Wednesday, June 11, 2008

When is a Bear not a Bear

So, you all may have noticed lately that not only have I not been posting much, but when I DO post, it hasn't been about druids. Lately, all I've been talking about are my paladin and other holy men (Well, technically I was married by a judge, but thats neither here nor there). And while I imagine most people who read this blog find other classes to be interesting, the general idea behind a druid-themed blog is, in fact, discussion of the druid class.

So, whats with the absence of bear-tanking goodies lately? Well, I have a confession to make . . .



I'm bored. In a general sense, I'm a bit bored with the game as a whole, mostly because of my inability to participate in the activities I really want to be a part of. I haven't been able to attend our thursday/friday raid nights for a long time now, and those are our boss farming days (at least I don't actually need any gear from the farm bosses on Surania due to a combination of crap itemization and obscenely overpowered badge gear). Weekend raiding in Prophecy has been largely hit-or-miss lately; I haven't seen the inside of a 25-man instance for three weeks now.

Heck, I can't even get into Karazhan raids half of the time, as everybody-and-their-mother runs it while I'm at work on tuesdays. The midnight run I once hosted has fallen prey to earlier runs, summer schedules, and a general apathy which seems to have been caused by a combination of people jumping to Age of Conan, an early-onset pre-expansion (hyphen-inducing) slump, and the start of summer. Poor Jasminne is still in fairly crappy gear (though she did finally save up the 75 badges for that sexy paladin tanking chest).

Honestly, that takes away half of the reason I play the game these days. 5-man content is nice and all, but I've done every damn instance so many times that the runs bore me to death. PvP . . . well, if I really wanted to PvP, I'd probably join the folks jumping ship for AoC. And low-level content? Yeah, I'm rolling yet ANOTHER alt just to fill my WoW playing time, but honestly its about as engaging as farming gold (which I also detest, by the way). And as for the other half of the reason I play? I love my guildies, and hanging out with them, but alas, most of the folks who are usually online when I can play have started a set of Horde alts who I have no hope to catch up to.

All of that contributes to my lack of posting in general. But there's one other thing. Something that is hard for me to admit to, especially here amongst my fellow Druids.

Surania has been boring the crap out of me.

Thats right. I'm bored of my druid. I haven't completely hammered down why I've lost interest in playing Surania, but I've come to realize a number of contributing factors:

1:) I'm a spoiled brat who misses the limelight. I remember the pre-BC days, when getting to occasionally offtank an add in a raid was a huge deal for me as a bear tank. Compared to those days, I have it damn good. But I'm selfish, and miss the days when Prophecy was young, with just a handful of 70s. Back then, I was THE go-to tank, the best geared and skilled meat shield. When we couldn't take down Prince Malchezaar because he kept killing the tank in phase two, *I* was the big gun called in to take the hits.

I didn't know it back then, but that Malchezaar kill was to be the last guild-first I would ever get to maintank. I was on Shaman duty the day we downed Maulgar. Gruul himself was being tanked by me when he died, but only because our actual maintank bit the bullet halfway through. The two T5 bosses guides commonly suggest using a bear tank on were tanked by warriors; I was cat DPS/add offtank the first time Tidewalker fell (despite trying to clue in the raid leader to bears' superiority in the MT role on that fight), and wore bark the first time we cleansed Leotheras of his inner demon for good.

I know, druids are the ideal offtanks, not main tanks. And I know that my limited play schedule means I really SHOULDN'T be getting the premium tanking gigs. But God damn, I miss the rush of adrenaline as the big, bad boss who was beating on my furry hide fell for the very first time. Its an incredibly addictive feeling.

2: The class no longer challenges me. Perhaps there will be new challenges when we start progressing full bore into T6 instances, but right now we're preparing to tackle the old 3/4 - 5/6 T5 gatekeeper bosses (Kael'thas and Vashj, for those who didn't know), and my tanking roles have been boring me. "Take [insert add name here] over to that corner and keep him busy." just isn't all that exciting, especially when said add is weak enough to be tanked by a fury warrior in half blues (that is, the majority of non-boss mobs, including many bossfight adds). Half of my tanking assignments, I could literally smack the mob with a mangle, move them to my spot, and then go AFK, autoattack generating ample threat to hold the mob until it dies.

Yes, I will admit, I HAVE done that during raids. So sue me.

3: I have nowhere to go from here. I look at loot lists for the bosses my guild is killing and shrug. I see plenty of gear I'd die for on my Paladin, or my Warlock, but nothing I give a crap about on Surania. Sure, I could definitely fight for some upgrades to my cat DPS set, but since I wear my tanking gear more often than my damage gear on raids, I've never felt right in taking the gear over rogues, hunters, and DPS warriors (assuming we had any, all our warriors are tanks for some reason). And anyhow, even if there were upgrades to my tanking set available, I don't earn much DKP (as most of it is earned on the farming nights, which I can't attend, or by farming raid materials, which as I mentioned earlier, I detest).

Not that getting upgrades would make much difference these days. Like I said, I'm usually tanking stuff that could be tanked by fury warriors in half blue gear.

So, in short, the class I once absolutely adored now has me absolutely a-bored. What's a guy to do? Well, I'm not 100% sure yet, but its looking more and more likely that, once WotLK hits, Kirari (my warlock) will become my main character. I never used to be much for straight damage-dealing characters in games, but I've become rather addicted to the affliction warlock lifestyle. And, on the plus side, if blizzard continues bringing out encounters like Shade of Aran, Teresian Illhoof, High King Maulgar, and Leotheras the Blind, I'll have plenty of interesting challenges that I, as a warlock, will be uniquely equipped to deal with.

Thats a decision to set in stone later on, though. I refuse to change mains before the expansion simply due to the fact that Surania has benefitted greatly from her time raiding with Prophecy in terms of gear. I would feel like I was cheating the guild if I did not continue to use said gear to further our raiding efforts until such time as said gear becomes obsolete. Not to mention, I'd never be able to catch up in gear if I switched mains now, I can't attend the raids Kirari's upgrades would drop in.

I'll try to come up with some druid-related topics to discuss in the future, I promise. I just don't want to bring you guys some half-assed, uninspired posts simply because I'm not feeling it.

9 comments:

Exanimo said...

I feel your pain, only in my case i'm bored of my Hunter. When TBC got out i was bored with him aswell and almost mainswitched to my Warrior (prot) but i didn't. The Hunter was fun for a while with the new stuff but now once again im bored with him.

I'm considering mainswitching at the next expansion aswell but not sure to pick my Warrior or my Shaman... or even my Warlock who is Horde in contrary to the other toons. Quite a debate inside my head going for some time now...

Anonymous said...

I was the same way with my Druid until last week. It hit me, I can respec moonkin. So thats exactly what I did. It's like having a new toon. I started doing pvp and bought some leather pvp starter gear from the Cenerian Expedition.I'm usually top 6 in the killing blows and damage done in Alteric Valley. I love the moonkin now.Anyways its just a suggestion and you can always respec back to Ferral.

Anonymous said...

Like delaraga said it feels like a new character when you respec. I've been going resto now and again since I never ran Kara with a resto druid and have a lot of resto leather (and I picked up the 2 hand staff from the second ZA timed chest event!) and I just picked up the spell-damage blade from Prince which has given me some incentive to go boomkin one of these days for the heck of it before expansion.

I do want to get my spriest to 70, but I'm still having fun with my druid; just don't fill it into one role because that's not what a druid was made for! =D

Jason said...

Sorry to hear you are having trouble in getting interest in your bear tank. Since it sounds like you have great gear, why not try tanking in your cat form, with your bear gear. I have done that and it makes it quite fun and interesting if you are just on add duty.

Also, AFAIK if you get the Frozenshadow Weave Set, Spellstrike Set and Belt of Blasting, you would actually be overgeared for SSC TK as upgrades for locks in that crafted gear doesn't come until T6 content. So if you really wanted to switch to Shadowbolt spam bot, you could do that and be right on par for damage in your runs.

--Valthan

SuraBear said...

Meh, shadowmage never really appealed to me. If I wanted to spam the same button all the time, I'd gear up the mage. Kirari will always be affliction, most likely, unless I decide to try out Felguard.

And yeah, I'm not undergeared for the instance on Kirari, but I am behind the gear curve compared to my guildmates. I have FSW and the Belt of Blasting (No spellstrike though, as I use my head and legs for my 2-piece T4). I can certainly hold my own and contribute (and do when I get to go as the 'lock), but I have no hope of catching up to those who have been raiding warlocks from day 1.

As for respeccing. . . theres a very good chance I'll be a tree in the expansion with Surania. Might even level boomkin, just to say I did. But all of my gear is tanking gear, so any respeccing I did now would only be for a few days at a time.

All very valid points, however.

Anonymous said...

@respecs

It is true- respec a druid to resto and you have a new toon. In PvP it is a lot of fun to keep people up while they take the opponent down. Instances always need healers. You will never be bored healing. You cannot autoheal a raid. Even if you are undergeared, a little healing goes a long way.

Also, I hope we get some new tanking abilities. We can't be expected to have tons of fun with auto, maul, swipe, lac, mangle, growl and charge as being our only abilities. Warriors and pallis have many more abilities and, I would imagine, fun.

Anonymous said...

@respecs

It is true- respec a druid to resto and you have a new toon. In PvP it is a lot of fun to keep people up while they take the opponent down. Instances always need healers. You will never be bored healing. You cannot autoheal a raid. Even if you are undergeared, a little healing goes a long way.

Also, I hope we get some new tanking abilities. We can't be expected to have tons of fun with auto, maul, swipe, lac, mangle, growl and charge as being our only abilities. Warriors and pallis have many more abilities and, I would imagine, fun.

Kalon said...

Sorry to hear that, man.

Dunno what your role is on Kael or how far you've gotten, but tanking the phoenixes in P4/P5 is damn fun and pretty doable with a small bit of FR gear. It helps a lot not having to kite them and just sit them in a spot where the melee can go kill 'em. Tanking P2 of Vashj is also really fun for me, but yeah...it's not the main boss.

And sadly, it only gets worse in Hyjal/BT. I've had to really work on my cat gear simply because I'm not tanking at all on the majority of the fights, and when I do tank it's either some gimmick fight (Akama), some stupid offtank thing (Supremus) or random other crap. Though if you have the priests Archimonde is really great to tank. T6 is just really poorly designed for multiple tanks, and as a result you end up doing DPS a lot more.

Anonymous said...

Tired of durids? :(((

Me and Icyback too =/

Ive not been playing for a while now... but Im still watching for old durid buddies :P

Sent me an tell Lorenzo... gauchoman@gmail.com

BTW... Dishy "Swahili" Patronus here! :P

 
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