Level 20 and loving it

Made it to level 20 and picked up cat form. The difference in how fast you can take down a mob is breathtaking. I would estimate that I kill mobs perhaps 3 times faster, and finish with much much higher health and mana.

And that's without any kind of opener. No Pounce (level 36) or Ravage (level 32). When I trained cat form, I tripled checked my spell book looking for either of those two spells. I had forgotten it's not until much later that you get them. At level 20, there is literally no combat reason to use your newly acquired stealth (prowl) skill. Only at level 22 when you learn Shred does Prowl become useful in a poor man's version of Ravage.

Speaking of cat form... Why does the Horde cat form look so horrible? The run animation looks (at best) weird and ungainly. The mane and horns look tacky. A night elf cat looks like a svelte killing machine. A horde cat looks like a freakshow animal escaped from the circus.

Here's some suggestions Blizzard:
- Make different female and male versions of both cat and bear forms. Perhaps make the female versions a bit slender and lose the mane for the horde version.
- Improve the run animation. I've seen excellent move animations in the game, I know they can do this. Less circus freakshow, more lithe killing machine please.

kthxbye.

More gear for lower levels

Up to level 20, rings and amulets are hard to come by.

Correction: prior to TBC, they were hard to come by. With the Jewel crafting profession, lots of people create lots of low level rings just to level up. You can find these on the AH for very cheap.

Check out a handy list here. The Bronze Band of Force, is pretty sweet. You should be able to pick one up for a couple of gold. Sure, that's a ton of money for that character level - but it's nothing for an alt. Plenty of green rings for 20-75s too. Here's a good list for amulets.

My update: level 18. So close to cat form, yet so far away....

Absolutely Fake Patch Notes

2.4 is coming. Everyone knows it; Blue has been parceling out tidbits of information over the forums. With an impending patch comes fake patch notes! The latest I've seen are posted here at mmo-champion.com.

They list the probability that the patch notes are real at 50%. I put the probability at 0.00%.

Let's look at a couple of the best druid notes:

• Nurturing Instinct: Increases your healing spells by up to 50/100% of your Agility, and increases healing done to you by 25/50% of your Attack Power.
• Force of Nature: Treants now have a 15% chance to proc Entangling Roots on the target.

Nurturing Instinct: It sucks right now, even for hybrid builds with hybrid gear - but this change would be so overpowered that there's no chance it's real. A bear tank with KZ/ZA gear and perhaps a bit of Gruul gear can approach 2000 AP. That would give the bear tanks' healers an effective +1000 healing to each and every one of them. Ha! Why would you even consider bringing a prot warrior or prot pally to a raid when it's so incredibly easy to heal a bear tank? 3 healers; +3000 effective healing on the bear! So overpowered, it defies comprehension. How about a little credibility in my fake patch notes please? A bit of plausibility? Come on, try harder people.

Force of Nature: How often have you heard balance druids complaining about how much Treants suck? Oh right. Never. Well maybe you have, but I haven't. I don't know what the attack speed of the treants is, but let's say it's 2.0. 3 treats x 0.15% chance to proc Entangling Roots x 2.0 attack speed = roughly a 22.5% chance to be rooted every second. Double that for a 1.0 attack speed. I really don't see this as plausible.

Other druid notes pretty much nerf resto druids. A bit more plausible, but unlikely in my opinion.

Life as an Alt

WTB Cat Form. Will pay hefty price. PST.

Levels 1-19 suck - when you know what you're missing. Sure, they go by pretty fast - but wrath, wrath, wrath (maybe), moonfire, whack on target with large stick for a while is not my idea of fun.

After flying around with swift flight form, walking around everywhere is pure pain. Arrrrrgggghhhh. Why, oh why, can't I play Blizzard $25 for a premade level 60 character once I've hit 70 with a normal character? It's a win for everyone, and it would not be that hard to develop.

I'm pretty much playing my horde druid now, unless a ZA or KZ run is happening, or some short queue arenas.

To Reroll or Not to Reroll, that is the question

The friends & coworkers I play with are convinced that rerolling Horde is the way to go. They're probably right - but - with so much time invested in my current Alliance characters (that I continue to enjoy playing), I'm finding it unappealing to reroll and level 1-70 all over again.

I could level my 46 Shaman and save myself 46 levels. But Shaman suck. I find them boring to play, so screw that. I've played long enough with enough alts to realize that I enjoy druids and warlocks; the rest of the classes don't appeal to me.

Well, I decided to create a horde druid and see if I can stomache the leveling process all over again. Whimzy, currently level 11, let's see if you hold my interest.

Notes so far: I enjoy a NE character model over a Cow. Shocking, I know.

2.4 Patch Notes.... Sorta

Blue forum posters have been posting bits of info on upcoming 2.4 changes today. I'm not going to bother listing all of them; just go to mmo-champion for the latest and greatest.

However, he's two of my favorite upcoming changes:

- We've reached a point where we're now confident that applying diminishing returns to honor is no longer necessary, and we're currently planning to remove it with the 2.4 patch.
- What the removal of diminishing returns means for you is that as soon as you defeat an opponent that rewards you honor, you will receive that honor, and you will be able to spend it right then.

Good stuff. I really hated the difference between the "estimated honor" and what you actually got. Seemed to be that you received anywhere from 10-20% less than what was estimated, likely due to the diminishing returns on honor kills.

dgks

dG Killshot Notifier - It was Dusky the other night who said over Ventrillo, "If I had to have only one addon, this would be it".

There's no other addon that I've found that adds so much fun to the game.

I'm at a loss for words on how awesome it is. It's really, really simple. For everyone who runs the addon, you get a voice notification and big text notification whenever someone gets a killing blow. The Unreal Tournament sounds are used.

It adds so much fun to any premade group as you hear "Killing spree!", "Unstoppable!", "Double kill!" and "GODLIKE!" amongst others. While as a healer, you rarely get killing blows yourself, it's still fun hearing others in your group get the kills.

BUT WAIT! There's more!!!! If you act now...

I've found that besides being fun, the mod actually helps me in arenas (especially 5v5), by increasing my situational awareness. I'm running around trying to keep opponents cycloned, rooted and teammates healed. I'm paying little, if any, attention to enemy health bars. When I hear the killshot notification go off, I get an update on how we're progressing, I get a heads up that DPS is looking for a new target. It's surprisingly useful.

You can get different voice packs here. I recommend sticking with the original voicepack.