Kitties and cats

Restokin had an interesting post interviewing druids in her guild, and one interview in particular caught my eye. 

What do you like least about the druid class & your spec?

•Part of what I liked least was removed when they redesigned cat and bear forms. As we all know, Blizz still needs to improve boomkin and tree. In addition, I don’t like that there is no visual advancement to my character in the form I take 95% of the time. It’s the same cat that I have stared at since level 20. I’d love to see either some armor or have the animal become more tough-looking somehow.

Of course, this made me think of how cool it would be if feral cats started off as, well, KITTENS!!

Level 20:

Level 85:

Wouldn't that be kick ass?  I'd definitely play a feral cat.

Gunship (normal and heroic) cheese strat ftw

So lately, I've seen a couple of blog posts about "how" to win at Gunship heroic mode. 

The long and short of it?  "Do it like normal, just don't get hit by the cannon balls." 

Well, great ... but want an even easier strat that you can do for normal OR heroic mode, nab yourself the achievement, and, if done right, you do not even need two tanks for?

Sure you do!  Presenting the "cheese" gunship strat, as if it wasn't easy enough.

So here's a overview shot (stunning, I know) of the two ships - I am only Alliance, so I'm kind of guessing for the Horde strat here, based on the layout of the Alliance ship and what I know to be true about both.

So you have your one tank stay on your ship to handle the adds that spawn from the portal, just like normal.  Put two RANGED dps into the cannons (four on 25 man, of course).  Make sure all of your melee, the other tank, and one healer have their packs on.

When the mage comes out and freezes your cannons, have said other tank, all your melee, and one healer (can be your weakest healer, spec or class doesn't matter) hop over to the other ship.

Now look at the artwork above.  If you are Alliance, you jump over.  Your tank will grab Saurfang, HIT HIM A FEW TIMES WITH MELEE ATTACKS (super important), and then edge over to the ledge behind where Saurfang stands - camera positioning is important here, just have the tank rocket up onto the ledge (#1 on the Horde ship).  I suppose that if you are Horde and you jump to the Alliance ship, you'll see a similar ledge on the LEFT side of the ship, and will also have your tank jump up to #1.

If your tank melees the boss a few times, then said boss will follow the tank and try to get at him up close (instead of standing back and throwing axes/shooting at the tank). 

The thing is, the ledge the tank is jumping onto?  The boss can't get him them without running all the way around to where the ledge starts sloping up from the main floor of the ship.  This buys the tank a good few seconds to wait up on the ledge for the boss to run around and start up the slope of the ledge.

Once the boss gets about halfway up the ledge, have your tank either rocket pack themselves to #2, or simply jump down off the ledge. 

The boss then stops, turns around, and has to run down the slope of the ledge and around to where the tank is.

Once the boss gets a little away from the bottom of the ledge, have the tank rocket pack up to #1/the ledge again.

The boss will continue running around the edge of the ship to go up/come down the slope instead of jumping up or down, so your tank is always one step ahead of the boss.

If done right, the tank takes ZERO damage.  The healer will be very, very bored, but that healer is needed for the initial few hits.

If the tank gets perfectly comfortable with rocketting up and down and never getting hit, then your healer can just go back to help with your ship.

The key is, the tank continues to "kite" Saurfang/Muradin the entire fight, even when the mages are killed.  Your melee dps will also stay on the enemy ship, running around killing the rocketeers and axethrowers (or gunners or whatever) when a mage is not up.

This results in a faster kill overall.  The ranged dps not in the cannons on your own ship take care of the adds that spawn from the portal.

Simple, easy way to win and get the achievement, your tank doesn't take huge hits from Saurfang/Muradin, your raid members remaining on your faction's ship take less damage over all (because the axethrowers/rocketeers on the enemy ship are brought down a lot quicker) and there's less of a repair bill for the tank - extra win!

I'm going to assume that if you have a skilled holy paladin, you could have that person jump over and take over the "tank" role - pop a cooldown, melee Saurfang/Muradin a few times, then start the ledge jumping.  That frees one of your tanks to dps or heal.

Anyone else do it this way?  This way is so easy that we prefer this on normal AND heroic, 10 and 25 man.  I love being the "kiting" tank.  :-)  Pretty fun to see Saurfang freak out and run around trying to catch up with me.  Glad he doesn't have a rocket pack!

Attunements in Cataclysm (possible spoilers)

Newish Blizzard "blue" post:

Looking to Cataclysm, maybe you want to know that, for normal dungeons, players must discover the dungeon in the world prior to access it from LFD tool. It is possible that you could see attunements for heroics and raids (which would be similar to the one of Karazhan). Developers aren’t sure yet of whether they use attunements or not. However, heroic dungeons at level 85 would probably have more gear requirement (in comparison) than heroic dungeons at level 80.

So .. attunements.  Awesome.  For someone like myself who only had one level-capped toon at the very end of BC, the idea of doing quest chains to "open" a heroic or raid is interesting to me, and it would indeed prevent the noobs and baddies from just stumbling out of the greens-and-blues questing scene to heroics and raids.

Except ... what about someone like myself, who has four level-capped alts?  Doing said attunement chains would be fun and exciting the first time around, but the second?  The FOURTH?

Hell to the no.

So I propose this:

Do the attunement chain once, get the "key" for a particular heroic or raid at the end, and have that key be account-bound.  Have gear requirements for the heroics and raids, still, but make it so that alts don't have to go through the exact same long quest chains that were JUST DONE in order to get into something.

I wouldn't oppose the "key" being account-bound AND faction-specific, either, if they wanted to do a separate quest chain for the factions.  As long as I don't have to do the same quests over and over and over again.

I love the gear requirements on the harder heroics, like Halls of Reflection - sure, it prevents me and my guildies from "running" someone's alt through it to gear them up, but that's really no skin off my back.  :-P

What do you think?  Attunements?  Hell no?