Been awhile

Wow, this spot has been empty for about a month! Not a good start, but I have to get back into it. I'm letting my 17 subscribers down!

My Paladin is on the cusp of level 70. I took her into Kara anyway, where absolutely no Plate dropped, but I did get a healing Libram off of Opera and my T4 gloves off of Curator. I'm specced Ret right now, to aid in leveling. I expect to be 70 before Saturday night. My wife is leveling her as we speak (She's so nice!) When I hit 70, I will start tanking Karazhan on her, and work on her gear. Fortunately we have a good Pally that can tank the harder fights until I get up there.

I've been on the PTR, just messing around, and I say I approve. Berserk is probably the coolest thing to happen to bear form, being able to spam Mangle on three target is just pure awesome. I haven't really been able to test the DPS of Cat form yet, but it looks promising. For reference, my build on the PTR. I will talk about it in a little bit.

I did happen to spec balance for a little bit, and I'm impressed with how well I've been able to do. It hasn't really gone much beyond the Ogres above Shattrath, but even the elites up there were pushovers. I'm happy that wrath will mean only one set of caster gear, though I doubt I could responsibly reduce my tank and DPS sets to one set. There will be overlap, though. (There kind of is right now, I have the Gauntlets of Malorne in both sets, and two differently gemmed and enchanted Stag-Helms of Malorne. But as far as caster stuff goes, for all I care it's all one set. I'm sure some Boomkins and Treefolk will disagree with me.

My PTR set consisted of a mix between my current healing and balance gear, and I topped out with 980 spellpower, which I don't think is bad at all. Wrath was critting for 2k, but I wasn't really impressed with Starfire cast time/damage ratio compared to Wrath. For reference, I used a balance build similar to the one posted on Gray Matter recently (under the heading My Mock Raid Build.) Basically I took the same balance tree then started going up restoration.

As far as Savant goes, we're chugging along. We had a really good week where we cleared Karazhan, then went on to kill Akil'zon and Nalorakk in ZA. I've finally got off my ass and made a website for Savant, but I'm sure the use of it will be slow for a while. I think it will basically be a forum to discuss happenings and random crap and nothing more. Which is fine by me. I'm using MyGuildHost because they are the same folks that run our vent, UGT Servers. The Vent servers are reliable, and the web hosting is pretty good. If you want to get something usable up right away, it's very easy using their platform. But if you want to customize it, you may be frustrated at your limitations, especially if you do web development for a living. =~_n= All in all, it's good enough that I don't have any major complaints, just some bug reports to file with them (the Guild code that lets a member skip approval doesn't seem to work right now.)

Now, about the Feral build. I may be naive, but I'm hoping for a build that still allows me to be good DPS and good Tanking, with a leaning toward Tanking. To that end, I believe I have the important talents for tanking, or will take them before 80. I also try to maximize DPS per talent point where I can. From my previous build, I'm going to take Omen of Clarity at 71 (for leveling, yeah!) and then Predatory Instincts, Feral Instinct, and King of the Jungle. This is deeper into Feral than I expected to go, but I believe it is best.

The biggest thing I miss out on is Intensity (Master Shapeshifter will always be seen as a 5 point talent to me, and thus not worth the points, since Natural Shapeshifter is all but useless in PvE, especially with the downfall of Powershifting.) To me, Intesity was the only thing that let me heal instances in my Feral Spec. Now, I will have no mana regen, and therefore cannot possibly keep up with my meager mana bar. But that's okay, you don't go Feral to heal. Oh yeah, Enrage won't generate the extra 10 rage, but I don't think that will be an issue.

I don't think there's been anything in that tree that hasn't been touched on by other bloggers, and I don't really have a perspective on it since I'm not in the beta. But if you look to my blogroll, you will see the best of what I read regularly. And there you will find all the theorycraft your heart desires.