Hey EJ. Congrats on your success. To my limited knowledge you're the best raiding guild on the server, so I was wondering how you felt about the recent druid changes, as well as druids in general. Specifically, I'm curious as to whether or not you allow or plan to allow druids into your raids performing roles other than healing.

Thanks!

no

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Ahaha, moch has been drinking.

We have two heavy balance druids (I think one is even mooonkin) testing out the raid viability of the build, and two LotP druids testing that. One of the LotPs is 0/31/20, and I'm playing with 14/32/5.

The math says that a feral druid, with good epic gear, should bring enough DPS to the table to be worth using. Of course, the "best" feral build is really 0/30/21, but you aren't particularly helping the raid there, whereas LotP does.

Right now it's feral for trash clears and healing on bosses. Once we've gotten enough gear even that may change.

1.8 dont really matter druids arent really worth playing imo

I remain highly skeptical about the viability of non-healbot druids in a raid setting. But I'm willing to indulge our feral friends and keep an open mind.

For Horde, my main concern is that a druid that does a viable amount of DPS will have serious aggro problems.

Also, part of the problem is that it's really hard to evalaute alternate builds without the gear to back them up. Well, duh, a rogue with Perdition's and 7/8 Bloodfang outdamages a catform druid wearing all blues by a factor of 3:1, but what does that prove? But on the other hand, gearing people up in epics as part of an experiment is a heck of an investment as well. Ah well, we'll see.

In order to be somewhat helpful, Moonkin druids just don't cut it in terms of raid effectiveness compared to having nature's swiftness.

There are some Nature's Grace-Improved Regrowth builds that show promise though, so the balance tree can be very useful if used in moderation.

20/0/31, 0/13/38, and variations thereof are probably the best raiding builds now I think.

More like 7/0/44

;)

My 12/0/39 might actually change to 7/0/44 if I keep getting aggro while clearing the lab.

I'm 5/0/46 at the moment. I didn't really think those last 2 points in balance would do any major difference so I put them in Improved Tranquility. I never really used Tranquility before but I figured with the reduced cooldown and mana cost it might be worth it to try and use it more.

Habits are hard to break though and I think I've used Tranquility maybe twice since patch, when Emeriss does his corruption thingamajik.

Yeah, so far our experimentation has been on the safe side. We have MC down to a science now, so I was a cat for trash/Luci/Mag/Gole, bear for Garr/Domo, and healer/decurser for the others.

So far it's looking pretty good. Our current game in MC is to clear it as fast as we possibly can, and Lotp seems like a valuable aid to that goal while still packing a healing whallop when necessary.

It looks like it will be worth the investment. With better gear and more practice at pretending to be a raiding rogue, our damage should increase significantly. At the same time, thanks to Heart of the Wild, I have >8000 mana and can still perform quite well as a healer, so it's not like the raid is sacrificing anything in that regard, either.

Yeah, I know, I guess I can't get the idea of being able to solo with respectable efficiency out of my head :P

I do sometimes still fantasize about raiding with 40+ points in restoration though.

I went moonkin and participated in a Firemaw-Nefarion Run. While I was in I found myself doing some very respectable dps, often along the perimeter of the top ten on the damage meter. Im going to have to own up and say this is largely due to arcane vulnerable mobs, however, and not because druids do some awesome dps.

The amount of additional DPS the mages are getting because of the 3 percent crit aura in moonkin was hardly noticable as far as I could tell, its quite a job trying to stay within range of all mages while not getting your ass rocked by a mob with a cleave or a rain of fire.

If a Druid is truely invested in the balance tree, shifting in and out of moonkin form to heal is hardly a problem. That said I still did a respectable amount of healing, but I would say its less than shaman level healing. Take that how you will.

A major problem I see with this now; both the DPS and the healing a moonkin druid is putting out is derived from the same source. That source being mana, And it was the limiting factor for my dps all throughout the raid.

Now, I enjoy moonkin quite alot while raiding or otherwise, Its hands down fun and alot more involved than simply healing your arse off for 5 hours. The raid went by extremely fast and Not a second went by that i found myself "bored". Being that I am a member of EJ, Its hard to justify indulging myself so that my gameplay is more enjoyable at the expense of the raidgroup's effectiveness. I think that is the question it really boils down to.

Im sure that I could wait for all the mage gear from MC to be looted by mages and then do a dozen runs myself so i could get tons of arcane damage gear. In the end all im going to be is a wannabe mage that is behind everyone else in gear and therefor should be replaced by someone else.

Oh well.

Thanks a lot for your replies. I plan on being a 5/0/46 druid (although I am still unsure on Improved Tranquility as well). I love healing, but have friends of other specs who aren't as big of fans of it, and it seems unfair to me that people who choose to play a hybrid class be forced into what is typically the least desired role to play. However, ultimately it comes down to the facts and raid viability, so I thought I'd ask you guys. Once again, I appreciate your responses, they've been helpful.

I am the 0/30/21 greedy Druid (after having an identity crisis that cost me 95g in respecs ugh) and I must say, Heart of the Wild helps quite a bit. The only abilitiy I really miss in Restoration is Gift of Nature.

Being an Alchemist also helps. I can cheaply make my own pots to guzzle.

Gurg tolerates us right now. I'm wondering how he'll be about it in 1.9. :P