It was just this past week where I finally gave jousting in the Argent Tournament another chance and through my research I finally practiced a worthy technique and started getting pretty good at it. I finally worked my way up to the champion rank, defeated the black knight and started doing the daily group quest Threat From Above. As a result of this, I started doing the Battle Before The Citadel quest again too since a lot of groups tend to do that right after since it’s a LOT easier to do as a group.

mounted standing

I don’t know why but one time I decided to mount the horse for this quest in Moonkin form (I’m usually resto but I go Moonkin for questing) and lo and behold I got what you see in the picture above. It wasn’t a freak incident too since it seems to happen every time as long as I’m in Moonkin form. In my Tauren form everything is ok. This really gave the group quite a laugh!

So I was wrong about my prediction that the new Night Elf cat form art models would come immediately after the Tauren ones were released a few days ago. I based my prediction on the fact that the Night Elf bear form art came right after the Tauren one so I assumed that things would be the same. I read somewhere that the Night Elf bear form art was actually released too soon so the timing of the cat form releases would probably have been the way it should have been.

Tauren druid cat form

So anyway the Night Elf cat form art is finally out, completing the whole set of new druid form art coming out in patch 3.2. You can see it by following this link. You can view the other druid form art here. I have to say that it seems Blizzard did a better job in designing the new cat form art than the bear form art. The cat form designs seem to look more elegant and has more variety in color schemes, especially since the Night E;f bear form designs don’t seem to have as much variety as the Tauren ones. What would be my only complaint on this new night Elf cat form designs is that they all seem to have some kind of pink in all of the designs, some more than others. This would be nice for female Night Elf druids but would look pretty awkward for the males. This doesn’t bode well if you’re going for the manly look.

Last week Blizzard unveiled the new art for both the Tauren and Night Elf bear form art models that’s coming out in patch 3.2. Now it’s the turn for us to see the new art coming in the same patch for cat form. For now we have the new Tauren cat form art which you can see here. and if last week was any indication, we should be seeing the Night Elf version very soon, probably even later.

Tauren druid cat form

Though the new Tauren cat form art models aren’t as varied as I had hoped, they still look pretty cool. The fact that you can turn into a sort of white lion and even something that kinda looks like Scar from the Lion King movie. I’m guessing that, like the bear form art models, the cat form model will also be determined by the skin tone that the Tauren druid has. it’s for this reason that Taurens will be able to change their skin tone at the barber shop come patch 3.2.

As a Tauren druid myself, I’m quite anxious to see what my Night Elf druid brethren will get for their cat form art models. I wasn’t too pleased by the selection Blizzard gave them for the bear form art so I hope the cat form one will look better. I’m also still hoping that Moonkins and Trees of Life can get more models to choose from like bear and cat!

To see the new art for the Tauren and Night Elf bear forms, click here.

It’s funny how some things work out sometimes. Just because of something that concerns Tauren druids, all Taurens no matter what class will benefit from the issue. At least that’s how I read the announcement. I’m talking about the new druid form art that’s coming out in patch 3.2 and how some people are complaining about it.

tauren at barber shop

Apparently the new form art that you will use when you shift to bear or cat depends on how the druid’s “caster form” looks in terms of hair color and skin tone. CM Zarhym admitted that it’s going to take a great deal of programming to make the new druid form art independent of how the character looks. But this gives rise to a problem. Night Elves can change their hair color to change their look while Taurens cannot. Well, at least not yet!

In patch 3.2, Taurens will also be able to change their skin tone by going to the barber shop. Take note that there was no mention of this applying to just Tauren druids, so I’m assuming that all Taurens can make use of this feature, which I think currently can only be done using the paid character customization service. Now the question is, will Night Elves also be able to change their skin tone by going to a barber shop? It would seem quite awkward if they couldn’t.

As I mentioned yesterday, Blizzard announced that patch 3.2 will also feature the new art for the bear and cat druid forms. It’s about time too since Druids had those same looks ever since they learned bear form at level 10 and cat form at level 20. By going to a barber shop in a major city, druids can change their bear and cat look.

tauren bear form

Blizzard is releasing previews of these new art models little by little and started with the new Tauren bear form art. Their latest release is the new Night Elf bear form art which can be seen by following this link.

It looks like they made it a point to make the Tauren bears look different from the Night Elf bears in terms of color choices and not just that the Tauren bears had horns. But looking at the color choices, I’d be quite disappointed if I were a Night Elf druid since the Tauren ones seem to have more variety in the shades and they even have the cool while polar bear look. The Night Elf ones just look like different shades of brown.

Hopefully the cat form art will look cooler for both races!

If I remember it right, talk about new art of druid forms has been around since last year’s Blizcon. It’s been always brought up as a topic in the forums and the CM’s couldn’t give a definite answer. But finally Blizzard made an announcement in the World of Warcraft website that the new art for bear form and cat form will be out by the next major content patch, which is patch 3.2.

tauren bear form

You can look at the preview of the new art forms in that link above, although right now they only have the Tauren bear form art out. Looking at the new art, I’m actually quite surprised that Blizzard is offering several textures to choose from and they all look pretty cool. I’m liking the white polar bear type look, which is fitting with the frozen wastelands look of Northrend. I’m assuming that this should also be the case for cat form art.

The announcement says that druids will be able to switch their bear and cat form art using the barber shop in the major cities. I’m hoping that someday, the tree of life and moonkin forms could also get new art!

Patch 3.1 has brought us a spiffy new permanent event in the Argent Tournament and with it a bunch of cool new daily quests. Some of the daily quests involve the construction of the Colosseum, a project outsourced to the profit centered goblins.

druid cuts down a tree

Players are tasked with the acquisition of stone and wood to be used in the construction but the goblins profit centered approach is quite disturbing. For them they don’t care that the wood is obtained by cutting down trees in the beautiful Crystalsong Forest and obtaining stone from the artifacts near Ulduar.

As seen in the screen shot above, it certainly feels strange especially to the role players that a druid like myself would consent to working for these goblins especially in the matter of cutting down trees and angering the nature spirits. Cenarius won’t be pleased! I’m supposed to be a guardian of nature! Well that’s what I get for working for these goblins to fill my coffers!

There’s an outburst in the druid community now because the class is getting some nerfs in patch 3.1. One of them is the change to the feral talent Heart of the Wild where at max rank, the stamina bonus it gives will be reduced from a 20% increase to just a 10% increase. According to Ghostcrawler, this is part of their effort to make all tanks’ HP pools closer together but of course a nerf is a nerf and this sucks for bear tanks.

The next change is the one to the resto spell lifebloom, the resto druid’s best friend in tank healing in groups/raids. The change goes as follows:

Mana costs of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, It now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

Of course all resto druids are pretty mad that their bread and butter tank healing spell will become less efficient especially since the practice of rolling lifeblooms negates whatever bonus was given to it blooming given that that’s what rolling lifeblooms is all about - keeping the 3 stack up at all times. Ghostcrawler’s forum post on the matter gave you a sense that they felt the spell was too efficient a heal especially if kept rolling but instead of nerfing the heal itself they decided to just increase its cost. After being assigned to raid healing a few times in 10 man Naxx a few times, I found out that I cast lifeblooms and let them bloom quite often so this might be a nice change for people who do this since the bloom will refund mana and get a healing bonus.

While this change is quite a sad one for PvE resto druids, it’s quite a buff for ones who do PvP a lot. People will think twice now before dispelling HoT’s especially in the arena tournament. This is quite a welcome change to complement the fact that the PvP resto druid’s worst enemy has been tamed because of the removal of the Death Knight’s ability to remove HoT’s through Plague Strike. These two changes just might catapult resto druids back to king status as arena healers.

Healers like myself have been cherishing the remaining time we have until the mana regen nerf is implemented since we are the ones most affected and targeted by the changes. The aim of the nerfs is to make mana conservation and management a big thing and not just rely on our regen to tide us over while we heal endlessly.

Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there’s some cause for celebration since the nerfs don’t seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won’t go into detail with what he says but if you want to see the details then you can go ahead and read his post. The long and short of what he wrote is this:

Mana regen while not casting will be reduced by 40%

Mana regen while casting remains unchanged.

Talents that provide mana regen while casting (spirit tap, arcane meditation etc) will be increased by 67%

Paladins will have their Divine Plea healing penalty reduced to -50% and spiritual attunement mana gains decreased for non tanks.

It’s still sad for us healers to see our regen get nerfed but as you can see from the details, it’s not as bad as we thought. Sure we won’t be able to take much advantage of those big regen ticks when we’re not casting but at least the regen while casting still remains the same. In fights where we’re constantly casting our heals, this nerf won’t make a difference.

MMO Champion tells of a patch 3.09 that could be coming out this week. Since I haven’t tried checking the PTR or even if it’s up at all and the PTR forum is currently out for me, I can’t really check if this is really true. There isn’t even a patch 3.09 PTR notes so that makes the situation a bit worse. In any case, there’s something out there and it’s going to change a few things, even glyphs. Some of the change entries I’ve seen before as legit changes for the future so that might lend some credence to this. As always, you can find the latest PTR notes here so you can check it out if it eventually shows up.

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
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