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WoWhead has its pet talent calculators up.
There look to be 3 classes of pets: Cunning, Ferocious, and Tenacious. Ferocious is a clear DPS class and Tenacious is the tanking class. Cunning seems to be mostly slanted towards PvP with irritating things, but it could also be a bit of DPS.

I guess these make sense given that Ferocity covers cats and ravagers. Flyers seem to be in cunning (including sporebats and moths!). And bears and boars are Tenacious.

I’m hoping there will be something more to differentiate the pets though.

Okay…so here’s something from the beta patch notes:

• Feral Instinct (Feral) no longer increases threat generated in Bear form, but now increases damage done by your Swipe ability by 5/10/15%.

As if we didn’t have enough threat problems (I don’t care what karthis says, I didn’t start building good threat until I got my badge chest), they are reducing druid bear threat by 15%. Once again showing that Blizzard really doesn’t want Druids tanking. Every time we turn around they nerf us. It’s irritating as hell.

A member of our guild that I really liked left last night. He left because he didn’t feel like we were a guild. In other words, we didn’t do things as a guild and that was what he was looking for. And it’s true. We don’t, as a rule, do things as a guild, except for raiding and the occasional instance.

I certainly can’t speak for anyone else, but there are a couple of reasons I often just solo…The first is that I’m on an off time from everyone else. Most of my guild is on EST time, so the ones who do things together are often involved when I get on. And the ones that aren’t on EST tend to be predominantly on the west coast, so they start much later than I do. In either case, I can’t meet their times to do stuff with them if it isn’t previously scheduled (i.e. raids).

The second is a deeper malaise…Yeah, I want to get a bunch of 70s/80s and do all sorts of things. But, I’m getting kind of bored with WoW. I keep asking myself why I keep playing…And come up with answers that are deeply indicitive of other problems in my life. I keep playing because I don’t want to have to deal with troubled interpersonal relationships that I would have to do something about. I keep playing because it lets me escape how little I like my life and how much I fear making the changes I would have to make to like my life. I keep playing because I set goals, even though those goals are only important within the game. I keep playing because it gives me a lift where I would otherwise be lacking (I have a history of serious depression and WoW, for whatever reason, is a buffer against that right now). I keep playing because I’m sitting at the computer anyway.

All of these things point to issues that I need to confront but fear doing so because for all my dissatisfaction, I’m comfortable enough to make me a coward. I’m extremely risk averse as I age because I took so many risks when I was younger that simply didn’t work out. So, I guess, I need to start working on the rest of my life. However, at this time, I’m still going to keep playing WoW. Because I do need escape. And I still like parts of the game. Maybe I will play for the game itself again when WOTLK comes out. But I’ll probably be playing less. I don’t know how much less though.

Having tons of alts can require a lot of time management.  I have 3 70s right now and 2 in the 60s that I’m leveling, plus additional alts that I sometimes play for other reasons, like my Pox Arcana alt. Getting time in to play them all to the degree I want to in the limited hours I have isn’t always easy.

I’m starting to farm for mats in prep for the expansion (I’d like to get one guildbank tab full of herbs and ore).  That requires at least a couple of hours a week and I usually do the farming while waiting in an AV queue (need honor for various things and the PvP trinket on all characters!). Of course, there’s raiding to be done at least a couple of nights a week. And, as I mentioned, leveling for major alts and other game play.

I’ve developed a little bit of a steady schedule now as TBC malaise sets in while everyone is waiting for WOTLK. I don’t want to raid more than 2 nights a week and I only raid for about  3 hours at a shot, but those nights are pretty consistent.

I have one night that is dedicated to Arena PvP with the people in my guild who like to do that sort of thing. We don’t win that much, but we try to have fun. And we are unrepentantly self-deprecating :D.

I’m going to start setting one night aside for doing the odd instance, but I haven’t decided which night that will be yet. because I don’t like to PUG, and it being summer, our guild’s online presence can be moderately sporadic.

Finally, I will set aside 2 nights a week for mat farming while waiting for AV.

The remaining two nights I will probably be online, and when I am, it will likely be on an alt leveling.

Of course, this can all be usurped by real life events (there was a time when it was less likely that I would allow that to happen, but I too am less enamored of the current game environment than I was in the past. )

So, there is my limited but defined time management for WoW. Does anyone else plan their playing time in this day and age? I encourage you to talk about it if you do. Makes us seem less…obsessive;).

Well, I ordered it on June 30th. And my Blizzard Authenticator finally shipped today. A little longer than the one to two days the email suggested. And since it’s ground shipping, that’s another 8-10 days :(. But at least it’s finally on it’s way!