Talents:

Tier 1 – Wild Charge got moved here and out of Tier 4, which makes an incredible amount of sense; unfortunately, this makes having to choose between it and Feline Swiftness a tough choice for PvE. (I say unfortunately, but tough choices are a good thing.) I think it’s going to depend on the range of Wild Charge as to which I’ll prefer as a general recommendation. Also, Moonkin Disengage and caster Intervene is cool. Note that Feline Swiftness is now universal, not just Cat, but Cat has an innate 15%, which addresses one of the annoyances about Cat Form being the same speed as other forms for non-feral specs. With the addition of Wild Charge, Tireless Pursuit went away, which makes sense since it was essentially a Double Dash(TM).

Displacer Beast is still TBD. Does it break combat? Does it drop threat? Does it wipe dot effects? (My guess is no on the dot wipe, since it used to.) Either way, with a 3 minute cooldown, I don’t really see it being that useful compared to the other two.

Tier 2 – Nature’s Swiftness now is only a 1 minute cooldown, which makes it a much more compelling choice.  I see every spec taking NS for PvP (9 sec clone every minute, ouch) and Renewal for PvE. Cenarion Ward, again, is TBD; we don’t know how it will scale, so it’s hard to compare apples-for-apples with Renewal.

Tier 3 – Not too much of a change here; this tier is still about different forms of crowd control, which is going to make it wholly situational for PvE. I can’t really make a recommendation without knowing what Mists encounters are going to look like. PvP cats will likely want Faerie Swarm to help close gaps, though Typhoon is another good option for a peel; a good offensive/defensive tradeoff. Moonkin and Resto will likely stick with Typhoon due to its shorter cooldown, though Mass Entanglement could be fun in a Tol Barad-type zerg situation.

Tier 4 –  As we saw in the previous Tiers, your choices are going to be between a long-CD strong ability and a short-CD/passive ability. Incarnation is pretty meh for cats and bears (ferals don’t have a very compelling toolbox from Prowl right now, and guardians aren’t going to want a damage buff when the other options provide survivability), though it looks to be nice for casters. Force of Nature is, of course, TBD until we learn what the capabilities of the new treants are.

The new talent, Soul of the Forest, looks very nice for ferals; that 10 energy per finisher will add up quickly, and will definitely make the rotation more flexible. Good for Guardians and Balance as well, actually (remember, the reworking of the rage system means that increased rage income directly equals increased survivability), so the only class I see sticking with Incarnation is Resto and possibly Balance.

Tier 5 – More control. Bear Hug became baseline (bleh) so  apparently Bash had to go, and it becomes a talent choice instead. Ugh. Again, control is situational for PvE, so can’t say much there. The newly renamed Disorienting Roar remains wholly OP though (4 sec AOE disorient on a 30 sec cooldown? Really?) for PvP, so I don’t really see the others competing right now, though Ursol’s Vortex is still TBD as well.

Tier 6 – Yeah, this tier’s still odd. Master Shapeshifter got renamed to Dream of Cenarius, but the basic idea remains the same, and still looks likely to be clunky. Remember running out of melee to charge back in and proc a Ravage? How about having to hardcast a Regrowth on someone while at low energy so you can put up a 30% stronger Rip? I really hope it doesn’t end up being optimal to do so; I’d prefer it simply mitigates some of the DPS loss from shifting out to throw a spell. Heart of the Wild still looks a bit lame, which means that Disentanglement and it’s 20% heal will end up winning by default.

Symbiosis: We also got a ton of info on Symbiosis from a blue post:

Here’s the process:

• The Druid will select a raid or party member and cast Symbiosis on them.
• The target cannot be another Druid.
• The target gains a buff that tells them what spell they have temporarily learned, and that spell temporarily appears in their spellbook, and they can drag it to an action bar.
• The Druid’s Symbiosis button will become the ability they gained from the target class.
• The Symbiosis link is cancelled if: the Druid clicks off the Symbiosis buff, or the Druid or the target changes continents or enters or exits an instance, or the Druid or the target changes talent specializations.
• Symbiosis fails to cast if Symbiosis is already active on that target.
• Symbiosis cannot be cast in combat.
• For the non-Druid target, the icon will revert to a placeholder (uncastable) Symbiosis icon when Symbiosis ends, but will become the Symbiosis-granted ability again the next time Symbiosis is cast on that target.
• The ability gained from Symbiosis is always something chosen to match the Druid’s specialization and the target’s combat role.
• The target always gets the same spell unless they change combat roles. A Druid of a given specialization always gets the same spell from each different class. If there is a change of specs, there is a change of spell.
  Here are some examples of spells gained through Symbiosis. The spells shared focus on utility, cooldowns, and survival. (Adding Fireball to a Moonkin’s rotation sounds cool on paper, but wouldn’t actually be fun in the long run.)
  Balance: Chains of Ice, Mirror Image, Mass Dispel
  Feral: Feign Death (Play Dead!), Frost Nova, Soul Swap
  Guardian: Ice Trap, Fear Ward, Consecration
  Restoration: Ice Block, Hand of Sacrifice, Leap of Faith
  Hunter: Dash
  Warlock: Rejuvenation
  Holy Paladin: Rebirth
  Arms/Fury Warrior: Enrage
  Enhancement/Elemental Shaman: Solar BeamThere are a lot more coming, but we’ll keep some surprises for now, and many are still subject to change after testing.*

  *Including all of those just listed.

I think the post is pretty self-explanatory, though I’m withholding the majority of my thoughts for now until the abilities make it through the Wheel of Balance. I agree with Reygahnci in saying Soul Swap? WTF…wait if it works on bleeds then WOO!

Other reactions:

• Reygahnci’s PvP take (mostly) at Druidify;
• Graylo’s Moonkin take at Gray Matter;
• Arielle’s Guardian take at The Inconspicuous Bear;
• Lisanna’s general take at Restokin.

• Feline Swiftness now increases your overall movement speed by 15%
• Displacer Beast teleports the Druid up to 20 yards forward and activates Cat Form and Prowl.
• Wild Charge now has a 15 sec cooldown for all variations of the charge.Non-Shapeshift no longer reduces the mana cost of your next healing spell.
  Bear Form no longer increases haste by 30%.
  Cat Form no longer causes your Ravage to be useable with no Energy cost.
  Moonkin Form no longer grants you 20 Solar or Lunar energy.
  Aquatic Form no longer reduces damage taken by 20% and duration is now 5 seconds.
  Travel Form no longer reduces damage taken by 20%
• Nature’s Swiftness now only has a 1 minute cooldown but no longer affects Mass Entanglement.
• *NEW* Soul of the Forest Aessina’s blessing grants a benefit which varies by your combat specialization.
  • Balance
    When a Lunar Eclipse ends you gain 20 Solar Energy and when a Solar Eclipse ends you gain 20 Lunar Energy.
  • Feral
    Your finishing moves grant 2 Energy per combo point.
  • Guardian
    Mangle now generates an additional 2 Rage.
  • Restoration
    You gain 50% haste for your next spell when you cast Swiftmend.
• Mass Entanglement now roots a target instead of a target in the selected area. Root now lasts for 20 sec, up from 8 sec. Now affects 5 targets. Now can be used in any form.
• Incarnation Guardian: Son of Ursoc now also affects Growl.
• Demoralizing Roar has been renamed to Disorienting Roar and is now useable in all shapeshift forms.
• Ursol’s Vortex can now be cast at a specific location instead of being used on the Druid. 30 yd range.
• Bash is now a talent and has been renamed Mighty Bash Invokes the spirit of Ursoc to stun the target for 5 sec. Useable in all shapeshift forms.
• Master Shapeshifter has been replaced with Dream of Cenarius Wrath, Starfire, Starsurge, and melee abilities increase healing done by your next healing spell by 30%.Non-instant casts of Nourish, Healing Touch, and Regrowth increase the damage done by your next damaging spell or ability by 30%.Each of these bonuses lasts 30 sec and cannot be gained more often than once every 30 sec.

General Class Abilities

• Cat Form now also increases autoattack damage by 100% and increases movement speed by 15%
• Feline Grace has been changed back to only reduce falling damage taken while in Cat Form.
• Claw now causes 350% of normal damage, up from 155%
• Bear Hug is now avaiable to all Druids at level 22.
• Remove Corruption now removes all Poison and Curse effects on the target but has an 8 sec cooldown.
• Hurricane no longer increases the time between enemy attacks by 20%
• Innervate regenerates 10%(up from 5%) of the caster’s maximum mana over 10 seconds and an additional 10%(down from 15%) if cast on self.
• Maim now causes 110% weapon damage in addition to the stun.
• Symbiosis may not be cast on other Druids and the effect is lost if the linked targets are too far apart. 6 sec cast time.

Balance

• Euphoria now also procs off of Starsurge.
• Eclipse has been slightly reworked. It now causes Wrath to refresh the duration on Sunfire while in Solar Eclipse and Starfire to refresh the duration on Moonfire while in Lunar Eclipse. In addition, Lunar Eclipse transforms your Hurricane into Arcane Storm.
• Moonkin Form now increases Arcane and Nature damage dealt by 10%, down from 20%
• Insect Swarm now increases the damage taken by 25% (down from 30%) but affects all spells.
• Shooting Stars now has a 20% chance to trigger (up from 4%) but can only trigger from a periodic critical strike from your Moonfire or Sunfire.
• Celestial Alignment had its bonus damage reduced by 5% but causes Moonfire to also apply the Sunfire effect. 3 minute cooldown. (Up from 2 min)
• Total Eclipse (Mastery) increases the bonus damage from Eclipse by 20% (Up from 16%) Each point of Mastery increases the damage by an additional 2.5% (Up from 2.0%)

Guardian

• Savage Defense reduces physical damage taken by 40% for 6 seconds. (Changed from 80% for 3 sec) 1.5 second cooldown.
• Thrash now also causes the Weakened Blows effect. Weakened Blows reduces the physical damage caused by the affected targets by 10% for 30 sec.
• Nature’s Guardian (Mastery) increases armor by 5.2% (Down from 9.6%) Each point of Mastery increases the armor by an additional 0.65% (Down from 1.2%)

Feral

• Shred damage has been reduced from 540% to 425%
• Predatory Strikes is now called Predatory Swiftness and only affects Cyclone, Entangling Roots, Healing Touch, Hibernate, or Rebirth. (Has an X% chance to trigger)
• Thrash now also causes the Weakened Blows effect. Weakened Blows reduces the physical damage caused by the affected targets by 10% for 30 sec.
• Ravage damage has been reduced from 950% to 750% damage.

Things have been quiet around here for some of the usual reasons (end of expansion means no new mechanics changes/strategies), but I’ve also been SLAMMED at work.  After coming back from my deployment and leave, was reassigned as my battalion’s IT manager and head sysadmin. (The Army considers this two separate jobs. The IT manager manages and does paperwork; the sysadmin fixes stuff.)  The previous person in this position left lots of work undone, most notably not completing elevation paperwork for her (now my) subordinates. This meant 400 users, with 1 guy (me) who can fix problems, which means that all the planning/training/etc. I was supposed to be doing got constantly interrupted by user-level issues. This is easing, thankfully; I’ve got six more SA’s that are coming online this week, which frees me up to work normal hours again.

TLDR: Work sucks; getting better.

I’m also going to try to, as Cynwise describes expressively, remind my inner editor to fuck off and just hit “publish” more often. New motto: Less professionalism, more personality.

To compensate for previous bitching, here’s a diagram that perfectly depicts feral strategy on the Lord Rhyolith fight.

Glyphs: Rip, Savage Roar, Bloodletting. (Tendon’s not up for enough time for Berserk glyph, TF glyph doesn’t help and desyncs trinkets.)

Trinkets: Slot 1) A good on-use trinket. Kiroptyric Sigil is best option, but a PvP clicky or even Ancient Petrified Seed can work. Slot 2) Wrath of Unchaining, preferably, if not, whatever else you have. Don’t use two on-use trinkets, as the second one will not be usable until the buff from the first drops.  (and yes, this means engineering is somewhat penalized since they won’t get any benefit from Synapse Springs.)

Reforging: Cap hit, then crit. Mastery and haste are significantly worse.  (edit: do NOT reforge for expertise, thanks Reesi; edit2: According to Tangedyn and Tinderhoof, haste isn’t as good as I had originally calculated it.)

Pre-Tendon: Get a Savage Roar and Stampede up off a corruption or blood.

Rotation: (Mangle), (FF), Trinket/Rake, Ravage!, Shred, TF/Trinket/Berserk/Rip.  (You can waste some TF energy here if necessary.) Continue with Shred/FB, make sure you get a Ravage! in. Using Rake a 2nd time is probably not worth it, but pretty close DPS-wise if you get it in during TF.  Final GCD should be an FB, but only if you have 5 CP’s, otherwise just Shred. Potion, obviously, though this is probably coordinated by your RL. If you have a 20s proc trinket, pop it at the beginning instead of with TF.

Is FF worth it in 10m if I’m the only melee DPS? Yes, but the difference is fairly small.

Rip? Really? Yes, assuming you get it up in time. 1 FB = ~3.5 Rip ticks on average. So, even if you’re slow starting, still use Rip unless there’s less than 9s remaining when you get to 5 cps.

Think that about covers everything; feel free to ask a question or share your experiences in the comments.

Strats:

Kael’thas

Prepwork: Make two macros and drag them to your bars.

/equip Staff of Disintegration
/use Staff of Disintegration

/equip Cosmic Infuser
/cast Rejuvenation (or Lifebloom if you prefer).

Clear trash in entry hallway and Al’ar’s (man that looks odd) room. Kill Al’ar (easy). If you want to kill Solarian or Void Reaver, do so now; they’re both easy, though you’ll have to clear all the trash in their rooms first. Clear the trash in one of the tunnels leading to KT (both is slightly safer but not necessary.) Kill the trash in his room if you wish. Pull KT, who will start monologuing. Run to one of the little antechambers leading to KT’s room; you’ve got about 45 seconds before the energy walls go back up and block entrance to the room.

Phase 1: Kill Thaladred and Sanguinar in the antechamber. Run to the doorway of the antechamber, enough so that Capernian runs out, then charge in and kill her. She’s quite annoying, with a long stun and a knockback, but she’ll die quickly if you can get close. Get to her sides, so the knockback doesn’t send you down the hallway. For Telonicus, work him down to 20-30% HP, run around dodging bombs until your Remote Toy debuff is at less than 15 seconds, than kill him, preferably on top of all the other advisors.

Phase 2: All the weapons spawn. You’ll have a few seconds to heal up before they get to you; tuck into the corner of the antechamber so they all come in, pop Barkskin, and start kitty swiping. Target the Cosmic Infuser and interrupt his heals. After 4-5 swipes, go bear, hit Enrage, and continue to AOE. With a little practice, you should be able to kill all the weapons with 30s left until Phase 3. Loot the Cosmic Infuser and Staff of Disintegration. Hit your macros to equip the Cosmic Infuser, cast a heal (to get the buff), then equip and use the Staff. Go bear.

Phase 3: All the advisors rez simultaneously. This is the first tricky bit. Wait until you get out of Sanguinar’s first fear, then pop Berserk and nuke down Thaladred, chaining Mangles to Sanguinar and Telonicus (hopefully). You’ll want to save Barkskin and SI for when he’s close to dead, as the stacking DoT from Rend is the biggest source of incoming damage. This will take 30s, as the DPS from the Staff of Disintegration is pretty low, but you need it equipped for the buff. Once Thaladred and Sanguinar are dead, go cat to take out Telonicus and finally Capernian. At any point, if you get low on health, start running down towards Al’ar’s room, hotting yourself up as you go. Once Telonicus is dead, you can outheal Capernian’s damage, so I usually heal to full and wait to kill her until Phase 4 is starting.

Phase 4: KT comes after you. If you are in Al’ar’s room and you’ve only cleared one corridor, make SURE you position yourself so KT runs down the cleared corridor, else he’ll aggro every mob on the way. Try to hit your Macro 2 twice and Macro 1 twice every 30 seconds; this keeps the magic damage protection buff up, which really helps for the fireballs, as well as the staff buff, which you need to not get disoriented. KT has three main threats:

• Casts Fireball every 8-10 seconds. Interrupt as many of these as you can, as they hit for a good 15-20% of your HP. If you get low on HP and need to heal, either run away and HoT (easier) or LOS casts using a doorway (harder). Don’t run away if his Shock Barrier CD is close.
• Casts Shock Barrier, then three Pyroblasts. These can NOT be LOS’ed/outranged, so you’ll need to be close by. If you have Rip/Rake up, you can typically break the shield and interrupt before he gets one Pyro off; if unlucky, you may have to eat one. Pop a CD.
• Casts Flame Strike, which is a void zone on the ground, Just stay out of them, as they can hit for a lot.
• Phoenixes will come in, then turn into eggs at 0% HP, then turn back into Phoenixes after 15s Can mostly be ignored; if you want to kill, note that they can only be killed as an egg.

Pop Berserk and work him down. Play defensively; I used every Predatory Swiftness proc for instant HT’s, and ran away to HoT immediately after Shock Barrier phases if I felt threatened. Once you work him to 50%, he will take off and run back towards his room. He is still attackable, but slightly faster than you; if you use Dash and SR to keep up with him, you can knock a significant chunk of HP off him, but it’s not necessary.

Phase 5: go back to Al’ar’s room. Wait (kill any Phoenixes that are up). You’ll get hit with some stuff; don’t worry, just heal through it and wait. Eventually, he’ll teleport you to him. At this point, you can just kill him, but I like to run back to the main room to get some space; this time, he’ll follow you, and you can work him down like you did in P4. Still casts Fireball and Flame Strike, but no more Pyroblasts, so he should be easy to finish off once you get him here.

Reward: 300g, the T5 chest (if you want it for transmog) and a 1-2% chance at the Ashes of Al’ar.

High King Maulgar

Much simpler, mostly a gearcheck. Start in cat, pop a potion, Berserk/SI/Barkskin, and nuke down Blindeye, interrupting heals. Once Blindeye is dead, kill Olm so he stops fearing you. When you get low on HP, go bear and use FR to heal, then finish off Krosh, Kiggler, and finally Maulgar. The tough part is interrupting Blindeye’s heals, since they’re usually synced with a fear; you’ll win or lose the fight in the first 30 seconds.

Reward: 50g (I think) and T4 shoulders, plus you get to kill Gruul, who is very easy.

With that, I’m done with BC. Sunwell’s too difficult, and I’ve cleared everything else save Vashj in SSC (which requires ranged) or everything past Reliquary (no pet to take aggro and let you LoS) in BT. Time to start working on WOTLK content; here’s a little screenshot of a solo I did a while ago while I was playing in Iraq and was inordinately proud of:

Sounds good, right? Well, there’s a few problems with that.

Haste is useless if you’re not attacking something. Again, common sense, but it bears repeating. If you have to move off-target, your mastery/crit continues to affect your bleed ticks, while your haste just sits there.

Haste is terrible for bears. May not be an issue, but if you plan on bearcatting, then you want something that can affect Savage Defense, which means mastery. (Crit used to be nice, but is now devalued in bear due to the 2pT13 set bonus.)

Extra energy regeneration increases rotational difficulty. Ah, here’s the most important one. The cat rotation is very dynamic; you’ll have times where NOTHING is up, and you have to quickly execute your priorities to get everything going. You’ll have times where you need to dump energy ASAP to use Tiger’s Fury optimally. On the flipside, you’ll have times where you’re sitting around waiting for energy to regen.

The issue? Well, as haste increases, you have more #1 and #2 situations, and less #3. In these situations, fractional time matters. (What do I mean by this? Well, if you’re just waiting for energy to regen, you can use that Shred at 60 or 80 energy, it’s not really a big deal. If you’re trying to start or restart bleeds, each bit of delay starts to take away from uptime and thus damage.)  This is where in-game reality starts to diverge from simulations; Mew doesn’t have to deal with raid mechanics, crazy raid leaders, or out–of-game interruptions; all of which will end up causing you to spend more time at energy cap, which also makes haste less than useful. Ultraxion is a good example of this; relying on Mangle instead of Shred requires a few more keypresses, since Mangle uses less energy.

So, what am I saying? Yes, in sim theory, all the stats are roughly equal. In actuality, though, the priorities that make it easier to play perfectly, such as capping hit and expertise, and minimizing haste, will increase your DPS the most. What do you think?

Of course, this group also managed to wipe on Spine when we somehow triggered a barrel roll killing the third amalgamation, so…perhaps not the best representative sampling.

Short-Term (pre-MoP):

• Get back to regular updates. With my schedule, that wasn’t possible before, but I plan to start writing a weekend recap post, even if nothing else is going on.
• Add some merch. As I mentioned before the holidays, I’ve had several requests for shirts/etc., and I’d love to put something together.  I’ve done some looking around on Cafepress, etc., and at the moment I still feel a bit overwhelmed.  I’m a writer, not an artist, and I don’t want to sell something crap. If anyone has experience with Cafepress or similar sites of that ilk, please shoot me an email.
• Update the guide. Yeah, the feral guide that’s still labeled 4.0.3, that’s about a year out of date. That one. :P
• Participate more in the forums. Not much to say here, but I like to be accessible.
• Remember that I have a Twitter account. Uh, yeah.
• Refresh the site theme. The theme is getting a bit stale. I like the overall presentation of information, but there’s lots of little niggling things that I want to fix.
• Add some solo-specific content. This is our last and greatest opportunity to experiment with soloing content, to see what we can push. The item level “squish” and the removal of hybrid speccing is going to make old raids more difficult.

Long-Term (for MoP)

• Video Guides. Yes, I’m entering 2007. Go me. I will still do a fully-written guide for Mists of Pandaria, but I will supplement it with a video guide as well. There will be a small charge for the videos (still determining what a fair price would be), but everything else (text guide, blog, forums, etc.) will remain free. I plan to cover both Guardian and Feral. I will probably do some smaller videos pre-MoP to make sure I have a good product; those smaller videos will be free or almost free. I don’t do scammy; refunds will be available, sample clips will be available, etc.

Feel free to jump in and tell me what else I should cover (or tell me I’m crazy for trying to do videos, either works). This is still just an idea at the moment, so there’s lots of flexibility.

Website Stats

People were excited to finally dig into Cataclysm content, and it showed. The site had a huge spike in popularity, going from ~50k monthly views in Nov/Dec to ~150k in January, then slowly fell back to the 50-60k level. (Of course, we also had a lot less to talk about in the later half of the year.)  Subscribers to the RSS feed (as measured by FeedBurner) jumped from 500ish to about 800 in January, and are now hovering around 1k. I don’t have good stats for the forums, but we’re up over 6k total posts, so obviously something’s going right there. :)

Popular Posts:

• January: The gearlists, obviously. We discussed Unheeded Warning quite a bit, as well as the 4.0.6 patch notes; most notably, the loss of our free root/snare break, which had everyone predicting the death of ferals in arena.
• February: My 4.0.6 trinket list was big news (short version: UW sucked, then was great, but see below). My post discussing my negative outlook for the feral class also made the rounds and got LOTS of comments. :)
• March: My posting started to fall off here. No super-popular posts this month, but I really liked Syl’s UI post; lots of great information.
• April-June: Swipe damage was doubled for 4.1, taking us from near-worst in AoE situations to near-first. We had our first glance at the FIREKITTY. 4.2 re-nerfed Swipe a bit, but buffed a few more abilities. My 4.2 gear list was popular, but I forgot to link it on the front page until after 4.3, making it somewhat useless. :)
• July-September: Not too much happened.  UW finally got nerfed, as we had all predicted.
• October-December: Some cool stuff came out at Blizzcon. 4.3 buffed us a bit; things look pretty decent in normal gear, though the final verdict is still fairly mediocre at the heroic gear level. (That said, sub rogues/UH DKs’/Enh at the top, arcane and mut rogues at the bottom…Neo says whoa.)

Personal

WoW Insider offered me a columnist slot back in January, which I accepted (first column for WOWI). Admittedly, the timing wasn’t the greatest:  I completed my training in Georgia in February (CISSP passed! Yay!) and moved to Texas in March to deploy to Iraq in April. Whew. Sylvaneart, Qbear, Tinderhoof, and Leafkiller did an excellent job filling in with guest posts while I was occupied, and they of course continue to contribute in forum discussion, which I am slowly dipping my toe back into. Due to a highly unlikely set of coincidences, I was actually able to keep raiding in Iraq, even though I had to wake up at 0330 to make the 8PM CST start time. Due to a lack of healers and low FPS, I ended up raiding as Resto.

September saw me leaving Iraq for Kuwait; no more incoming fire (good) but, ironically, worse Internet and housing arrangements meant no more raiding. Yay. I wrote a story for the Blizzard writing contest, which didn’t win anything. I’ll post it, in case anyone is interested in reading my first attempt to write fiction since high school. (TLDR: Not very good.)

Now that I’m home, I’m playing through all the great games I missed (got Portal 2 on my 360, with Arkham City waiting as soon as I finish Arkham Asylum on the PC). Raid Finder is cool, but ultimately boring in the lack of difficulty. I feel like I’m cheating somehow; I’ve still got a lot of 359 gear, but I’m hitting top 5 on the DPS meters for every fight. (UPDATE: Wow, Happy Winterveil: I’ve done RF twice now, both parts, and come away with 3 pieces of T13, Kiril’s, and the Wrath trinket. I actually topped the DPS meters on Ultraxion.)  I may come back to normal raiding, but I’m not ready to commit time to a schedule yet. We’ll see on that one.

Anyway, enough navel-gazing. (At least till my next post, where I discuss where I want to take TFD for 2012.) What’s your favorite moment of 2011?

The Draft 4.3 Gear List

The full version (with better explanations and text) will be going up on WoW Insider sometime next week (when I finish it), but this is a good starting point. Feel free to leave any comments here; I’ll try to respond quickly, but no guarantees as things are crazy around here with packing.

(Wowhead’s list is good as well. If I had known they were doing one, I probably would have skipped doing one myself. Also, here’s my Firelands/ZA gear list, if you’re just getting started.)

I apologize for the lack of blogs lately; as more and more people have stacked up here in preparation to depart, the civilian wireless network has gone from bad to horrendous. (You’re only reading this now because I’ve prewritten it and gotten up early in the morning to log in and publish it.) It’s been all I could do to keep my columns going for WoW Insider, and I’ve only been able to keep those up because their blogging software doesn’t get filtered by the work firewall. *cough* Of course, my laptop recently died as well, which didn’t help matters any.

Anyway, enough complaining. I’ll be going dark for the rest of December, as I have a lot of catching up to do with my wife and son. Come January, however, I have a lot of changes in store; thinking a blog style refresh and update is long overdue. Couple people have asked me for Fluid Druid shirts, too, so hell, I’ll see what I can do. Anything else you want to see, feel free to ask in the comments!