Welcome to the Handicap Hybrid Blog

As a personal flaw I like to play my toons in a way that is concidered substandard.  Basically I don’t like people telling me what to do.  I have a Druid level 64 and a Human Paladin level 60.  Whenever people tell you that one spec is easyer for leveling, what they mean is from 60-70 I just found that out.  

I leveled resto on the druid until 62 when I realized that people might be right about feral being easyer to level the final levels.  I have done two levels as straight feral.  I am done with that.  I am going to go back to instances.  which are a great way to level by the way.  I am going to respec in a way that lets me be viable in dungens.

The paladin followed the flow as well until level 44 when I got bored of it.  Now she is a shockadin.  which gives me a great up hill task to see how the shockadin will work in Wrath.  looks like not so good. but we will make it work.  

So if you like trying Specs that just barly work, take a ton of skill, and do things that make most people go “huh? why do you have that gear/spec/gems/enchants?”  Then this is the blog for you.  This is the place where Ret pallys, and Moonkins tank.  This is the place where holy pallys are ranged DPSers.  Welcome to the handicap Hybrids blog

 

Seamus

Paladin Update 11-21-2008

Paladin Has clawed her way to 63, while I was waiting for someone to go to town and buy me wrath. I still hate BC. I don’t know why. I love the gear and the endless entertainment at 70, but getting from 60 to 70 is the hardest thing I have ever done. not because of difficulty, but rather sheer lack of will. I just don’t want to do any of the quests. they often have low drop rates for which you might as well AoE grind. I don’t find any of the story outside of the instances in any compelling. So I look foreword to getting done with it and moving on to Northrend. Which is Beautiful, by the way. Different too, they put a lot of thought into making this a different experience for the quester.

Seamus

Resto your tree loving self to 80

Wrath is out, and you have most likely read all the news about it. It rocks in my humble opinion. However I have seen no info on leveling Resto through wrath. Most people are dropping bark for feather chickens and laser chickening to 80. I don’t think this is necessary. I am now at level 72 working on 73. I have ran several instances, but most of my leveling comes from questing.

So how am I doing it? Simple, Spell power and healing power are the same thing now. So while I lack some of the spell that a balance druid might have, I still hit for a fair amount. As long as you keep roots on your target it is really not that hard. Also if you have to use your body to absorb a few blows from adds, no problem your a freaking healer for crying out loud. Pop thorns and keep your HoTs up.

I Know that I am the person that would try to tough it out no matter what. This is different. Even I could not stand to level thought BC with the resto spec. No damage what so ever, great heals but still killing things took forever. In wrath I enjoy leveling full resto. The quest are new and different, drop rates are not so bad. So grow a pair (of branches of course), and level like a true resto.

Seamus

I was wrong about life bloom.

I have never said that this was a blog that had all the answers. I am learning about the process while I go. I see this as a great resource for people that are new to the druid. soon I am planing on writing a piece about how to play a druid at low levels. because being a 70 is not the entire game. some people like to twink out at 19,29. which makes sense I think those are purer ranks to do Bgs at.

Having said all that I was wrong about life bloom. while the healing it provides is mediocre. I give you a lot of flexibility. you keep lifebloom on the target for a little extra healing. then if your target takes a big hit, all you have to do is let it expire and you give him a nice HP bump. if he doesn’t take a spike you just refresh it. combine that with rejviation and wild growth and you have three instacast HoTs which deliver a constant stream of healing without too much threat. you don’t have to deal with threat spikes like paladins and priests do. Again I don’t know about shamans I don’t like them.

I don’t at the moment use life bloom like most people do. I don’t keep in on 4 targets and let that be my only healing done. instead I keep the tank HoTted, and then heal others with wild growth for small spikes, or a regrowth for big spikes. which is the great thing about being a druid, the tank in being healed the whole time I am dealing with the damage on other people. Now before I have to write another piece about being wrong. I have only done 5 man instances. maybe in a raid situation i will have to resort to constant lifeblooms on people.

Seamus

A new Take on the Shockadin

Defensive Shockadin

A thought that occurred to my just now. Since we lost one of our huge damage dealers, and I am hesitant to commit to seal of casino(command), what if we focused more on our survivability. Remember the core idea is that we are an effective arena, or BG healer, but the thing that sets us apart from other healers is one massive burst damage, and two incredible defensive abilities. I think this build stays true to that goal.

Lets run though the build and have a look. Holy Tree is standard stock. We go low enough to get holy shock (duh). We go a step deeper to get two great healing talents. Infusion of light and Holy guidance. Here is where the new ideas come in. We go down the prot tree. Blessing of the Kings, while costly is worth it I think as it help make up for the mana efficiency we lose in the ret tree. Stoicism and guardian’s favor help us stay in a healing capacity and keep our tank alive by getting him out of hot spots. we can use our bubble more often, blessing of freedom lasts longer. Then the two I am really happy about, a quicker stun and a fair amount more armor. although that last point might be better spent in Divine Illumination. For better mana efficiency.

None of this has been double checked. I have not played or ran the math on any of it. It was just a thought. Constructive criticism welcome.

Seamus

Tweaked feral/resto hybrid 1.0

Tweaked Feral Resto Hybrid

Tweaked my Build from my last post. This lets me have swiftmend and Primal precision. I had to sacrifice improved tranquility and one point in feral instinct. Those are one I feel I can do with out for the time being. I might back fill the improved tranquillity once i get to 72. I haven’t looked past 70 yet to see if there are a few more talents that I want or not.

So this is the final release version of the druid’s talent tree once he reaches 70. Test it as you like it is released under the creative commons license. Just kidding.

Seamus

Paladin Update 10 27 2008

My paladin has one of the rarest specs, for pallies. Shockadin. Meet Pearseamus. al level 60 shockadin working her way to 70 slowly I am afraid. Shockadins have a bad wrap right now. prewrath we were able to dump 6000-8000 damage consistently in the matter of two global cooldowns, from a distance of 30 yards. However with the changes in wrath we no longer have our Judgement of Righteousness. the damage it does now is a mere pittance of what it was. Holy shock also got a nerf It is still useable for 4000 damage or so, but all the new talents we got will not push it above that 4000 limit for now. I still have to look at gear in wrath to see if we might be able to push it a little higher.

So where does that leave us? Most web sites say give up on the shockadin. Theorycrafting web sites have comments like “the ret pally has more DPS so there is no theorycrafting on this spec.” /push BS button. People who say this don’t understand the Shockadin at all. Shockadin is not a ret pally. For one we can heal way better. For another we are not a melee class. We stay back and heal then dump a huge load of damage from a distance. If we have to swing a few times in the meantime to keep up our DPS, then so be it we have plate armor, and a shield to handle it.

What we are left with is a quest to find another spell that will let us dump more damage. Preferably this will be a ranged spell. As of right now I don’t know what this will be. Crusader strike is one point away at level 80; which I am sure was the plan. Seal of Casino(command) would up our DPS out put quite a bit, but we would have to be in melee range, and it takes a fair number of swings to get a good amount of damage off it. So for now the hunt continues. Just remember this is a spec that works if only for as a healer in plate armor. It has great potential. We just have to find one more spell that will give us some great damage, so we can finish off people once they get to half health.

Seamus

PvP Update. 10-27-08

I have mentioned this in one of my previous posts, but I figure I should tell whole story as it is kinda funny. I logged into my Druid after a 3 day dry spell on it. I was in no mood to level, so I decided to BG. Remember that he is only 64 right now. I didn’t know that 70s are in the 60-69 bracket. I assumed that 70s had their own bracket. So I entered an Eye of the Storm match, and I was the only non 70. Trying to be nice I apologized to the group for my lack of understanding. Then followed that up with “I hope I don’t drag you down. Another Druid replied with “You will why don’t you just quit.” He was in tree form so I knew he was pretty far down the resto tree. I replied in character with “I bet I can out heal you.” He bet me 1000 Gold. I only had 200 since I had just bought my mount, So he gave me 5 to 1 odds.

At this point I had 4 thing working against me.

1) Feral speced
2) No healing gear
3) My raid healing UI add-on was broke from the 3.0 Patch
4) 6 level difference.

Fortunately in this game skill does matter. My strategy was to click on people as often as I could. If they were horde I would push “f” to see who they were targeting. I tried to get in as many big heals as I could. When I ran out of mana I would time a GY rez by watching when other people spawned, then get myself killed right before a spawn. This method worked decently well but I was still 20,000 heal point behind the other Druid. My break came at the end when it was clear the alliance would win. For whatever reason everyone rushed the middle for one last big battle. Seeing my opportunity I ran in and tossed up tranquility which can heal 1400 every second to five people, with crits up to 2000. it lasts about 6 second. Also fortunate for me the five people in my party were all taking a ton of damage. I healed 32,000 in that one heal. This put me squarely at the top of the healing charts.

I like telling these little stories about PvP because they are fun for me, and I want to share them with you. It is not because I am conceited. I plan on sharing some stories soon about how I got owned righteously. If these bother you in anyway just don’t read them.

Case for Druids being the best RP class.

First off let me say that I love my pally, and I have no problem or loss of love for any class. That said, I don’t connect with any class the way I do with my Druid. This might be because both my hunter and pally are girls. I experimented with the pally in a role playing way. It didn’t work, mainly because I cannot pretend to be a girl and have people believe me.

On to the Druid. My case is based on the fact that the Druid has forms, and in essence can be four different characters(as a side note I don’t have characters for my travel, aquatic or flight forms as I consider them utility and not “people”) As a night elf my Druid is kinda a young punk. Likes to taunt people and talk trash. Sometimes makes rash decisions, there have been time to taunt a NPC the Humanoid form has aggroed people in a dungeon that he shouldn’t have.

As a cat the Druid is a female. She likes to play. Often will break stealth to pounce on a mouse. Loves to be the center of attention. Loves being able to run around.

As a Tree my Druid is more like a old time preacher. Often saying “HEAL” before tossing up his arms/branches to cast a heal. He has the mindset that injuries are bad, and loves to relieve pain. He considers it a spiritual experience. If they give us different looks to our forms as has been discussed the tree might take on more of a sage character, but we will have to see.

The bear at present has no personality. I know that some of you think RP is for nerds. Don’t look at it like that. don’t look at it like people trying to pretend to be a different person. Rather look at it as a virtual envierment where your toon, since you spend so much time with him starts to take on a personality. Much like a pet does in real life. You are not that person. I think that most RPers don’t consider themselves to be the toon in any way but rather look at it as a thing with a life of it’s own.

Seamus

PvP Update.

As you know, if you have played at all in the last couple of days, there is a plague infestation in the major cites. Also there is an achievement for killing the king of the opposite faction. These two facts combined into a great PvP story. Last night a huge group of horde were attempting to attack Stormwind. Alliance on my server are kinda weak. One we are out numbered and two most of them can’t be bothered to help with anything. So a few 70 were fighting the good fight at the gates but most were just chilling in the AH. What is a lowly level 64 druid to do? I healed for a while but I really wasn’t doing much. Finally a great idea popped into my head. I ran back into the city and got infected. After waiting the required two minutes I ran back out to the fight as a zombie. I ran into the middle of the horde and started infecting like crazy. There were way too many horde for them to even see what was happening. After a minute or so zombies started popping up every where. Needless to say the invasion was ruined. I take single handed credit for it. Of course it wasn’t all me, but I would like to think so.

Seamus

The Meaning of Handicap Hybrids

I don’t want anyone to be offended by the name Handicap Hybrids. I mean no joke or disrespect to the handicap community. rather I think the choice in name is appropriate because. While I am choosing to handicap my toons. I am making them work. Which I think embodies the spirit of the handicap community. Of course mine is a choice and theirs is not, but still we are both trying to make the best out of a less than perfect situation.