An Ode to Treants

I am really enjoying multiboxing.  Through using a program called Hotkeynet I have been able to set up everything that I’ve thought about (well, one item is missing… currently the mousewheel is not a button that is broadcast to my slave accounts).  I still have a bit of work to do with making the macros leaderless so that if Owltoid dies then I can easily switch over to Weirdowl or Owlive.

Also, I need a new name for Owlive… any suggestions?

Over the past week I’ve been doing instance runs and just learning the basics of multiboxing.  I’m significantly better at controlling the movement of all three moonkins and am getting better at my spacial awareness for LOS and slave facing the correct direction.

I have tons and tons hotkeyed but one I’m particularly proud of is my entangling roots macro.  Since the moonkins are only 64 right now (hopefully 70 within a week) they don’t have cyclone.  However, I do have entangling roots set up (shift-c) and cyclone will be an easy transition (unmodified c).  What I’m proud of is using Hotkeynet’s toggle function.  I have three windows of WoW up when multiboxing: w1, w2, and w3.  When I push my side mouse button the first time, Hotkeynet tells w1 to set the target to focus.  I then highlight a new enemy and hit my side mouse button a second time.  Now w2 has its focus target set to the second enemy.  I highlight a new enemy (on my main screen) and hit the side mouse button once more which sents a signal to w3 telling it to set the target to its focus.  I now have all my moonkins with a focus target so that anytime I cast roots they switch to their focus target and begin the crowd control.  Then, they go right back to DPSing my kill target.  Effectively what this does is crowd controll three melee (assuming no resists) while I burn down a fourth target.  Usually the moonkins can easily burn down an instance elite before they get more than one hit or spell in.  So, if the pull goes properly I can take out four elites without taking any significant damage.  Of course if the pull is more like 6 elites then I just pull out the treants and have some fun.

Anyway, that’s my contribution to the multiboxing world (I highly doubt I’m the first to come up with it, but it was fun figuring out a solution to my problem instead of using someone elses code!)

Thank you Hotkeynet!

I’m excited about WoW again.  I’m hooked.  I’ve been thinking about a 3v3 moonkin team for a long time but there were always issues with getting others interested and coordinated.  The solution has been right in front of me the whole time and I didn’t see if until a few days ago… I’ll just play all three moonkins!

So my journey into multi-boxing (MB) has started!  Through the wonderful recruit-a-friend program I should have three level 60 moonkins one week from today.  I have one lvl 52 and two lvl 32 so it should take much time.  Then I have twenty levels to learn how to control them all at once.

I know MB is not a new idea, but it’s never something I really considered.  When powerleveling my druid Owltoid I was running three versions of WoW on my laptop with relative ease.  Finally the idea of justing doing the moonkin team myself sunk in and I’ve been extremely excited ever since.

I have my work holiday party in a few minutes so I won’t be able to write much tonight, but I have a flood of questions and ideas concerning MB, 3v3, and moonkin abilities at level 80.

My first problem is how do deal with is basic movement for three toons.  I FINALLY broke my habit of turning with the keyboard and exclusively use the mouse these days, but I think that exactly wrong for MB.  So, back to turning with the keys (which will limit my macros in quick button range).

Sorry for the scattered blog post (my 0-3 readers out there)… I’m excited to be excited about WoW again!!!

I’ve been using Jugz, my 73 warrior to powerlevel Owltoid from levels 40-52.  It’s definitely interesting playing three accounts at once (Jugz, Owltoid, and my friend’s druid Moonvine).  Using my laptop screen to control the two druids and my TV monitor to control Jugz it’s an exercise of kill everything in sight with Jugz, move druids in, repeat.  I’m considering keeping the second account active so I can farm honor with Jugz and Owltoid at the same time.  Why go through the pain twice when it can be done once?

I remember dreading BRD while leveling alts to 60 during the pre-Burning Crusade days.  The instance was long, many quests were required for MC attunement, and the only really cool gear was the Hand of Justice.  Wow, I didn’t know how good I had it.

Welcome to the WotLK days of WoW.  Every instance so far is extremely easy.  We’ve had our level 73 druid tanking level 75-76 bosses in an instance without knowing the strategy or what we were up against and we’ve only wiped a few times (the Void Reaver boss is the only one that has given us a bit of true difficulty).  I’m actually extremely frustrated with the game because it seems EVERYTHING is about AoE.  My fury warrior Jugz holds up fine in the DPS using whirlwinds and cleaves, but it’s really freaking boring.  Pally tanks are so overpowered that they can pull multiple groups of mobs and survive with ease.  I have yet to see crowd control be required, or helpful, in any instance.  The strategy is gone and it’s now Diablo with tradeskills.

It’s a huge disappointment.

Granted, since I’ve been trying to level my moonkin I haven’t been working on getting Jugz to 80.  Maybe at 80 the instances are much more difficult and CC is needed.  I doubt it.  I remember one of the most fun things about my horde 70 druid was doing a heroic where I was the only form of crowd control (before roots was usable indoors).  People would say that a moonkin wasn’t enough and that they needed a mage or lock, but we would always be successful.  Using the diminishing returns of cyclone to control a mob until another mob is down and then selectively switching was extremely fun.  Not as fun as treants, but a close second!

Now what do I have to look forward to as a level 80 moonkin?  More AoE?  Bleh, no thanks.  If that’s the case then I’ll go do some PvP until I get bored and then likely quit the game.

Back to the title of this post… BRD.  I used to complain and I feel guilty about what I said years ago.  Over the past few days I’ve been in BRD for hours powerleveling the druids and then place is just amazing.  First, it’s absolutely massive and yet each part feels different.  You go from the start with an area full of patrolling dogs and jail cells into a part with officers training their troops.  There is a spectator arena where you fight random mobs before a boss.  There is a golem lord, a general who calls for reinforcements, a fire elemental boss, a whole bar scene with patrons ready to tear your head off, and much more that I just can’t remember.  The place is absolutely incredible.  In the old days you needed crowd control, people responsible for runners so they don’t pull another group,  and actual skill/teamwork.

I truly envy those who went into BRD for the first time without knowing anything about the place or any strategy.  That had to be one of the most fun times in the history of WoW.

I wish I could say the same for WotLK.  I have gone in to 4 instances with friends without knowing a thing about the place or its bosses… we barely wipe and can out DPS/heal anything that is thrown at us.  Strategy is gone, and if it doesn’t come back then I’m gone too.

Owltoid reached level 28 last night with a total played time under 6 hours.  I believe we’re off to SM until level 40 which shouldn’t take more than a day or two.

I’ve been thinking about my level 80 build.  I enjoy PvP and will likely be playing battleground and possibly an arena team.  I doubt I’ll ever do a 40-man or 25-man raid again, but 10-man raids are reasonably likely.  With those considerations in mind, this is my first attempt at a level 80 build:

http://www.wow-tools.org/talent-calculator/Druid/50320030253300332130333112310000000000000000000000000000003500330200000000000000000

I use that website because it’s not blocked at work.  Hopefully it’s up-to-date!  Please post comments on what the build is missing!

The first problem is that I don’t have insect swarm.  I’m not sure how much insect swarm is used in PvP and I am trying to stay away from dispellable forms of damage.  If I was to group with a warlock then it would be useful as one additional DoT (this is based on my knowledge of warlocks as of 3/2008… things may have changed drastically in the past months).

In the posted build I have intensity (3rd tier resto tree).  I’m assuming moonkins don’t care about spirit and just want as much intellect as possible.  If that’s the case, then that may be 3 wasted points.  I’m mostly worried about drain teams, running out of mana on long raid boss fights, or running out of mana in a 5 man group that has a tanking pally cruising through the place on autorun.  If anyone has a comment on spirit’s role in a moonkin build then let me know!

I have natural shapeshifer because I remember constantly kiting in my old arena days.  It’s a new world in WotLK and I may be able to exclude that talent and still have some mana leftover.  However, the added bonus of +4% spell damage in moonkin form is pretty nice.

Given how much I love treants, I’m very tempted to go for brambles.  The only problem is every class seems to have an AoE and I’d assume the treants will die very quickly.  Where before they could be a great help when used in the proper situation, I’m worried that now they’re nothing more than a cute perk.  Hopefully their stamina is buffed so that they can survive a few AoE’s and live out the 30 seconds of nature glory.

I’m missing 2 points in Wrath of Cenarius.  The problem is I don’t know what level 80 stats look like and what these abilities will really add.  If you assume an average arena battle is around 5 minutes of combat, and you know what a lvl 80 with decent gear looks like, then you can calculate exactly how much mana talents like Intensity and Dreamstate are giving back.  Often it’s such a small amount of mana that the ability is just not worth it.  Similar situation with Wrath of Cenarius that may just require analyzing my gear at 80 to see if the incremental bonus damage is worth it.

To all my dedicated readers (which I think was one, Floralark) I have returned to WoW and the moonkin world!

My last post was February 15, 2008, which I think coincided with my breakup with the girlfriend and quitting of WoW.  Since then I have conveniently forgotten about the addiction WoW brings and decided to hop back into the driver seat and begin again with the new expansion!

My RL friends all play on Dalaran and some don’t like horde so I believe ‘Simoncowell’, my 70 horde druid, will continue grazing and abstaining from combat.  However, I have created a new alliance druid named ‘Owltoid’ to continue the moonkin quest for domination.

Through the recruit-a-friend promotion, a friend is helping me level Owltoid using the 3x experience bonus.  It has been amazingly quick so far with level 20 being reached after 4 hours of playing last night.  I have a feeling level 40 is only about 5 hours away and level 60 likely being 10-15 hours after that.

For those who haven’t heard of the recruit-a-friend promotion it’s a system that an existing account can send an email asking someone to play WoW with them.  The email contains a key that once entered in the WoW website activates a trial account.  The cool thing about this account is that any toon on the new account that is within 4 levels of any toon on the existing account will gain 3x experience while grouped and nearby each other.  That is 3x the experience on everything, including quests.  Also, toons below 60 on either account can summon a toon on the other account once per hour.

With the help of my friend, we take his high level toon on one account, his low level toon on another account, and my low level toon on the new account, and powerlevel the crap out of instances.  With the 3x experience one run of Deadmines was about 1-1.5 levels.  One run of Stockades is about one level.  These clears only take about 20 minutes which leads to some insanely fast leveling times.  I’m sure we’ll slow down after we get through Scarlet Monastery, but I believe this system will work all the way up to 60.  For the higher level instance we can both play on our high level accounts while dual-boxing to allow our low level accounts to soak up the exp.

I see level 60 being within two weeks, and possibly much more quick than that.  I may try to recreate my horde pally in the alliance side using the same technique, but I’ll have to see how smooth this goes.  One other perk is that for every two levels my toon gains, I can grant the other players toon one level of immediate gain as long as the other toon is lower level than my toon.  So, if I level my druid up to 60 and my pally up to 60, then I can level my friends brand new toon from 1-60 in less than 5 minutes.  Talk about a nice /played time!

I think my friend gets a unique mount through the recruit-a-friend program which is just added bonus!

Well, the time is here.  I have about 6 more hours of grinding/questing and I will hit level 70.  Vindisiel is already there, and Seacrest out shouldn’t have too long to go.  Arena will happen this weekend.

I’m a bit worried about our lack of gear.  In truth, I was hoping we’d hit 1600 this weekend because of a non-traditional, yet strong, setup.  However, we tried to gank a well geared 70 warlock who absolutely destroyed myself and a feral druid.  We had no hope of out DPSing his drain life and he had the HP of both of us combined.  I know I just made a post about how warlocks can be beaten by moonkins, but this guy really outgeared us… PvP does make a huge difference.

Our gear is going to be a major problem, but we always knew that.  I am looking forward to the growth process.  Each week we’ll get much better ratings since we’ll have 1-2 new pieces of gear per week and our communication will evolve.

I have about 3.5k gold so I am not going to be able to get epic flight form quest upon dinging 70.  However, I’m sure I’ll have 5k by next weekend which will still be amazing.  It really is easy to get 5k gold if you level using mining and herbalism.  After that large purchase, and since I’m not raiding, I’ll be rolling in cash.  On my warrior we were able to sell arena teams.  If our 3v3 or 5v5 is good enough, then we can make a ton of gold doing just that.

I have 32,000 honor saved up.  I don’t know what I’ll be able to get with that, but I’m hoping the +20 resil trinket plus boots.  I plan to do a ton of BG’s, when not doing arena, so hopefully I can get close to another vindicators piece.

Also, if there is enough time, I may try to run Kara (after getting attuned of course) with some friends I’ve made on the server.  Since we all come from a raiding guild that stopped farming Kara months ago we won’t need any direction on the boss fights.  That instance is easy enough that even with our gear we can help out since it’s unlikely we’ll screw up.

Lots to do… good thing it’s a 3-day weekend!

(PvP story below warlock discussion)
After losing to an ugly owl beast chickeny looking thing, the least a good moonkin can do is wish warlocks a happy Valentines Day.

In truth I just wanted to make a post regarding how easy warlocks have been so far.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that warlocks are one of the strongest PvP/arena classes out there.  A good warlock is the strongest 1v1 class.  They may lose a bit to rogues, but all other classes likely fall at their feet in a duel.  A GOOD warlock can solo any class.  Luckily, just like huntards, there are few good warlocks.  Easy ones give moonkins a chance.

Getting the jump on any class is key.  If a warlock ganks you outside of arena/BG’s, where you’re not expecting it, then you have little chance of survival.  They will DoT you up, chain fear, drain life, or kill you a number of different ways.  If you’re able to get the jump on a lock, like you should in arena, then the tables may have turned.

Warlocks have paranoia so how can we get the jump on them?  Well, unlike our other stealth friends who have to worry about it, namely rogues and feral druids, moonkins do not need to be in melee range (big surprise, eh?).

The fight with warlocks will always be a close one, but our main advantage lies in treants and HoTs.  Treants interrupt their spells very well.  I have yet to see a lock cast howl of terror with three treants beating on him.  A regular fear takes 3-4 times longer and should be ample time to either HOT yourself up, break LOS, or feral charge.

I use all my mana in these fights.  Either through the lock getting a mana drain off or just constant shapeshifting, healing, and DPS.  Moonkins will have trouble killing a lock without healing themselves.  However, a lock will run out of mana fairly quickly too if they try to outpace your own HOTS.

My typical fight:  stealth - pop treants on lock - moonfire - IS - HoTs - feral charge if spell incoming - bash - MF - IS - HoTs - etc…

The initial treants are key.  Until PvPers get used to fighting moonkins, the treants are always going to be a shock & awe tactic.

69.3… less than a level to go until the beatdown begins!

——————–
My fun duel with a 70 mage:

I was grinding yesterday evening.  The never ending level 60-70 is almost to an end and I’m still surprised how brutal the last 10 levels are.  Loooong.

A 70 mage flies up and, without saying a word, challenges me to a duel.  I decline and start walking to the next mob.  He follows me and challenges me again.  So, I eat my tasty mana biscuit (I had about 10% mana) and eventually accept the duel.

Immediately I go into cat form and stealth.  I could tell the mage wasn’t expecting this.  He starts running around trying to break my stealth by AoEing everything, but I’m safely far away.

I don’t have a good strategy against a frost mage.  I really haven’t dueled a lot at all, and I’m not exactly sure how to beat them.  So, I resort to my favorite buddies, my treants.

From stealth I summon the treants and root the mage.  I expected a few things.  I expected the treants to be rather worthless since the mage can just frost nova and blink away.  I expected the mage to say screw that, throw out a couple AoE’s and be done with the pesky bugger.  Instead, the mage attempted to frost bolt me.  My three friends made sure that the mage took a good long time to get that frost bolt while beating him to a pulp at the same time.

I put my DoTs on the mage, did a bit of wrath spamming, expecting a counterspell at anytime.  It never came.

The mage was getting pretty low while I was at 50% health.  My treants were wearing down and about ready to become mulch.  The mage pulled out a pet of his own: the damn elemental.

Now this is a 70 mage.  He should have better gear than me (I know when I hit 70 I’m immediately getting three upgrades: 1 instance gear that I’ve been waiting on and 2 PvP items).  He should be able to beat me easily, in my opinion, but this guy was obviously not the brightest iceman.

With the elemental out he pulls the noob move of iceblocking.  This is not a noob move because it’s stupid, it’s a noob move because it’s really overpowered in a duel.  Iceblock while the elemental beats the crap out of your opponent is often an instant win.  However, I was able to heal through the elemental and actually gain health in the end.

I’m running low on mana, though… time for an innervate.  I’m barely staying alive with this elemental on me and it’s using most of my mana just to fend it off.  The iceblock is about to expire, though, and I’ll be able to finish off that last 8% quickly.

Until the damn frost shield.  I spammed the crap out of moonfire thinking that 2 of them would be more than enough for that 8% to become “Simoncowell has defeated xxxx”.  Nope, they were just absorbed.  I was in real trouble.  I see him queuing up a spell and there’s not much I can do.

So, in true druid fashion, I run.  I don’t run far enough to abandon the duel, I just run far enough to get out of range of his spell.  I pop into cat form, hit dash, and am off to the races.

His spell fails.  My manuever worked.  It’s time to go back and finish the job.  I sprint back, use the rest of my mana on the 2x moonfire, and defeat the mage for good.

“let’s try again”
“nah, once is enough for me”

gg

When our arena matches actually commence, which should be this weekend, I’ll have many more descriptions of matchups and strategies.  Hopefully some readers will be able to comment on techniques and suggest improvements.  Although I have relatively limited experience with rogues, I have learned to fear them.

If a rogue gets the jump on me while I’m in stealth, then I will likely die before I can even get into moonkin form.  Since rogues do have better stealth than I do, this is most likely the case.

When I suspect a rogue is around, such as when ninja capping an AB flag, one defense I have learned is to pop treants, go into moonkin, and use natures grasp.  If the rogue does come out of hiding, then it’s likely I will be able to beat them.  I have relatively high armor, they should be rooted, and will have my three buddies in their face.  However, that means burning most of my cooldowns and I’m not sure a guy is even around!  Also, it’s fairly likely they will still be able to kill me.

When I actually get PvP gear, I’m hoping my survivability will increase.  I have very low health and am still in a few cloth pieces.  However, rogues DPS will also increase.  I’m just hoping my survivability will outpace their DPS enough that I can escape and at least throw a HoT on.

Feral charge has provided a good escape so far.  Embarrassingly I have not hot-keyed bash, so often I feral charge away from a rogue and just end up moonfiring my new target.  Still, creating that distance from the rogue has saved my life quite a few times.  Usually it buys me enough time to put some HoT’s on, and then it’s just a question of escaping or rooting them.  More often than not I still die, but I’m learning.

Warlock, on the other hand, are turning out to be fairly easy…

The g/f and I broke up.  If I’m lucky she will just move her shit out and get off the lease.  If I’m unlucky she won’t sign the paper releasing her from the lease and I will have to resort to bribing her or going after her in small claims court until she relinquishes her legal right to enter the apartment.

This is a WoW blog, and not a personal one, but I needed to mention that since it will likely affect how often I am on this week.  However, I WILL be level 70 this weekend and ready for some arena!

Currently I am level 68 and about 20% through BEM.  Given that I now have flight form, rested exp will be large if I can’t log on, and the fact that the goal is so close, I can guarantee that as long as the g/f doesn’t trash my computer or disconnect my internet service (she’s a spiteful one) I will be in arena this weekend.

With 30k honor I will be able to get my trinket (+20 resil one) and possibly one other piece.  Then, the true honor grind begins.  I’d like to have two pieces this weekend (trinket and ring) and two more next weekend.

I am going to level my ret pally, Johntesh, to 70 during the times I can’t handle honor farming.  He’s level 59 with full rest exp, so I should definitely use that up and park him in an inn for a couple more weeks.  I’ve gotten demolished by a couple ret pally’s in BG’s, so I’m excited to see what he can do.  Without raiding, WoW could get a bit boring and having two lvl 70 PvPers will hopefully help.

Although he doesn’t read the blog, I want to say congratulations to Vindisiel for reaching level 70!  Seacrestout and I are right on his heels.

We do need to think of a team name.  Maybe “The beat from the street” or some other “Entertainment Tonight” related title that has a double meaning.

Playing in BG’s has taught me alot.  I’m sure playing in arena will teach me even more.

Here’s a snippet of what I’ve learned:

Barkskin is extremely important and needs to be hotkeyed.  It’s both a massive damage reduction and a chance to avoid spell interruption.  Even with wrath’s 70% resistance to pushback from damage it is still nearly impossible to cast if a hunter and their pet are on you.

Stealth is your friend.  If you can get the jump on somone then your chances of winning go up dramatically.  If a rogue gets the jump on you, then it’s goodnight.  I had a level 60 rogue absolutely demolish me last night.  I didn’t die quickly, but the combination of sap, gouge, vanish, stunlock, blind, etc allowed someone 6 levels lower than me to win.  Granted, they blew all their cooldowns and I don’t have a trinket, but it was definitely a skilled PvPer playing that rogue.  On the other hand, due to casting where it’s difficult to find me, putting treants on my target, and DPSing the hell out of the alliance, I have killed many toons 5-6 levels higher than me.

Hunters are tough, but they are beatable.  Hunters have been killing me since level 20.  Rogues and hunters seem to be the two classes that I really struggle with.  However, I am learning how to beat hunters, slowly.  If it’s a BM hunter and they pop beastial wrath, then just LOS the hunter and out heal the pets damage.  I was surprised how strong my HOTS were.  A full stack of lifebloom and rejuv is more than enough to run out the betial wrath at which time it’s GG for the hunter.  If it’s not a BM hunter, then just stick on barkskin and start the DPS race.  So far I’ve won more than I’ve lost when I just calm down, take the incoming damage, and deal out my owl power.

Treants are very useful, but need to be used correctly.  Treants really hurt shamans and warlocks (the ones who don’t AoE) since the spell pushback and lack of escape mechanism.  Mages don’t really have too much trouble (no surprise) since they just frost nova and blink.  Hunters (if they’re smart) can just feign death and the treants will go after the pet (I really hate that).  It will be interesting to see how useful they are in an arena situation.  I haven’t come across many priests, and I’m sure most would burn their fear to get them away, but I think treants may be of use against them.

Manaburn is really damn nasty.  I have yet to hotkey a macro to shift into bear and feral charge, but I will this weekend.  I’m going to need to start relying on this, especially against a priest or mana draining team.  I still haven’t figured out how to go against arena hunters who will be smart enough to drain my mana.  I can just cleanse the poison, but even a tick or two is enough to take a good chunk of mana away.

Moonkin form isn’t all that great, yet.  Maybe with good gear (high resil and high armor) I’ll start seeing the benefit of Moonkin form.  Right now the armor isn’t really helping out much and I find myself in caster form throwing up HOTS more and more often.  I’m not giving up on it, yet, because I truly want to make a moonkin viable in 3v3 (and I love the treants) but I’m already getting doubts and thinking about the 27/0/34 spec.

The main thing I need to focus on is not getting frustrated.  My gear sucks.  I have no trinket.  I have really low stamina (I saw a moonkin 3 levels lower than me with 1k more health… how does that happen?).  I have zero resil.  Yet, I do have strong DPS, strong healing, and druids are damn fun so far.  I really just need to realize these next 2 months are going to be spent getting my ass kicked.  As long as I can accept that, and my arena teammates want to constantly get a beatdown while we learn, we’ll come out on top.