Assuming I don’t get better stuff in between I’ll be looking to deck my moonkin out in The windhawk gear which looks like I just buy it from a trainer once I hit 375. Trick is to get there in short order of course.

I must admit – I’ll have to congratulate blizzard on what is essentially a whole new game for me on top of what World of Warcraft. Level wise I’m half way through being 65, but clearly there’s a bucket load of end game out there so I far less than half way through in game time.

I’m experiencing the same wonder I had when I started out in Darnassus many moons ago (oo! a pun there since I’m a Night Elf). So I started out with herbing and skinning I think, get some cash and what have you, switching to enchanting and herbing at some point (yup – odd mix) and then to tailoring and enchanting making gear to sell and disenchant. So now I’m a leather worker and enchanter, 181 in one and about 320 in the other as I recall, I’ve got 25 quests and still loads to do in zangermarsh and terrokar forest and I’ve not even. A little research reveals its probably the kurenai guys I’m keenly interested in for my leather working as they have the recipe’s for the Netherfury set which looks well suited to my moonkin build. I must admit, at this time I’ll be hard pressed to let my current build go – my mana regen is awesome, I’m a capable healer (not quite the same output as my previous raid build but..) and actually my dps is starting to show some real promise.

Gotta admit – tempted to skip terrokar and go straight to nagrand for the kuernai rep but we shall see.

This kilt is of interest too.

bah – just noticed netherfury is mail gear :o( – doh! It’s windfury I want!

next!

Still – lots of content, new things and stuff. all good :D

As previously reported I had had issues finding a talent build that suited me. As it turns out the moonkin/nature’s swiftness build is working out great so no expensive re-talenting lately. In addition given some of the cool moonkin leatherworking recipe’s around at the moment and the requirement to actually do leatherworking to wear them had me concerned about my choice of professions – then tailoring (328) and enchanting (320). I’ve switched to leatherworking and thus far got my skill to 150 at very little cost. I’ve kept enchanting as getting that skill was expensive and hard work.

I will write up stuff about the rest of my life at some point but right now, my spare time is focussed on levelling my character to catch up / keep up with my guild.

So, my previous mostly resto and a little balance build really didn’t cut the mustard. Compared to the full balance moonkin dps build the difference in dps output was absurd. With the full balance build I was regularly hitting for 2.2k (crit + bonuses) and with this new build I’m lucky if I get over 900 with a starfire hit. Gotta admit though my survivability is much much improved. So, I die more and I’m not too useful in instances with a full balance build, but I can’t dps to save my life in the mostly resto build. Not only that but I’m starting to get mana issues due to missing out on some of the lovely regen abilities later down the talent trees. What’s a druid to do?

Well wowwiki has a nice druid builds section, in particular some lvl 70 balance builds which are nice. There’s a nice swiftmend/balance build that I may actually use when I get back to raiding but I’m feeling that I would like a moonkin build at the minute. Something like a 31/0/21 natures swiftness build appeals to me, although being level 62 I now have a few more points to play with.

So – what are my goals. I rather fancy trying to be a dps machine but still able to heal groups. The point of the balance spec was I felt that a caster focussed build would leave me as a reasonably effectively healer and I fancied being a mage for a while. Whilst I was getting some pretty neat dps out (mage like) I found the build wasn’t reliable for healing a 5 man as there were no emergency heals available. As it stands the swiftmend build left me able to heal (although most of the groups I went in had a priest and wanted me to tank – go figure) but I sacrificed more than I was happy to with the dps side of things. FYI – natures grace is only useful if you’re going to crit alot and frankly the build I had and my gear didn’t do that (go go moonkin form).

So, probably on Wednesday and most likely still level 62 I’ll be getting the moonkin talent back, but this time with natures swiftness (possibly with a macro to drop moonkin form and insta-heal meself to improve survivability). So, I’ll be going from my current resto swiftmend balance nature’s grace build to this moonkin natures swiftness not quite so resto build . All this testing different builds is getting a little expensive so this is likely my last for another week. I think the weekly drop in talent reset happens every wednesday so may wait till then to actually do it.

As posted here I’ve been using full balance so far in burning crusade and solo wise it’s served me very well. It’s not served me so well in the instances though, where my group abandoned a Furnace run because I couldn’t keep the healing up with the suicidal dudes I was with. Still, it did demonstrate that great healing gear isn’t enough in a 5-man group when I don’t have talents for a quick response heal.

So, I’m now looking at a 21/0/31 build . So I get omen of clarity back (love that), natures swiftness for instant heal and swiftmend – giving me back my quick heals. I also get the the bonus damage and natures grace abilities from the balance tree.

I figure that the ability to heal outside moonkin form will actually up my survivability and losing the treants will be a shame – but I’ll die less and be more effective in instances – will report back.

FOR LONDON BASED PEOPLE

As you may be aware, we are experiencing very high winds this evening and travel is affected. There are many bridge closures on roads and trains will be slower than usual with delays and/ or cancellations.

The current public transport situation is as follows:

• Due to roof collapses at Kings Cross the station is currently closed and there are no services to the Hitchin, Letchworth and Stevenage area.
• London Bridge is also closed due to a roof collapse.
• Euston station is also closed.
• A limited service is operating out of Liverpool Street.
• There are very few trains out of Waterloo and there is no Eurostar service.
• There is disruption to services out of Charing Cross

English weather eh?

Emerald Dream (EU) was problem free as the portal opened. The gather in front of the portal was fun and had lots of banter, mood was good. Got kicked off just before midnight, logged back in nice and easy and hey presto, one draenei shammy quickly rolled and then on with levelling my druid.

Forgot how much I enjoyed levelling, questing, killing X foozles, take [magical random thingummy] to bob down the road. In terms of new experiences bombing the scourge from an armoured gryphon is just superb.

4 discs….

installer done now, nice graphics, slightly too loud on the music at start and end – all very exciting!

doh!

hit the expansion page – 3 hours 26 minutes to go….

oh the tension, the excitement…

actually it is just a game. I’ll go watch some telly with my wife for a bit ;)

update – worth logging in as there’s a small update to down load (looks like it reapplies the 2.0x patches) – 3 hours 20 left…

oo – the portals been changed to the dark one (bet the beta users knew that already…) 3 hours 15

The burning crusade is due to start tonight in about 12 hours and 42 minutes and here I am, sat at work in possession of a copy of the expansion, a little ahead of the release time which is 11pm 15 January 2007 UK time. play.com has certainly worked for me this time around.

I went with a full balance build and found that actually it wasn’t too bad for healing. All my quick healing abilities are missing – swiftmend, natures swiftness – but I was able to heal effectively through a Stratholme run which is promising. If I get time for the last of my guilds raids in the coming few days before burning crusade pops up I’ll most likely switch back to my old build but I think I’ll definitely be going balance build in the expansion

Pros:

• Relies on high int and spirit like healing does
• Balance tree has bonuses to healing and massive mana regen abilities
• good dps output with low down times
• +damage/healing gear helps healing more than melee gear tends too

Cons:

• Still going to be quests that suit cat form stealth or tanking
• spells aren’t so effective versus higher level mobs that resist more
• Few good options for quick heals
• feral was fun from lvls 1-59

from play.com

World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Expansion Pack) (PC Games)

£17.99

Posted: 12/01/2007

Seems ruby got in a funny state - sorry to those trying to read and being unable to today.

posted to my guild forums…

Was hoping to get some Wow time in this week but it’s proved infeasible with a bunch of stuff going on at work. Hoping sunday is going to happen but my wifes signed me up to do some tech support (friends office installation is wonky).

Hope to get some of the last raids of WOW pre-BC – see you in game when I can..

Seems my post Top healer in SWStats appears in the list of URLs returned. Very little idea why but hey.

Only noticed as the feedburner stats tell me what folks searched on to hit my site. most odd.

Seems in the next patch my tree form aura will be switched from bonus to healing done to bonus to healing received. In practice this will make little difference in 5-man groups, but will hurt my healing output in larger groups. Still, Burning Crusade will be out by then so I'll be off doing 5-man's mostly anyhow - nice.

hi,

As part of my self appraisal activities I felt that I was weak in my business analysis skills, or at least there was an opportunity to leverage those kind of skills in my current role. As such I’m currently doing the ISEB Organisational Context course with a view to getting the Business analysis diploma . A good measure of if I’m learning something is if I could have passed the exam without doing the course – I get the feeling this wasn’t the case so the course will do me good. A measure of if the course was useful will be how much I use it’s content but I guess that will come later. Still, for now I need to do some reading up and I got 1.5 days of course and exam on Wednesday.

all good fun.

My ISEB tagged links on del.icio.us

Seems I have to post this Technorati Profile to claim my blog. I added the wee searchy thing on the right too...

Something I hadn’t really thought about before was the propensity for T’ai chi and chi gung folks to have a T’ai chi belly. This could be attributed to the breathing techniques and the development of chi, however other esoteric arts such as Yoga that have the breathing and the Prana development don’t seem to result in a physique that looks like one has had too much beer…

This post on on his recent experiences with Wang Shujin in Taichung, Taiwan prompted these thoughts

Went to see Eragon tonight - really enjoyed it as did me wife. Different from the book, necessarily so I guess as you can only get so much into a film but I did feel the book had more tension, more of a chase feel to it and was a better storyline. I also felt the were-cat ought to have been in there but I can see how they had to chop things out. Good story, cute baby dragon, reasonable growing story, fairly true to Brom's story, not totally sure about the big fight at the end but it was entertaining. All in all, I liked it.

Currently I use google analytics and feedburner as my analytics tools and this weeks certainly been interesting, well for me at least. Since Tobold linked me I’ve had a significant increase in visits, many attributable directly to that website but a few from others. The following table shows visitors and hits over the last week:

Date Range	Visits	Pageviews
Wed 12/27	4	4
Thu 12/28	4	8
Fri 12/29	33	44
Sat 12/30	11	85
Sun 12/31	13	19
Mon 1/1	142	379
Tue 1/2	154	397

And the referrals table is quite interesting too:

Sources	Visits
tobolds.blogspot.com	214
reddit.com	48
dawnraiders.com	42
(direct)	17
claimid.com	17

I’ve also had some subscribers too (whom I guess will see this as a result – hello!)

Well I’m glad that my recent efforts in writing a couple of long pieces has had some readership. All very gratifying

Joe-Joe – a couple of weeks ago but she’s still going strong

The wee cat

One of the baby snails

Ok, so I know I’m like light years behind on this but hey, finally got round to watching it. I was a big Buffy fan and Angel – actually met my wife as a result but that’s another story. So Joss Whedon’s next show was always likely to sit well with me. I believe it was last Christmas that I received the box set as a present (oops) and finally got round to watching it over the past week – in between writing that huge warcraft post…

The show is amazing. Great, love the characters – the setting, all good. I can see where some of the ideas came from for the new battle star galactica series (which I rate very highly too). As I recall I got the film for my birthday so I’ll go dig that out.

Must admit – I heard some months ago the chance of bringing it back was gone, but it’s not until now, now that I’ve seen the show and gotten to know the characters that I feel like something has been lost from the world – something that could have given us all something…

• wikipedia entry for Firefly

Figured I’d link back. He’s a great read and I’ve been reading his blog since at least January – Awesome stuff. He’s far more prolific than I am so a good one to check back on regularly:

Craigs wow in 2006 review