I thought I would take some time today to go over resources that you may want to have on hand as you jump into Diablo 3. With so many WOW players on the annual pass, I expect a large chunk of WOW players to hop over and give D3 a try. This post is going to be a giant list of links, since other people know a lot more about the game than I do, and sending you to where to find info makes more sense than me trying to duplicate their guides anyway.

Getting Started:

• A couple months ago, I wrote about Diablo 3 for WOW players, talking about some differences between WOW and D3.
• Blizzard has a ton of info on their Diablo 3 website, of course, including a launch day preparation guide.
• If you have problems installing the game, WoW Insider posted some installation trouble shooting steps. You can also try the tech support forums for PC, or the Mac Tech Support forums, on the D3 forums. More advanced users can also bypass the downloader using manual links (with a guide written by another Blizzard MVP).
• SET YOUR REGION (US vs EU)!!! You will want to follow the instructions from this blue post to make sure you choose the correct region (US or EU, etc). Having the wrong region will cause errors with trying to log into the game.
• You need a battle tag set up for playing D3. You can add your friends’ battle tags from D3 but not WOW or SC2 yet.  You can still see people logged into D3 on your WOW friends’ list if you previously added them while playing D3.
• If you didn’t play the first two Diablo installments, WoW Insider also has a D3 lore recap to get you caught up. I checked, and they don’t appear to spoil D3′s storyline in the post as far as I can tell. They also posted a basic intro to the game’s systems for WOW players.

D3 Trusted Gameplay Resources:

• Diablo Fans is a Curse gaming website, similar to mmo-champion for D3 players. They have a massive information recap post that covers a lot of the class and system information. In particular, make sure you read their guide about the skill & rune system. As a WoW player hitting the D3 universe, also make sure you read about the difficulty levels, and the hardcore mode so that you aren’t surprised when your hardcore character suffers perma-death. Be careful with things labeled spoilers if you want to stay away from info about the storyline. You can read basic system & class info without too much fear of spoilers otherwise.
• Not to be outdone, the Zam network is also building a site called Diablo 3 Database , which is a wowhead-like site for D3. It contains information on items, abilities, etc. It has a character builder for building what kind of gear sets you are looking for, and an ability calculator for playing with your spells and runes. There is also information on quests, as well.

If you  have other favorite D3 resources, please feel free to add them to comments on the post and I’ll do my best to update this resource list. Happy D3 day!

Also, if you have an annual pass and aren’t sure whether you should play or not, I really recommend that you give it a try. The game is pretty friendly to WOW players, and I had a lot of fun playing the beta!

First order of business: The changing face of Restokin. As I’ve been alluding to in my posts here and on twitter, there are some changes coming to Restokin. I’ve decided (for the sake of my sanity) to branch out into other classes more often, and to be slightly less druid-focused. Druids have always had the best blogging community. So, when we leave to go and try to find information on other classes. I’ve found the solution, which is to bring other classes here. I have a few guest posters lined up (including a shadow priest, a mage, and a shaman). As we transition into MoP, I’m hoping to build the blog up as something where we have posts on an assortment of different healing and caster DPS topics. So, you’ll get a mix of news for your druid and your other assortment of healers & casters here.

The bloggers of Undying Resolution: So, in thinking about branching out to other classes, I wanted to spend some time today talking about how awesome my guild is. I’m in Undying Resolution on Elune (US), as many of you know. Since I have been the guild’s primary recruiter, I have found a handful of bloggers, and we’ve cultivated a blogger-friendly environment in our guild, and we list all our blogs on our guild’s website. We now have (as far as I know) 10 other bloggers in our 25-man raiding guild, excluding me. Now, some of the blogs are bigger than others, and some don’t get a lot of posts. However, in honor of the newbie blogger initiative, I wanted to take some time to show you what my guild has been up to.

• Ponerya of Fel Concentration and WoWinsider: Ponerya has been blogging about Warlocks on Fel Concentration since 2009.  Recently, our resident warlock expert has picked up a job as the defense against the dark arts teacher (ie. warlock Blood Pact writer) at WoW Insider! Her witty and insightful posts are helpful for anyone looking to play a warlock.
• Juvenate of WTS Heals: Juvenate originally started blogging about priests, but when he switched to playing his druid full-time for Undying Resolution, WTS Heals turned into a resto druid blog. Since we blog about similar things, I’m sure you guys have seen Juv’s posts pop up on my blogroll.
• Elemaster’s WoW Shamans: A new blog coming onto the scene is Elemaster’s WoW Shamans blog. Just like the name says, he blogs about the shaman class. He has only been blogging for 3 months, so he’s still working on growing the site.  He writes about mostly elemental shaman, but will also sometimes post about enhancement and resto. He has been playing the game since Vanilla, so he has a good depth of knowledge about the shaman class.
• Effreati’s RP: We originally recruited Effy from a Role Playing server, where she had been blogging about Role Playing on Effreati’s RP. Effy raids as a restoration shaman in our guild, so you may also be able to find some resto shaman info on her site if you look hard enough. Currently, she’s writing a story that includes some of the members of our guild as characters, which is pretty awesome.
• Aesadonna’s Derp KnOOb: Aesa, one of our death knight DPS raiders, has a DK blog (Called Derp Knoob) where she writes about death knights, transmoging, and about her process of dragging UR back to ICC to complete her ICC legendary. It’s low on theorycrafting, but high on fun!
• Djent’s Fun Killing Time: Djent, one of our newer members, has recently started up a rogue blog called Fun Killing Time. It looks like he’s trying to build the site into a good resource for rogues, and has been recently blogging about rogue MOP beta changes.
• Malchome’s Mind on Gaming: My husband has a blog where he blogs about a pretty random assortment of WOW-related things. Malchome’s Mind on Gaming has been up and running for about the same time as my blog, where he blogs about WoW’s game design in general (leveling, crafting, raiding, class design, etc).
• Amowrath of The Light’s Wrath: Amowrath, a Holy Paladin in my guild got bit by the blogging bug, and started a blog about holy paladins called The Light’s Wrath. It looks like he hasn’t posted much recently, but maybe some MOP inspiration will bring him back to the blog.
• Maerdred of Treebound: In retirement from raiding right now right now, Maerdred (one of our resto druids) had a long-standing blog about his druid called Treebound. He still sometimes posts, but has mostly been afflicted with some disease called “real life”.
• Opalbreeze of Fake game Design: Opalbreeze, a moonkin in UR, has a new blog called Fake Game Design. He writes mostly about druids on the blog, and has been posting a flurry of feedback about MoP.

So, that’s the current set of blogs we have in my guild. If I missed anyone, let me know and I’ll add you to our list. The list of UR bloggers grows bigger and bigger all the time! I have a guest post lined up for this site where one of our shadow priests will be writing about his experiences here on Restokin. My guild does our best to be supportive of new bloggers, so it is a lot of fun to play in an environment full of creativity and awesome people! I love my guild!

We’re not yet happy with the druid level 90 row. We still like the theme of it playing into the druid’s hybrid nature and we want to reassure you (which I think most of you already know) that druids won’t do lower damage or healing compared to other classes just because some other class has an unambiguous throughput increasing talent at level 90. Classes are balanced around their whole package.

Nonetheless, we want the bottom row of talents to be exciting. In the next (hopefully) build, you’ll see a few changes.

• Disentanglement — no longer a talent. Shapeshifting for all druids just breaks roots.
• Dream of Cenarius — increases damage spells by 70% (up from 30%).
• Heart of the Wild — now also grants 6% passive Agility and Intellect.
• Nature’s Vigil — replaces Disentanglement. Increases all damage and healing done by 30% for 30 sec, with a 3 min cooldown. While active, all healing spells also damage a nearby target for 50% of healing done, and all damage spells and abilities also heal a nearby friendly target for 50% of the damage done.

Let us know how they feel once you get a chance to try them.

This is some great news! Nature’s Vigil is going to be a nice utility tool that will be a good option for people who want to specialize in their main role while still bringing some utility. Being able to break roots baseline is a much better idea than having to spend a level 90 talent to have it back. The heal from disentanglement won’t be baseline, but we have enough self-healing options available that it will likely still be okay.

I guess that means I need to get back to leveling my druid on beta! This is definitely some great news for druids. I’m really happy to see some improvements here!

NOTE: the new level 90 talents are hitting beta in today’s patch. Keep in mind that the ability to shift out of “movement impairing effects” will include shifting out of both roots & slows.

This took a while to figure out since we were bugged and had no mounts at all in  the latest beta build due to the new UI feature not working all that well.

Jade Forest:

and this one from the monk starting area:

I’m also unhappy with my druid on the beta server. As I’ve talked about before, the talents for moonkin are pretty stale and unhelpful for my PvE raiding, and moonkin have lost a lot of PvE tools. So, moonkin are mostly going to spam 1 button over & over again, and the net result may end up still not being any better than what we have right now on Live.

My main has always been a druid, except for the couple months in Burning Crusade progression raiding where having a resto shaman with chain heal meant that a shaman in blues could out-heal a druid in epics. Even then, my druid was my main and I was just happening to raid on a shaman (while I beta tested my druid in the background to get it in good shape for WOTLK).

However, after many, many years of fighting for moonkin to try and be viable, I’ve come to the realization that if I want to do good DPS, I’m going to need to just re-roll a pure DPS class.

So, here is Miniliss, the level 61 mage:

At this point, I’m seriously considering making Miniliss into my raiding main in MoP, and running as a mage (haven’t decided which spec yet). Arcane mages have had a mechanics overhaul for MOP that will potentially make their rotation a lot more fun compared to wrath/starfire spam for moonkin druids. I’m considering leaving Lissanna as my forum posting character, and I’ll likely level my druid up to 90, but for the first time in the history of the game, I’m considering changing mains.

I probably won’t make a final decision until MoP actually goes live.

For my readers, though, I wanted to ask:

• Have you ever changed mains in previous expansions? If so, what did you change to & why did you change?
• Are you thinking of changing mains for MoP? If so, what class are you looking forward to playing in MoP?

It’s something I’ve never really done before. Lissanna (the NE druid) was my very first character I ever created on the very first day I started playing this game at the beginning of Vanilla WOW, and I’ve never changed mains before. I’m rapidly hitting the point, however, where I just don’t think I can keep doing the same thing over & over, fighting for a class that is always going to be an expansion behind the rest in terms of development and never ends up being right.

Also, if I do change mains, I’ll probably have to broaden the scope of my blog from being really druid-centric to including more classes. Starting a new blog seems like too much of a pain, and I’m likely to always play my druid even if it’s not my main for raiding. I definitely still have a lot to think about, but every day, my mage becomes more and more tempting.

Garnaph's little girl Zoe!

In somewhat related, but also unrelated, news… my sister ALSO had a baby over the weekend (a day or so after Garnaph). So, I’m also an aunt now. My niece is named Cadence.

Lissanna's niece Cadence

Congrats everyone!