Primary spec? Resto. Secondary spec? Ummm...

When Blizzard announced Dual Specialization I was ecstatic. Anyone who played a healer during the Burning Crusade will remember how frustrating it was to quest or farm materials without any assistance from a friend or guildy. Rolling +healing stats into +spellpower helped us deal some damage but not it’s just not the same as a proper DPS build.

The day Dual Specs were released I hopped on and paid my 1000g so that I could turn Lath into a chook with the click of a button. I was well prepared, and had a decent Balance gear set just waiting in my bags so I could start DPSing my little heart out as soon as possible.

Releasing my inner Moonkin had some rather interesting side effects. I absolutely loved it at first. And I initiated my Secondary Spec by completing all the Storm Peaks quests. Yes, I had missed the entire area while leveling to 80 and thus not only did I not have a shoulder enchant, the Sons of Hodir hadn’t even heard of me (if only I had done some research before I hit 80!).

After the initial euphoria wore off, induced by super fast questing, I discovered that my opportunities to DPS were actually pretty sparse. In 5 mans and raids I was always needed to heal. And my guildies learnt pretty quickly that I, err, was much better at healing. Ok, I sucked as DPS. It also gave me a new appreciation for how much I really enjoy healing and the control and contribution to success you have as a healer. A PUG run with a crappy tank can go much more smoothly with a smart healer that can pre-empt the incoming damage accordingly. As a DPS? There’s not much you can do. Keep your finger (or cursor) hovering over Rebirth?

For the last six 6 months I have probably DPSed 10 dungeons and switched to DPS during raids perhaps 3-4 times. Pretty infrequent but it was still nice knowing that I had a DPS spec to fall back on if needed.

When my guild hit Heroic Faction Champions (a mock PVP battle) we struggled. Around that time I was also jumping into the Arena with my Paladin boyfriend. And I had this epiphany: my secondary build could be some experimental Restoration PVP/Arena/Raiding build. The build was so goddamn handy to have around that I just kept postponing my next visit to the Druid Trainer to respec back to Moonkin.

My primary spec? Restoration. My secondary spec? Restoration.

Over time my “PVP” build morphed even further. We reached Aub’arak on Heroic so I decided to include talents to improve Healing Touch. I also dropped down to 0 points in Subtlety just for Algalon. When we fight Algalon I have the special job of collecting constellations with healing agro and dragging them around the room to close up black holes. My primary spec has 2 points in Subtlety and I always lose a stray constellation or two to another healer who generates more healing aggro. This has caused quite a few wipes as that healer runs to avoid a Big Bang only to accidentally close the portal before the rest of the raid makes it through.

The best part about having these two Restoration builds is that I am using both my specs, often swapping mid-raid, and my 1000g has definitely paid itself off. It also makes me a little sad. I never intended to be a tree when I rolled this Druid. I leveled Lath as Moonkin and loved it every minute of it until I realised at level 70 that raiding guilds wanted Resto Druids, not Balance Druids.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love healing. But having the opportunity to revisit my special, long lost Moonkin form was really fun. Yet I’ve now removed that option completely by choosing to spec Resto/Resto.

I find myself questioning my own motives. Were there other opportunities to play as Moonkin that I passed over? Am I scared to fail as a DPS (you know, the easy role)? Am I too lazy to learn and master a different Druid play style? Am I sticking to my comfort zone?

Last week I received my first Trophy of the Crusade on an offspec roll. And I hesitated. What to buy? I’m currently wearing 4 pieces of Restoration Tier 9 and eventually I would like to own the whole set, if only to equip some time far into the future for nostalgia. I also have one piece of Tier 9 Balance gear that I won in a VOA. So I could either get a second piece of Balance gear and earn my 2 piece bonus (that I haven’t even looked up yet!) or I could get my last piece of Restoration gear and plonk it in the bank.

I avoided making the decision all week. And ended up buying the Balance piece. I went out and gemmed and enchanted both pieces as well as some other 245 Balance items that I’ve picked up along the way. The question is will I ever use it?

Somewhere deep down I’m not ready to give up on DPS altogether. I’m still Resto/Resto, though.

Rhonin was suitably grateful (thank you for the cloak, btw). We had a nice turnout at the Eventide, too.

Our 10 man group defeated Algalon the Observer on Sunday. If you’re following Lathere’s and my Achievements closely you probably already know that. It took us 3 weeks: 2 hours and 33 minutes all up to kill him. The learning curve for us went something like this:

Week 1: Our two tanks got their timing perfect
Week 2: Our star killer got his timing perfect
Week 3: We managed to stop accidentally phasing out

Thus… you may now address me as Starcaller Cassandri!

I’ve blogged about Algalon before, I think, and I have to put him up there are one of my all time favourite boss encounters. For Shadow Priests it’s actually really quite straight forward.

1. Equip your Glyph of Dispersion
2. DPS the dude
3. Don’t stand on a Collapsing Star when it’s low on health
4. Don’t stand within 10 yards of those nasty red void things
5. Hit Dispersion before he finishes his Big Bang cast

Video

[youtube eS4yQUs9GKs Vitare vs Algalon (10 man) - click to enlarge]

Enjoy the video! Make sure you have your sound on, I love both these songs and the Celestial Planetarium ambiance track.

Lathere had a much trickier assignment – gather up all the constellations with healing agro and maneuver them to close up the black holes without accidentally phasing herself – all while healing, of course!

And the best part about our victory was that we beat the other guild 10 man to it. And they got Firefighter almost 1 month before us (which they bragged about quite a bit!) Gotta love a bit of friendly competition, hey?

Turning up the ambience in Zul'Aman made the jungle come to life. It also helped us defeat Akil'zon.

Do you remember the first boss in Zul’Aman? I do. Akil’zon still ranks up there as one of my favourite encounters in World of Warcaft. Deadly Boss Mods was notoriously untrustworthy at predicting Akil’zon’s electrical storm. However, if you listened very carefully, with your Ambience sounded turned up, you could hear the storm approaching each time.

I got into the habit of raiding Zul’Aman with my Ambience turned up and Music turned off. It felt like a completely different place in a different game – tropical and wild.

Pop Quiz

Q. When the XT-002 says, “So tired, I will rest for just a moment!”, what does he do?

WoW.com recently published a story about a guild who run a weekly pre-raid trivia session to get the team motivated. They included one of Relyimah’s 20 question sets which included the question above.

This was the first moment where I stumbled taking the trivia challenge. Mentally I replayed the XT-002 Decontructor fight in my head. And even as I can hear XT saying “So tired…” I hear the rallying cry as Heroism is activated.

Yep, it’s when the Heart of XT-002 is exposed.

Matticus once wrote that he didn’t need to be warned over vent when it was time to activate Pain Suppression before Sartharion could breath fire all over their tank on their Sarth3D wipes – he could see the animation change leading up to that particular boss ability. He could see that giant dragon head lifting up and know that Sartharion was getting ready to take a deep breath.

The best way to be aware of what is happening around you isn’t always to pivot your camera and take a look. It isn’t always installing a bunch of addons. Take your eyes off your cast bar (or combo points or whatever) for a moment and look around. Turn on your sound and listen.

So many cues in this game come from sound, I honestly don’t know how people play with it turned off.

If you go back to the XT-002 and his exposed heart. How do you know when Heroism is active?

1. Your character grows (animation – visual)
2. You gain the Exhaustion debuff (screen information – visual)
3. Your cast times and global cooldowns decrease (screen information – visual)
4. A war cry sound is played (sound – audible)

Of those 4 cues in the game, which one do you rely on to know when Heroism is active? For me, it’s absolutely the sound first, then I’ll run my eye over my debuffs (which, admittedly, are prominent on my UI setup) to confirm by checking for Exhaustion. A part of my mind is also noticing the swiftness of my casts, and if I’m not looking elsewhere on my screen I might have noticed my character grown in size.

If you’ve ever played a Rogue, you’ll know the distinctive sound that accompanies entering Stealth. It’s unmistakable. A smart Rogue isn’t going to walk up in front of you and then enter Stealth where you can see them. They’re going to sneak into the bushes, or approach from behind and hit it yards away. But you can hear it. Hearing the enemy enter stealth has saved my life many a time defending nodes in Arathi Basin. Well that and Holy Nova.

The Celestial Planetarium

The ambient soundtrack in the Celestial Planetarium is as amazing as the visuals

On Tuesday night we had our first shot at Algalon the Observer. I love Mimiron, I really do, but Firefighter was a pain in the ass. Unlocking the gate to Algalon was certainly a suitable reward. Spending an hour with him was even better.

I was playing with my usual sound settings which look something like this: Master Sound on 50%*, Sound Effects on 50%, Music on 0% and Ambience on 75%.

Everything about the Algalon encounter is just beautiful. I don’t know how else to describe it. One of our raiders compared it to the Infinity Room at the Gallery of Modern Art, and perhaps this is just the gamer in me talking, I thought it was even better. The “room” feels huge and endless and the ambient soundtrack is just amazing. I was trying to explain it afterwards and the best I could come up with was: it sounds like a sonic boom – deep and echoing.

Probably a terrible description. But it’s the best I can do I’m afraid.

Please, if you get a chance to visit the Celestial Planetarium make sure you turn on your sound, especially your Ambience, first. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

* I drop my Master Sound setting down significantly so Ventrillo will always be louder than any sound produced by World of Warcraft. If you don’t play with Vent, just leave this at 100%.