Happy Winter Veil, NOW PAY ATTN

Greetings Readers.

I've been mulling over this throughout the holiday season, because it's just been bothering me so much.

With the release of Lich King my character spec has been de-nerfed. It's great, it's awesome, It sucks A$$!

The reason for such high levels of suckage is that the majority of players who are speccing balance have no clue how to play the spec. I've seen so much bad play that I've just stopped even giving advice to new moonkins.

But I decided to try at least one more time since it's the holidays.

First off the back story.

In the beginning balance was the deformed olson twin of the Druid Class. No Druid Played balance, you leveled feral & then when you reached 60 accepted your destiny & went Restoration to provide the HOT's for the raid group.

Blizzard began fixing this with patch 1.8 which introduced the Moonkin Form. This made the balance tree the PVP spec for Druids. I started playing WOW after 1.8 came out and immediatly fell in love with the concept of the Moonkin as soon as I saw on in STV.

Moonkin form now was upgraded to the Red-Headed Stepchild of the Druid class. It was still not acceptable for leveling or end-game raiding but if you were into pvp then it was ok (after you were level 50 or so.)

With the release of the Burning Crusade expansion, Balance got more love from blizzard & actual tier specific gear. This moved the balance spec to the out-of-wedlock child of the Druid class. Hardcore Raiding guilds now started having 1 or 2 balance druids to provide spell crit to the dps or healer groups. It was at this time that I learned to play my class. I learned the hard way that I would have to outplay any other dps in order to be included in a dungeon, heroic dungeon or raid. Other players could make mistakes. If I made one mistake I could and was dropped from the group.

I studied theorycraft not because I liked it but because it was the only way for me to be considered useful. I encountered resistance from old-schoolers who felt I was a waste of a raid slot and made it quite clear that other less well geared players would be a better fit because while at the moment they would underpreform me, they deserved the gear that would drop while I didn't. That was an actual statement made by a Tank who's since left Fenris.

But still I stuck to my guns. Or as my friend brian said once "Yeah I can see why you play moonkin, your Stubborn, Persistant and Damn usefull when the Sh!t hit's the fan."

Now were at Lich King. Balance is now on par with the other hybrid dps classes. I should be happy but I'm not. I've seen so much bad playstyle it's made me consider going resto. (Yes Doug I'll say it again Resto!) It's caused me agita as guilds that I would've given my remaning testicle to join earlier this year as me to apply because "I'm the only old-school boomkin remaining on the alliance side." and I have to turn them down because I don't raid hardcore anymore.

Note: There is an old-school boomkin who's on the horde side & belongs to trample We know each other in game and have done formal /kneel /salute /cheer to each other if we cross paths, we've also helped each other out when were both questing grinding & pulled more than we can take.

So my advice to New Moonkins is as follows

1.) Learn your class: I cannot stress this enough study your class & figure out what you can do & what you cannot do. what works in Questing will cause failure in Instances, What's great in PVP will wipe a group in a heroic.

Case in Point; Typhoon is a great spell that should become insta-cast like moonfire but it is a horrible spell in instances since is pushes the mobs away from the tank. This is a bad thing (Wack Wack)

2.) Learn your Role. You are now equal to an elemental shammy which means that while you are viable for instances raids etc. you are not a pure dps machine, you are a hybrid this means that while you can top the dps charts (as my buddy zorch did until he switched back to resto for raiding) you need to be prepared to drop the hots on the fly to save the healer or battle rez the tank.

This also means your not a softy clothie. Your a Moonkin, a blessed form given to the druids by Elune. Your tough, You can stand up to mobs and take some hits which means you need to be ready to pull them off your cloth wearing teammates if they pull aggro & the tank can't get to them.

Also your going to have to deal with perceptions of how the class used to be wheich means that you need to advertise your skills to the group. A good example is crowd control, as a class we now have viable crowd control that somewhere below a mage in my opinon. At the same time though I have found that there is still a learning curve with tanks regarding our cc abilities. So you need to let them know what you can do.

Entangling roots is a great cc provided that the mob is melee. Hibernate is absolutly awesome for WOTLK because so many dungeons are full of dragonkin\beasts due to the nexus war\vrykrul war storylines. To Paraphrase Azrael from Dogma, "I'm a mage I can't sheep a dragon, but guess what? Druids Can."

3.) Ask questions from other moonkins Find someone who's done it pre-lk & ask questions. Experiment with gear. My general rule is that you can have some cloth gear provided that your armor is between 50-55% (So cloth bracers\belt, everthing else leather or 1 large item cloth etc.)

Until another day

The musing moonkin