4.soon

When the announcement was made that the firelands and the next raiding tier that will accompany them was bumped to 4.2 I figured that meant that 4.1 was almost ready and they just dropped the not quite finished content to get it out. Oddly enough that didn't happen and it is now six weeks later. I want my fixes now! /stomps feet

I haven't actually looked forward to a patch in quite a while. Normally it is just new content that I'm not quite ready for and I'll get to it when I get to it. I suspect this first tier of raiding will keep me busy for at least another three months, probably longer. I sort of miss the raiding paradigm where once the core players of your run get something down they could drag everyone else along to some extent. With the current content, especially in 10-mans, there is a lot more responsibility on everyone to be performing well.

So what are those fixes I am waiting for? Well for starters they are making it so I can rez people who released via their raid/party frame. I am also hoping that as a side effect someone releasing mid rez won't interrupt the cast and also that macros announcing rezzes can be simplified and no longer blurt out things like, "rezzing Unknown". Even even half of that turns out to be true I will be quite pleased.

Then probably my favorite change, enrage will no longer cause me to take extra damage in bear form. It is quite annoying to try and time an enrage to coincide with a pull when depending on other people to be ready. Ready checks can help, but there is always that one yahoo that clicks ready and then says, no wait, over vent a second after you've popped enrage. Then in 5 mans there is always the whole crowd control timing thing, but that is somewhat less important since a little more damage in a 5 man won't kill me. Grabbing Halfus and getting reduced healing right off the bat certainly encourages me to make sure I'm not taking more damage in those first few seconds.

I'm also really excited about being able to run 2 or more of my "daily" heroics in the same day. I don't log on every day, but do enjoy running multiple heroics when I do have the time so this will easily more than double my valor point income. The new dungeons will also help keep things interesting as I know all the current heroics like the back of my hand these days.

Death knights getting a battle rez! Since my second main is a DK this is exciting for me, but considering I also run with a dk a lot of the time this will also be beneficial for my druid. It's not always easy/possible to pop off a battle rez while tanking as a bear. Will be trivial for DKs to do it though. I think I am a little jealous.

Prowl has a new... yeah that is stupid.

Savage defense changes for bears should bring us a little closer to other tanks when it comes to mitigating lots of little hits (i.e. trash). Still scales pretty poorly compared to a shield, but it's a step in the right direction.

I'll also admit I am a little excited about the stampeding roar buff. I've actually been making use of this ability more and more since I decided it was worth a hotkey. More speed and a longer duration will make it even more useful.

Cat swipe damage doubled? I have my doubts that this will make it live simply because it sounds so good. Looking at my current performance on AOE groups in cat compared to others I can hold my own and often top the meters. If this change does go through then that would put me head, shoulders and torso above the general population and slightly above those that can give me a run for my money currently.

Looking forward to the healing changes for druids as well. I doubt they will be enough to sway me from my shaman loving ways, but having a couple more things to do besides spam healing touch in a tight spot will be nice. Tranquility will actually be on a short enough cooldown where I'll use it rather than always trying to save it for later.

Righteous Fury won't drop off when pally tanks die! This is always quite inconvenient for me when DPSing with a pally tank.

So I guess not all of those were fixes per say, but they all help smooth over some rough edge or another. In any case the sooner the better. I read over some of these patch notes like prioritizing damage classes with different armor types in random pugs and I start to get the idea the change is already in place.