new tooltip data, etc.