4.0 First Impressions!

I don't know about anyone else but it took me forever to get the last part of the patch finished (or enough data streamed to be able to play). Of course I knew this would happen so I was content with mindlessly trying to occupy my attention with other things while anxiously awaiting the patch’s completion.  I was able to hop on all of my toons eventually and take the new specs for a semi test drive but unfortunately due to how late the patch actually finished for me I was not able to spend a lot of time with them... and I probably won’t be able to do anything until later today.  

I logged in on my main first to check out first hand some of the changes to resto and feral.

Because of my time constraints I did not look into re-gemming or re-forging ( lol, I Iogged off not being completely sure if that was even available.  I just assumed it was since it was among the things to find in Shattrath when I spoke with a guard).  I did manage to get the appropriate prime glyphs for all of my toons.  I honestly didn't spend to much time in my restoration spec. I did notice I had a crap ton more hp and mana but my heals weren't hitting as hard as they used to even out of caster form let alone while in tree.  Also my mana barely moved but then again I was just messing around with the spells so I really wasn't using anything that you might say would be optimal to use in an appropriate situation.  Even still, I noticed with the cast time of the direct healing spells by the time I cast the next spell my mana was regenerating crazy fast.  I also popped the ‘tree form’ cool down to check it out.  I guess it was cool and all but I would rather just have tree form back as a permanent shapeshift.  A lot of people have qq’d about the tree form  skin as wit was before 4.0 and blizz has actually addressed that “problem” in a recent build

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I assume the four different colors are for each of the four races that have a druid class...at least that’s what I would assume.  Either way they most likely won’t be available until Cataclysm actually ships.  Today I plan on healing at least one random to see how my resto experience will really be changed.  

After messing with resto for a bit I was really  not to to eager to test out kitty dps so I hopped on my alts first.  I’ll talk about my dk first since he was unfortunately the most lackluster.  


As some may or may not know, Blizz decided to make blood the new dedicated tank tree of dk’s and frost the dedicated dps tree.  Like all the other classes there’s not a whole lot anyone can do to deviate from a cook cutter spec due to the reduction of talent points available at the level cap.  Being that 80 isn't the level cap intended for the new talent trees everyone is definitely forced into basically picking up everything that is necessary with only a spare 2 or 4 points depending on play style.  With that said (and also mentioning that I am far from a dk expert)  I'm not disappointed with the frost tree as it pertains to me doing dps.  I'm also not doing very much dps... I guess about the same I was doing in 3.3.5.  I am insanely over the hit cap though for my dk but as I stated earlier I didn't really bother with re-gemming or re-forging yet.

I probably had the most fun on my balance druid.  After getting proper prime glyphs I found that my dps had more than doubled than what I was doing before...and Mizzle is still practically a new 80.  Its kind of a shame that he is doing almost as much dps now as Bigbody (my main) who far outgears him.  I love the new eclipse mechanic and starsurge.  I cant wait to get into a random later today.  Heres a snippet of my work on a target dummy.

After playing with Mizzle for a while I then got up the nerve to hop on Bigbody and see what all the talk has been about concerning feral kitty.  I’m definitely not the best feral kitty in WoW and not even the best on my server (although with there not being so many of us I consider myself to rank at least top...5 or 10. At least that I know of).  That's mainly due to my gear because I reached the point where it was ridiculously hard to get upgrades due to my raiding availability so I found my self getting what I could get and re-gemming and enchanting to optimize my stats. Even still I liked my stat build and I managed to put out decent dps that was obviously inherent of some skill on my part.

So after picking up my necessary prime glyphs I proceeded to the dummy to see if feral dps really went down the tubes.  Surprisingly I found that my dps did not suffer a substantial decrease.  I cant express how relieved I was.  I was so close to expressing how relieved I was in trade but I opted not too due to all the qq that was already going on.  The damage that each of my abilities was putting out was definitely different but I did not find a need to change up my rotation by much.  As it stands now there is definitely more of a urgency to keep you bleeds up at all times and having savage roar up isn't as big of a deal.  Now this is obviously my experience at level 80 with level 80 gear so things most likely will change once we move into cata.  My dps is probably where it is now because of the insane amount of crit I have and because of the haste that was added with the conversion from armor penetration.  

All in all I'm satisfied and glad that my position as viable dps still remains for the most part.  I cant wait to get in a random or a raid for that matter on this guy is all I have to say.