5.04 Lazy Resto Druid opinion

First off, restore feels pretty much the same. We get some new perks that make tank healing easier, like living seed. Unfortunately, the whole raid healing things feels a tiny bit gipped. None of this really matters until lvl 90, since healing numbers are a bit OP for all healers right now (not normalized for lvl85 anymore). The old talent system really favors selecting what I wanted to do, aka ditch all tank healing talents in favor of HoT power and raid healing. But other than that, restore feels the same, lifebloom 3 ticks, rejuv, swiftmend on cooldown, wild growth on cooldown if more than 3 people have non-full hp. O yeah, we have a barkskin we can cast on other people now, but really... compared to 70% damage reduction of pain suppression, ironbark is retarded, since it's only 20%. I guess shorter cooldown, but seriously not that useful on big burst damage prevention on tanks. So I guess use randomly just to make healing easier? Then should just downright make cooldown 30seconds or something. eh... w/e. Blooming mushrooms, I like because yay, free heals, and I hate because I keep forgetting I planted them or there's no one near them, but that's my fault, I do not plant mushrooms well yet.

Regarding the talents;
First tier is movement related.
Only interesting new one is Displacement Beast: I really wanted displacement beast to work like a rogue vanish (i hate dying, hence vanish = no death during wipes), but after using it once or twice in a dungeon, I think I'm very wrong, but being the wonderful healer that I am, never was in an actual wipe situation, just noticed that though I'm prowled, I'm still in combat, unlike rogue vanish where you'd actually drop combat. So if it's not a free vanish, I would say displacement beast is only useful in pvp, otherwise, might as well get the +15% movement or the super far leap/charge.

Second tier is healing related.
Nature's swift is here, which is kinda sad. I really like it, but kind of want to try other talents.
Renewal, you can heal yourself only for 30% with 2 minute cooldown. Wouldn't use as resto, might use as bear.
My favorite new one is Cenarion Ward, shield + HoT and I can cast it on anyone I want, use it in any form. Great for healer or bear form. Unfortunately it's not really a favorite among the community. Meh, leave the optimizing stuff for when I reach 90. Right now, just enjoying and trying new spells.

3rd tier is Root/Pushback
To tell the truth, I believe the faire fire slow is retarded and useless. Bears and cats can slow anyway just by putting on mangle. Restore would use tangle or pushback. Blizzard's promise of making all 3 talents on a tier a hard decision is epic fail for this tier. I like typhoon and mass entanglement, will switch between those 2 depends on fights. For raggy, typhoon :D.

4th tier is fun healing?
Trees that heal with you I personally like, just because it's a lot of fun, but when serious raiding starts up, I'd have to reconsider. After all, these trees are kinda retarded... they just spam healing touch, which would probably end up overhealing during progression.
Tree form, nothing new.
The passive healing, well... have to crunch numbers and determine a good haste breakpoint, I'm too lazy to do that, since someone on elitistjerks will eventually post the numbers. And imo, though the passive haste gain per swiftmend is great for hps padding, come progression, I'm sure there will be times when huge burst damage comes that that requires Tree form to ensure raid survives those 3 seconds.

5th tier is stun related?
As restore in raid, I didn't get to play with disorienting roar, but I would imagine it might be useful for 5mans. I didn't pick ursol vortex. Ursol vortex seems to be a popular choice on line, guess I'll try that out over the weekend. Mighty bash is just totally worthless for healer, why bash them if they come running at you when you can disorient roar or ursol vortex? I mean, when a bad tank loses aggro, it's always a swarm of 5 coming at you, not a single one. Single one losses are usually only to a dps who's beating on the add while tank is ignoring/not hitting it enough, which isn't the healer's problem :D.

许嵩 - 幻听

Wow, Vae wows me again. I was first introduced to Vae with 你若化成风. I loved that song and his other upbeat fun songs because they have a chinese style of composition (either through the beat or just downright draws from traditional styles), plus hilarious but easy to remember lyrics. Of all the "creation singers," I find Vae's style to be most versatile. He has an issue where he doesn't speak clearly, but that's an obvious imitation of Jay Chow's singing style. Plus, who's really listening to his voice anyway? It's really more about the composition and lyrics.

His darker songs like 半城风沙 is also a great success, especially paired with the fantasy MMORPG game. Although, the newest song he did for the game's 3rd expansion is a little disappointing in terms of creativity. Sounded like a mish-mesh of his older pieces. But with  幻听 I'm pleasantly surprised. The song itself is relatively generic in C-Pop style, but I'm glad to see he's still trying out new styles, unlike 后弦 who hasn't really changed song styles since 2010. Obviously the problem would be Vae lacks a definitive signature, but I don't think that's really necessary, his voice and singing style is enough for anyone to identify him from the rest of the C-Pop crowd.

Pre-MoP Jitters for my druid

So MoP is coming out in a month. New talents out next week. Though I wish good things for my druids, I see more downsides than up atm.

Restore druid. Whatever, no one cares, since blizzard's not changing much. Plus, I think restore druids in general are one of the least vocal group of players. Just do our HoTing and don't gimp us too much, and we're happy.

Feral druid.  Well, deep down I don't care to be a feral druid, tanking as a bear is fine, but not really a cat deep down. Even when tanking I like to focus on holding aggro and staying alive, if those two conditions are met, I could care less about my dps. Obviously, that mentality's fine for 5mans, but off tanking raids... well... different issue entirely. Derping is not my strong suit. Maybe with more practice i can get the rotations off better, but the 2sec gcd plus lag, I get my timing thrown off all the time, which stinks.

With the introduction of the new talent spec, I lose my 1 spec off-tank and dps spec. The truly committed feral druids are saying, hurray, we have to spec differently to tank or dps anyway. But I feel like Blizzard's neglecting the off tanks who like to spend time as kitty to up dps, or just the general don't really like to play cat, but it's necessary for quick kills during farming, but can still offtank fine people.  Maybe I'm jumping the gun, thinking that guardian spec will be unable to play kitty as well as before. After all, the new druid talents are all about versatility and hybriding. But if Blizzard wants to keep it balanced, I think guardian spec will be really unoptimal kitty spec and kitty spec will not be able to off-tank even, not to mention main tank.

Balance druid. Meh, I just skip over their complaints and threads completely. I don't mind balance spec, but didn't practice it at all, since I had to keep my restore and feral spec at all times. So, on that note, once MoP comes out, if I do get a chance to hold a dps spec (instead of restore/tank all the time) I might try this spec, but I have no comparison with the past, so wouldn't know if it was buffer or gimper.

Chinese IME?

Way back when, I used Richwin and NJStar, both were not freeware. They have awful compatibility with Windows compared to now. Not really their fault... just a lack of unicode. One day, Microsoft introduced their IME and finally rendered Richwin and NJStar obsolete. I didn't mind Microsoft's IME, it got the job done, a word at a time.

Then a few years ago, while on a trip in China, my cousin said, "Why are you using this awful IME?" I responded, "Show me why your IME is better and I'll use it." So I got introduced to Sogou. I loved it. The user interface was beautiful (though I don't particularly care for the skins. I didn't mind having the option of turning things pink or flowery). It had an ever evolving dictionary for easy phrase typing and even fuzzy sounds! What could go wrong?

As with most Chinese softwares, the more popular it gets, the more they start bundling "junk." I'm sure if you're a regular user, you could care less about the extra bundled features. I tried overlooking the news alert pop-ups (could turn it off in preferences), I tried overlooking the new installation of skin manager, but I got pushed over the edge by the browser. The second I got bundled that, I knew it's time to break up with Sogou. I'm sorry, but I like my browsing history to be private, and I already have good lite browsers, no need for a bloated one.

So I went on a search for a new IME. So the 4 IMEs are Sogou, QQ, Google, and Microsoft. The contest is really just between Sogou and QQ in terms of market share. But as I know with QQ, it's probably one of the most invasive, shadowy software in the world. So I went with Google IME. It seemed perfect, the lite form of Sogou I wanted to have. It looks like Sogou, feels like Sogou, and even uses the same dictionaries. However, after I toggled it off and on, the control panel disappeared on me... to forever not come back (I tried reconfiguring, reinstalling, unplugging my 2nd monitor, etc, etc).  It's probably a bug on my computer, but I had to say good bye to Google IME and move onto the final contestant Microsoft IME 2010. Did not have high hopes.

To my surprise, Microsoft IME has come a long way. The new user interface borrowed from Sogou, not as configurable, is definitely prettier than the olden days. Their dictionary is still subpar compared to the other IMEs, but an improvement nevertheless (really should try using the open dictionaries instead of sticking to Microsoft's own dictionary). Finally, no compatibility issues. So what can I say? After all these years, I'm back using Microsoft IME.

All in all, if Sogou wasn't bloated, I'd pick it any day. If Google wasn't bugged on my computer, I'd pick it. But at least Microsoft IME 2010 isn't unacceptable and it doesn't have the issues of the previous two, so why not?

Polar Bear Cafe

Of all the animes that started last season, I must say Polar Bear Cafe had the title that made me the most curious. To my surprise (or not), it really is about a polar bear who owns a cafe! Not only does he live in the town and interact with humans like humans would, other zoo animals also do the same thing. They talk, complain, and hang out in the cafe with humans! But once you buy into that premise, the times when they interact with animals like animals become jarring instead. After all, seals are scared of Polar Bear-san, but humans are not? Oh yeah, the chain pun time is also weird, but makes more sense once you realize its target audience is kids.

Of course, you'd think the show is about Polar Bear-san, but really it should be called the lazy panda with annoying penguin show. I don't mind Panda, after all, who could ever hate pandas (esp. one voiced by Jun Fukuyama)? But the penguin just spends all day whining about Penko-san (the female penguin he has a crush on). All in all, great show to fall asleep to or just to watch cute animals talk.

oops, 你懂的 - 金莎&后弦

Haven't listened to music for a few months now. Figured, might as well start with a duet from 金莎&林俊杰.
First 10 seconds, I realized the male singer sounded wrong, he sounded more like 后弦, and on a 2nd look, it was indeed not JJ, but 后弦.
All in all, this song isn't a keeper for me. It's so generic I could hear it on the street and mistake it for about 100 other recent 后弦 songs, granted all of his songs are written by him, and his creativity seems have to reached the limit. However, I still hope that he'd break out with some more creative or at least non-generic songs.
No complaints against 金莎 though, I like how her voice sounds in duets, but not so pleasant solo for some reason. Maybe because she's very good at harmonizing her voice with the bass voices, but solo, she sounds like every other generic auto-tuned female c-pop singer.

Just wanted to add, this song is actually a break up song. :D Wouldn't have noticed if I didn't actually read the lyrics. Pretty funny.