Post-3.1 Musings
Sorry it’s been so empty and dark around here, folks. I’ve been busy writing over at NoStockUI.com. We haven’t been doing much of anything that’s new or shiny in my guild. A good chunk of our officer corps are off to Vegas for a wedding (Congratulations, Baynn!) and so we’ve put “official” raids on hold, especially with the patch going live yesterday. Our (un?)official healing lead, David, has been on vacation for the last week, so it fell to me to do healing assignments on fights like Patchwerk and Thaddius’ first phase. That was both exciting and stressful. I wouldn’t mind keeping it up, but we’ll see how the big patch shakes out and if we alter our guild structure much.
Recent NSUI posts:
- Patch Day PSA: WowMatrix Will No Longer Work
- Patch 3.1: Something Wicked This Way Comes
- VuhDo Child: Interview With The Author
- Killer Combination: AuctionLite + Skillet + LilSparkysWorkshop
Recent lewtz:
- Illustration of the Dragon Soul from OS
- Band of Channeled Magic from Valor badges
- Idol of Awakening from Gothik to complete my Epic achievement
- My T7.5 helm off of KT to complete my 5/5 T7.5 set, which if you ask me looks totally badass.
Recent Lewtz IRL:
- Saw an amazing sale on Newegg for 4GB total of DDR2-1066 from a brand I know and love, which is the fastest RAM my motherboard supports. I had been using 4GB of DDR2-800, and before now, the cheapest I’d seen 1066 RAM at was still $150+.
- My HSF (heatsink & fan) on my CPU died a couple weeks ago. Died hard. My CPU hit 70C+ before I knew what was up, and even after sitting all night to cool off, it would heat up a good 5 degrees in just a few minutes the next morning. So, with some extra money I had from Uncle Sam, I got an E8400, a dual-core at 3.0GHz. Previously had a Q6600 at the stock 2.4GHz.
- Just days before that I had voluntarily spent some more of said “free” money on a shiny new 896MB GTX 260 video card and I couldn’t be happier with it. Upgraded from SLI’ed, and then later a single, 8800GT 512MB.
- I’ve been running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate, build 7000, very happily since the official Beta release. It’s been the most stable and high-performance experience I’ve ever had with Windows, excepting a bare-ass Windows XP x64 install. I’m very stoked for its release and might even actually pay for a copy.
3.1 Goodies
I managed to sell a lot of goods on the AH Monday night, enough to pay for my dual spec and then some. I went with:
Restoration: 11/0/60 with Nourish, Innervate and Swiftmend glyphs
Restoration: 11/0/60
I mostly tank heal with more sporadic raid healing, during our 25-man raids. This seems like a good first shot at a post-3.1 build for me and my healing style. Looking for some other 3.1-ready builds from one of my favorite druid bloggers? Check out Syd‘s post at World of Matticus.
Balance: 55/0/16 with Insect Swarm, Starfall, and Wrath glyphs
Balance: 55/0/16
Balance is my “for funsies” spec. I put this one together with a few things in mind: farming, 5-mans and the occasional bout of PvP. I know that isn’t optimal for any of those things, but it’s a good Jack-of-all-trades build, IMO. Some of my inspiration here came from Graylo’s 3.1 builds post over at Gray Matter. He’s been a great source for me as a part-time boomkin.
Addons and Wrap-Up
My addons survived the 3.1 transition well because I update them religiously and tested them weekly-ish on PTR. My realm, and more importantly, my ISP, were not so lucky. For those of you with networking know-how, I was experiencing dropped packets at a rate between 1 in 2 and 1 in 4 for all of last night, to no less than 3 hosts in drastically different locations. Sad panda. I hope I have a better experience with the internet at large tonight.
Look for more updates as my guild, Celestial Being, starts progressing in Ulduar. I can’t wait!
In: AddOns, Druid, Gear, Hardware, Meta, Raiding · Tagged with: 3.1, Balance, Celestial Being, Gear, Guild, Hardware, healing assignments, NoStockUI, NSUI, Resto, ulduar, upgrades, writing