new bear art

Anyway, I finally decided to check out which form art I got for both Cat and Bear after seeing one of our guild leaders who plays a feral druid look different in his new bear form art. It really did seem strange to see him so different from what we’re used to. When I checked mine out, I was a bit disappointed to get one of the plainer looking and unexciting designs. That wasn’t the worst part. That huge stripe on my back looks really funny. It really did make the design stand out but in a strange way. In fact, just this morning one of my guild mates saw it and commented that I look like a bigger bear took a dump and wiped his butt on me.

Any of you thinking of or already changed their looks to change their cat and bear form art?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Tauren druid cat form

Druids have come a long way since vanilla WoW since back then they were pretty much just healers in the end game content and now they are viable in Tanking and DPS as well. Several druid forms have allowed druids to maintain these roles in a way that other classes cannot. For example warriors can use their stances and Death Knights their presences to allow for some flexibility in roles but forms make druids to do this much better… in fact some may say too good.

Let’s talk about the Balance tree and Moonkins. One major concern is that the eclipse talent, which allows some variability in the spells, allows for a solar rotation to be well received but the lunar rotation not so much. Blizzard doesn’t like that just half the talent is favored and they plan to fix this. they said the problem here is that the two spells involved, Wrath and Starfire, are almost the same thing. A suggested fix for this long term is to separate the two spells and add another one like Insect Swarm or Moonfire. They seem to want a dynamic similar to how frost mages use fireball when Brain Freeze procs. For PvP they feel that Moonkins aren’t where they want them to be especially in the survivability department. but they feel that other caster classes also have the same problem so it could take a while since they’re focused on the classes that don’t have a strong PvP presence rather than those that do but have trees that under-perform.

I think this Q&A was pretty disappointing for feral druids since Ghostcrawler didn’t really say anything new or exciting specifically for them. They’re pretty much ha[[y with the way they stand right now from how they tank to how complex the kitty dps rotations are and such things. One thing they did mention though is they really want to see a future where shifting costs are gone so that druids will be in different forms so they can be more versatile. For example, thanks to their versatility druids already shift out of Moonkin or cat to backup heal or battle rez someone. Eliminating shifting costs would make this easier.

This brings us to Resto druids. Blizzard feels that there might be a problem with the fact that druids have to be in Tree of Life form to be as good healers as everyone else, losing some of their versatility. In fact they feel that it’s not really a good thing for druids to be locked into one form the whole time and this is where the plan to cut out the shifting costs comes in. They also feel like they want druids to be in their caster form a LOT more. For Tree of Life for example they might make it so that druids only use it for certain spells or to increase healing capability for a short duration like Warlocks and Metamorphosis’ damage increase effect. Does this mean that the same would be true for Moonkins? Based on their thoughts it seems like it. In other news, they also are working on a way so that +crit is more useful for Resto druids and in fact they want all casters to value haste and crit more.

To see the whole Q&A, click here.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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!

Post from: WOW Obsessed

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.

Post from: WOW Obsessed