Hop to it! It’s Noblegarden!

Thanks for hopping on over to come celebrate the great Feast of Noblegarden with me! The meaning of the Holiday goes way beyond just collecting beautifully decorated eggs and eating chocolate (although I really do love that part); it is a time to come together as a community and share the joys of life and friendship. The event runs from Sunday, April 26th until Saturday, May 2nd.

Ok, ok. I know why you are all really here… it’s for the Achievements! Noblegarden is just another stop on this Long, Strange Trip to get our coveted Violet Proto-Drakes. I had a fairly easy time checking each achievement off the list, but I got an early start and kept on hunting until I got the last egg and the last achievement early this morning. It took me about four hours total, and I probably could have done it in less time – but I think that now it may take longer depending on how populated your server is and what times of the day or night you decide to start your egg hunt.

Timing isn’t everything, but it could certainly make this Holiday and its many achievements a little more enjoyable if you pick an off-peak time to work on it. Weekends, of course, will be busy no matter the time of day. My best bets would be late at night, in the mornings, and during times when most people are raiding. Look high and low for eggs! Sometimes they are hidden under benches, and sometimes they are on top of torches!

Where to? The Noblegarden festivities are going on in starting areas, in the small towns situated outside of the major cities. For Alliance, you can head to to Dolanaar, Azure Watch, Kharanos, or Goldshire. For Hordies, you can head to Bloodhoof Village, Brill, Falconwing Square, or Razor Hill. Once at your chosen location, you will find two quest givers with two simple quests. Make sure you pick up both quests before you start, because you can complete them simultaneously.

A Tisket, a Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket: Picking up this quest will give you a useful item that will help you complete the quests and achievements faster: an Egg Basket. This item makes you run faster for 10 seconds, with a 10 second cooldown. (You can only use it in the towns where there are eggs, during Noblegarden, so unfortunately you can’t use this to cap flags like woah in BGs.) For this quest, all you have to do is open up 10 eggs. Each Brightly Colored Egg will either give you Noblegarden Chocolate or a special prize. You need to hand in 10 of these Chocolates, and then you get to keep your Egg Basket!

The Great Egg Hunt: For this quest, all you need to do is open up eggs and receive 20 Brightly Colored Shell Fragments, which will drop from all the eggs you pick while you have this quest. This quest is also a daily quest, so if you decide to spread your festivities out over a few days you can have something extra to do, if you choose.. As a reward for this quest, you will receive a Blossoming Branch. Hang onto this, you will need it for an achievement later!

Now that you have gotten a hang of collecting Brightly Colored Eggs, its time to look over all the achievements needed for the Meta Achievement: Noble Gardener! You will need to open a lot of eggs to get all these achievements completed, on some counts about 350 or so. It’s not so much the chocolates that you are looking for, although you will need those, but the other special prizes they contain.

I Found One! – Find an egg! You already have one done, go you!

Chocoholic – Eat 100 Noblegarden Chocolates during Noblegarden. During this you will also complete Chocolate Lover (to eat 25).Yay Achievement points!

Spring Fling – Find your pet Spring Rabbit another one to “love” in each of the four towns where your faction is celebrating Noblegarden. There are two ways to get your bunny, and it doesn’t matter to the achievement Gods which one you choose. You can either farm eggs endlessly until you get one to drop, or you can farm 100 eggs and buy it from the vendor. In the course of getting all my eggs I actually got two bunnies. My first was less than a half hour into egg hunting. All you have to do to have your bunny “fall in love” is have him out, he will make quick work of everything else on his own.

Noble Garden – While you are passing through Stormwind, on your way to Goldshire, make sure you complete this one. You have to place a Brightly Colored Egg down in Stormwind. You can buy these eggs from the Noblegarden Vendors for 5 chocolates. Don’t forget to open up your own egg once you drop it down. I’ve heard of people getting something they needed from their own eggs. They have the same chances to drop items as regular eggs.

Shake Your Bunny-Maker – Using Spring Flowers, you have to place bunny ears on female characters of at least level 18 of each race. While you are running around getting the Spring Fling achievement, keep your eyes out for the rarer females of your own faction, like Female Dwarves. For your opposite faction, Dalaran seems to work very well. You can sit outside their part of the city and hope one will pass on by. The hardest for me to find were Troll and Orc females. Someone also mentioned to me that you could do this in a Battleground as well. You can get your Spring Flowers the same way as your bunny; either from egg drops, or by purchasing them from the vendor for 50 Chocolates.

Blushing Bride – While you are wearing a White Tuxedo Shirt and Black Tuxedo Pants, kiss someone who is wearing an Elegant Dress. All these clothing items drop from eggs, can be purchased from the Noblegarden vendor, or can be traded because they aren’t soulbound. There are also achievements Sunday’s Finest and Dressed for the Occasion for getting these items from the eggs, although these achievements are not needed to complete the Meta Achievement.

These next two require some traveling, so grab a traveling buddy, because you’ll need a friend for the first one.

Hard Boiled -  Lay an egg in Un’Goro Crater’s Golakka Hot Springs as a rabbit. To become a rabbit, you need a friend with a Blossoming Branch. Remember that from earlier, and how I told you to hang onto it? Here’s where it comes into play. Un’Goro is pretty far away from everything else it seems at first glance. But here is my great tip on how to get there faster, for level 80s. Have you and your traveling buddy go to Sholozar Basin. There is a portal in the southern part of the Basin that will take you to Un’Goro. Switch into cat form to lessen your fall damage, or use slowfall or the like, and jump your way down into the Crater. Once you get to the Hot Spring, on the western side, cast your Blossoming Branch on your friend, and have them do the same for you. Once you are a bunny, just wait until you “lay an egg”, and you’ve got the achievement. Now, head up to the flight path before you think of pressing on your hearthstone.

Desert Rose – Use Spring Robes to plant a flower in each of these deserts: The Badlands, Desolace, Silithus, Tanaris, and Thousand Needles. You can get the Robes from eggs or from the vendor. This is the one thing I didn’t have drop for me, so I spent the required 50 Chocolates to pick it up.

1. Now after you have completed “Hard Boiled” in Un’Goro, take the flightpath to Tanaris.
2. Once you have landed, put on your robes, and use the item to plant a flower anywhere in Tanaris.
3. Mount up and ride North into Thousand Needles, then again plant a flower wherever you want. Ride South back to the flightpath in Tanaris.
4. Take the flightpath to Silithus. Plant flower.
5. Take the flightpath up to Desolace. Plant another flower.
6. Take the flightpath to Theramore, hop the boat to Menethil Harbor.
7. Once you are off the boat, take the flightpath over to Loch Modan, mount up and ride down to the Badlands!
8. You’re done!

Some extra tips for Egg Hunting:

• Yes, people will be camping spawn spots. Be respectful.
• You don’t need to camp a spot to get all your eggs. I got most of mine running around.
• As a Druid, using your Egg Basket isn’t necessary if you just switch into your seldom used Cheetah form instead. Using the basket for the speed boost while in Cheetah form made me run way too fast and I missed a bunch of eggs.
• If someone takes “your egg”, don’t QQ. They respawn really fast, and it really isn’t anyone’s egg until it is in their bag.
• If the town you are in is overrun, head to another one.
• Noblegarden is supposed to be about being a community and cherishing love and friendship! Don’t be a jerk!

Happy Feast of Noblegarden!

Kathoid the Noble!

Yes, I have done it again! I have lost much needed sleep to do the best possible research I can, all for you, my dear readers! It took me only 4 & 1/2 hours to complete, but here you have it: Kathoid the Noble!

Tomorrow, after I catch up on all those Zzzs, I will post my tips and tricks on getting you to the Noble (title) of your dreams!

Sleep tight!

Baby Druid Update!

I haven’t been able to put as much time into my Baby Tauren Druid as I had thought I would, due to raiding and patch 3.1 related activities. But today I finally sat down and set out to accomplish the first big task as a Feral Druid: Bear Form!

I waited until I was level 12 until I set out to do the quest, mostly because I was in the middle of a bunch of quests that I wanted to complete before heading off to Thunder Bluff for the first time. The city is beautiful and wonderfully detailed, but I still get completely lost when trying to navigate it. I’m sure I felt the same about Darnassus upon my first visit, so I think it will just take some time to remember where everything is.

This is how I have spent my talent points so far:

1. Level 10 – Resto – Improved Mark of the Wild, Rank 1/2
2. Level 11 – Resto – Improved Mark of the Wild, Rank 2/2
3. Level 12 – Feral – Ferocity, Rank 1/5

I think once I ding level 20 and get Cat Form I will respec my talent points around some. At level 12, I’m not sure if it really matters where you spend your points, so long as you keep in mind that you will have a few respecs down the road.

I’m taking a break for a little bit on my Cow Druid for a bit now, seeing as I have a raid this evening, and it supposed to be an absolutely beautiful weekend here.

So I leave you with this question about Tauren. If I’m a lady cow, how come my Bear Form has a beard?

Happy Earth Day!

Rejoice Druids of Azeroth, for it is Earth Day! And while Blizzard has no in game events tied to the Holiday, there is no reason why we shouldn’t celebrate, both in and out of game.

What’s the big deal with Earth Day, anyway? Just like we have Mother’s Day to celebrate our mothers, and Valentine’s Day to show how much we love our significant others, Earth Day is a day set aside to show our support and love for our Earth, our Environment, and what we can do to protect it for the generations to come. And just like Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day, it isn’t a message we should show just once a year, but a day to higlight our feelings we have the whole year through.

We only get one planet to call home, so we should protect it and keep it strong and healthy. Even if you only show your love for the Earth once a year on Earth Day, every little bit you can do adds up.

But I’m just one person, how can I make a difference? Even if you just recycle just one Mountain Dew can, you are making a difference by keeping garbage out of the landfill. If you turn the lights off in other rooms when you settle into your computer room for a night of raiding, you will reduce your energy consumption, and lessen your energy bill in the process. When it is time to get rid of old computer parts, look into recycling instead of just tossing them out in the trash – some recyclers will also pay you for computer parts that contain metals such as gold.

Want more ideas how to make your gaming more Eco-Friendly? Check out my post on Earth Hour.

Of course, you can do more than just greening up your gaming. Here are some tips that are easy and don’t take much time (or money) at all.

• Start Recycling! Many things, from yesterday’s newspaper to empty Mountain Dew cans can be recycled. Unsure of what can be recycled? Check out Earth911.com for tips. Unsure of if you can recycle? Contact your town (or your apartment complex) for laws on recycling.
• Start Composting! Composting helps in many ways: it reduces what you throw out, it creates wonderful rich compost for your gardens, and also helps make you more aware of what you are wasting. Apple cores, grass clippings, coffee grounds, pet hair, and egg shells, among many things, are compostable. And contrary to popular belief, a well maintained compost pile does not smell. For more info, see Wired’s Wiki.
• Turn of the faucet when you brush your teeth! Brushing your teeth is a great way to keep yourself healthy. Turning off the water while you brush is a great way to keep the planet healthy. And just like flipping off the light switch when you leave a room, this will save you money in the long run.
• Eat Vegetarian! I am personally a vegetarian for lots of reasons, but a great reason to eat vegetarian just once a week (or month) is that will help cut down on emissions: both from the trucks used to transport, but from the cows themselves. “Cows are responsible for 20 percent of U.S. emissions of methane, which traps 20 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.” (source)

So what am I doing for Earth Day? Working, and Raiding. I wish I could have spent some time outside today, but my work schedule and the weather aren’t really co-operating. However, this weekend it is supposed to be sunny and warm! I plan on setting up my compost bin this weekend, doing some much needed yard work, doing some spring cleaning, and going to see Disney Nature’s new movie: Earth. It should also be mentioned that for every ticket sold to the movie for opening week, Disney will plant a tree in your honor.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

(Image Copyright SuperKathoid 2008)

Patch 3.1 is here!

Highly anticipated Patch 3.1 finally hit us this week, bringing with it Ulduar, Dual-Specs, the Argent Tournament, and much server crashing and downtime. I haven’t dabbled into Dual-Specs yet, and I am just begining the Argent Tournament quests, but I have set foot into Ulduar despite all the Server and Instance downtime and seen a couple of the bosses – which I will elaborate more on soon in another post.

3.1 also brought a lot of Druid changes our way, and I’d like to go over specifically the Feral DPS changes, and how I think they will affect us. But first, let me highlight the changes to refresh our memory.

3.1 Patch Notes Feral DPS Druid Digest

Class Changes – Druid

• Faerie Fire and Faerie Fire (Feral): Now decreases armor of your target by 5%. Has a 5-minute duration, and a 40-second PvP duration.
• Maim: This ability is now considered a stun, and shares a diminish category with all other stuns. It no longer has a chance to break from the target taking damage. Duration lowered to 1 second per combo point.
• Pounce: No longer affected by diminishing returns with other stuns, however, it now shares a diminishing return with Cheap Shot (Rogue).
• New Talent: Primal Gore: Grants the periodic damage from your Lacerate and Rip abilities the chance to critically hit.
• Primal Tenacity: The damage reduction while stunned effect now only works in Cat Form.
• Rend and Tear: The critical strike bonus for Ferocious Bite reduced to 5/10/15/20/25%, down from 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Savage Roar is now considered an Enrage effect and now increases physical damage done by 30% instead of increasing attack power.
• (Resto) Improved Mark of the Wild: Now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.

Glyphs

• Glyph of Berserk: Increases the duration of Berserk by 5 seconds.
• Glyph of Savage Roar: Your Savage Roar ability grants an additional 3% bonus damage done.
• Glyph of Shred: Now increases remaining duration on Rip by 2 seconds each time it is used, up to a maximum of 6 seconds.
• Glyph of Survival Instincts: Increases the percentage of your maximum health received from Survival Instincts to 40%.

Bug Fixes

• Swipe: Now properly affected by area-of-effect damage caps.

My thoughts?:

The changes to Fairie Fire are minor, and all it really breaks down to is saving you a GCD by having it last 5 minutes now. The change to 5% armor is just so it scales better – it shouldn’t make much of a difference at all.

Maim, Pounce, and Primal Tenacity changes aren’t that important to a Raiding Kitty, but will be much more important to a PvP Kitty. I don’t spec any points into Primal Tenacity, so no change here for me.

Our newly added talent Primal Gore makes me a happy Kitty, and should make Bears happy as welll. In cat form, it gives each tick of Rip the chance to crit, and now that Rip can last upwards of 26 seconds (with T7 2-set, Glyph of Shred, and Glyph of Rip) this can add up to quite a bit more damage over time. The chance to crit is based off your own Crit Chance, not some seperate number, so with my Crit Chance at 47.13% unbuffed, I can expect to see a nice bit of extra damage compared to pre-3.1 numbers. As for Bears, it gives each tick of Lacerate the chance to crit, which will add up to more threat.

The change to Rend and Tear only applies to Ferocious Bite, which I very seldom use in my Raiding rotations. I’m not sure if it is used more in PvP or not, but I don’t see this change so much as a nerf as it is just balancing out the classes.

Savage Roar has been changed from an extra 40% Attack Power to an extra 30% Damage Done (33% with Glyph of Savage Roar). I’m really not good with numbers, and am not even sure how to do math to see what the change would be here. Reading a bit on forums and the like seem to work it out to be a buff rather than a nerf, but how much of a buff I am not sure yet. I really haven’t spent too much time in Ulduar or any raid since 3.1, so I’m not sure how much more DPS I am doing post-patch. If anyone has any more mathematical insight into the SR change, please let me know and I will update as needed.

While Improved Mark of the Wild is not a Feral Talent, I am recommending that all Druids, whether Feral, Boomkin, or Resto, put two points into this talent. Some Ferals, myself included, have had points into IMotW for quite sometime due to the lack of other Druids in Raids in order to provide the best possible Raid buff. This talent now goes beyond the buffs and now gives 1/2% to all attributes. It may not seem like a lot, but being a baseline Talent, it is definetly worth putting points into.

The Swipe change is one I have been expecting for a while. Seeing as it is a “Bug Fix” I can see that Blizz never intended for any of us to be doing 21K DPS or the like. Don’t look at this as a nerf, look at this as just a bug fix. We weren’t supposed to be getting such insanely high DPS, however limited the time is, and they are just restoring the balance. I don’t know what the actually AoE damage cap is, but I can still do quite a bit of DPS while swiping. Don’t think it Swipe is going to suck now; it doesn’t.

Onto the Glyphs!:

• Glyph of Berserk and Glyph of Survival Instincts aren’t impressing me that much. I am guessing that these two new Glyphs are made for our Bear friends. (Any Bears wanna confirm this?) I haven’t paid for my Dual-Spec yet and haven’t really looked into what Glyphs I will want for Bear Tanking, but I will consider these when I begin to look.
• The change to Glyph of Shred makes me very happy. Previously this would “Increases the damage dealt by Shred to stunned and incapacitated targets by 20%.”. For raiding, this really didn’t do much for me, but as one of the few Cat specific Glyphs, I had it. However, now it is a must have for a raiding Kitty. I will get into my “Cat Rotation” in a future post, but the main goal is to keep both Savage Roar and Rip up at all times. With the T7 2 set bonus and the already existing Glyph of Rip, Rip will last 20 seconds. If you Shred three times during that 20 seconds, the Rip will last a total of 26 seconds. Very nice indeed.
• The newly added Glyph of Savage Roar also is a must have for all Raiding Kitties. It gives us an extra 3% damage done when Savage Roar is up, to a total of 33%. As I said, one of the goals of a Cat Rotation is to keep Savage Roar up constantly, so an extra 3% damage done overall is nothing to laugh at.

I plan to update my previous Glyph posts soon to reflect these changes and additions.

I hope everyone else is enjoying Patch 3.1 as much as I have been. I love the Argent Tournament quests, the new Fishing Dailies, and am really looking forward to seeing all that Ulduar has to offer!

Don’t forget that The Feast of Noblegarden is fast approaching us now! It begins on Sunday, April 26th and runs for a full week until Saturday, May 2nd! I will, of course, have guides up for all the newly added achievements once the event starts!

Kitty Swipe: An Updated Review

Now that it has been many months since “Swipe (Cat)” has been added, I would like to take some time to talk about it again.

Yes, I still think that Swipe is a little OP – in the numbers. However, Swipe is still in no way sustained DPS and there is no way to make it sustained DPS, therefor it is really not all that over powered at all. I like to think of it as a fun thing to play around with, not something that is going to make me the best DPS overall for the raid.

When I say “fun”, this is what I mean:

No, I did not photoshop my Recount meter. Yes, that is 21,380 damage per second. I wish I could say that this is from a Level 80 instance, but this is from Ahn’Qiraj: the “gauntlet” you have to run down that has dozens of little bugs in it. We pulled the whole hallway and AoE-ed them down at the end. I just had to bash Swipe a few times to get them all down, but there were so many of them that it added up to a whole lot of damage. (For reference, the druid below me on the chart is a Boomkin, also AoEing.)

I don’t think Blizzard ever intended for any class to do 21K damage per second; hence this small, unnoticed “Bug Fix” from the patch 3.1 notes: “Swipe: Now properly affected by area-of-effect damage caps.” I don’t know the specifics on what this will cap the Swipe DPS at, but I am pretty sure that we won’t be seeing any 21K DPS for a while.

Even though this “Bug Fix” seems like a nerf, I am hopeful that this small change will help fix my biggest problem with Swipe: Dying. Because “Swipe (Cat)” does so much damage, it also pulls a ton aggro, which results in me dying. A lot.

I finally got down to doing my own testing with the Idol of Perspicacious Attacks to see if it would effect Swipe (Cat) at all. While I’m not the best at running scientific experiments, my results seem to show that in Cat form the Idol doesn’t have much affect, if any at all. In Bear form it does noticeably, albeit slightly, increase DPS. In my testing though, I did notice that the thing that increases damage most with “Swipe (Cat)” is when Omen of Clarity procs. So if you haven’t included Omen of Clarity in your Feral Build and you want to maximize your Swipe damage, you might want to include it when you get your free respec tomorrow when Patch 3.1 hits.

Hoppy Easter!

Have a very Happy Easter!

I’m off for a few days to celebrate Passover and Easter with family. Enjoy your Holiday, and I will see you all back soon!

Leap of Faith

The other night I did something I never thought I would do: After more than two and a half years of calling the Dalvengyr server home, I have uprooted my entire Druid life and transferred to my new home: Drenden.

Yes, I had been actively looking for a new guild, and therefore a new server, but somehow in my heart I still believed that “Leviathan” and it’s leaders would snap out of it and realize how idiotic they were being and truly accept me back into the mix, listening to all my ideas on how to bring the guild to greatness. After all, I helped formed the guild, helped recruit members, created the guild’s website, and helped teach many of the fights to new members. I did a lot more than that too; I became friends with many of the members on what I thought was a deeper level than just raiders and guildies.

I really truly cared about these people, about the guild, and about progressing with them into Ulduar. They felt differently. And after the last straw fell there was too much broken to ever repair. So I quickly said my goodbyes to the people I will miss the most, signed off for the last time, and paid for what I hope will be my only server transfer ever. Even though I felt very confident in my decision to leave Dalvengyr, I still feel that it was done too hastily and I should have done more research into my destination realm.

I really like to think things through, but I followed my gut and my heart on this one.

And I don’t regret it one bit.

Once I arrived intact on Drenden, there was a guild ready there to catch me: “No Vacancy”. I know the Guild Leader, Kreeoni, from both his Twitter and his Blog. As a fellow Feral Druid, albeit a Bear, I knew he would be understanding and accepting of a Feral DPS Druid. In fact, he was actually the one who sought me out and recruited me. On Dalvengyr no one really understands a Feral DPS Druid nor wants one in their guild. Here, I don’t feel so out of place or that I need to explain my existence. Here in this Guild I feel accepted and appreciated even after just a few days, something that took years to feel on my old server.

I thought the hardest part of this whole transition would be leaving all the people I thought were my friends behind. But even with only one person on my friends list I don’t feel so alone here. Nobody knows my past here, so I get to write my own future without all the drama and baggage that Dalvengyr had.

Are you on Drenden? Please let me know!! My name is, of course, “Kathoid” and I would love to add some new people to my friends list!

Looking For Guild

UPDATE: I have found my new guild: “No Vacancy” on the Drenden-PvE US Server!

Alliance Night Elf Feral DPS Druid “Kathoid” seeks an established, serious, professional, highly ranked Raiding Guild for an immediate raiding position.

My Armory

According to WoW Heroes, for Dalvengyr-US, ranked by gear score :

• #1 Alliance Feral Druid
• #2 Feral Druid Overall
• #3 Druid Overall
• #23 Character on Dalvengyr Overall

I do approx 3.5K DPS in raids, but it fluctuates depending on the boss. I also tend to be a little bit lower if I am Raid Leading. I have raided all current WotLK content on Normal and Heroic Modes, and Hard Mode Sarth 1D and 2D. I have lead raids in Naxx 10, and have been Loot Master on many occasions in all raids. I have also raided much of the Old World and BC raids. I am on the PTR but I have not raided Ulduar, but am more than willing to.

I have Off Tanked in Naxx 10 and in some instances. While I plan to make tanking my other spec when Dual-Specs arrive, I have absolutely no intentions of tanking in raids, so please do not ask me to join your guild to be a tank. I tank in a pinch, and like to keep it that way.

Ideally I would like to join a guild that has room for advancement. I have been a Guild Master of a small leveling guild and an Officer in every guild I have raided with and I feel confident in my abilities to be a honest and fair Officer. I have also created and maintained several guild websites.

I would prefer a guild that has other female Raiders and has a more mature age range (20s+). I am respectful to all other guild members and expect the same of them. I would prefer a guild that uses Loot Council to one that uses DKP or similar points system for loot. Yes, I am a female gamer – and if you have a problem with that I do not want to join your guild.

I work until 8pm EST three nights a week, so raid times must be approximately 8:30 PM EST. I don’t mind raiding several nights a week, but do not want to raid more than 5 nights a week. 3 nights is ideal, but I understand that it is to be more likely to raid 4-5 nights once Ulduar is released.

Please note that I am on a US Realm. I am also currently on a PvP realm, and prefer staying on a PvP realm, but would also be interested in moving to a PvE realm if the right opportunity came up. I do not care what time zone the Realm is in, so long as I can meet your raid times.

If you are interested in me, or know a guild that is looking for a Feral DPS Druid, please send me an email at: druidkitty AT gmail DOT com.