Druid discussion thread - 3 roles, 5 stages of grief - Page 12

Zeln · 03/27/07, 11:12 AM

I picked up an abacus of violent ends http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28288 last night in heroic mech, it drops kitty attack speed from 1.0 to .8

What I'm trying to decide is should I go ahead and pick up the everbloom idol for my dps set as opposed to waiting a couple more heroic runs for either the tank neck or tank ring. I'm already uncrittible and have a little over 30% dodge and 21.7k armor. The tank ringrds would be a nice upgrade to my stamina, I'm only sitting at 1200 with an imp, mark, and fort in my current gear in bear form

For heroics our group has recently changed up some and I'm not maintanking. In addition, I'm an offtank in karazhan as opposed to a mt. So my gut feeling is the everbloom idol is more of an immediate upgrade...or my gut feeling is I want to spend my badges now and not wait.

• Daboran · 03/27/07, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Cryect

To Daboran just wear your usual tanking gear and you shouldn't have an issue (if Hurtful Strike is working that is which it wasn't last night for me).

Normal? I have 3 18-slot bags of the stuff not counting my bank...

Well, it's going to be trial and error I assume - I'll err on the side of DPS(threat) along with 16k buffed HP/decent AC and adjust as required I think.

HaklePrime · 03/27/07, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by Cryect

Heh, I wouldn't worry about flaunting was trying to get people to talk about something a little different from the usual tanking discussions and was wondering since my conditions weren't optimal and I know they could be better. Curious you have someone keepng up mangle for you? Guessing you also didn't have to rez or innervate someone as well (I hate when I'm trying to rez and can't find the person's body since its got LOS behind various objects >_<).

When you say DPS warrior was it an Arms warrior for Blood Frenzy?

Wondering how much higher druids can go at this point in time.

To Daboran just wear your usual tanking gear and you shouldn't have an issue (if Hurtful Strike is working that is which it wasn't last night for me).

I actually did have to rez, though, there was no movement involved, my target was directly behind me(Silly Seed-spamming warlocks). We also didn't have a DPS warrior in the raid last night, though my BS was provided by our 2nd tank warrior, who also spent the remainder of the fight running around with T-fury spamming Piercing Howl. Lastly, my mangle-bitch, as it was his turn last night, was not in the raid. Oh! I had 7 Watery Graves as well

All those factors combined, yeah, it can get alot higher. I think, given optimal conditions, maxed-out buffs, clean kill, we can push 1200 dps, maybe a bit more.

Quasar · 03/27/07, 12:54 PM

Originally Posted by Cryect

Edit: Oh and this DPS using Everbloom Idol for Shreds and swapping to Idol of Feral Shadows for Rips.

Sorry for the tangent, do you have macros that do that when you hit Shred or Rip? If so, mind posting them? Thanks =)

HaklePrime · 03/27/07, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Quasar

Sorry for the tangent, do you have macros that do that when you hit Shred or Rip? If so, mind posting them? Thanks =)

I manually click mine.

Couldn't find a reliable script that accounted for miss/dodges/parries that didn't completely bork me with the extra GCDs.

Quasar · 03/27/07, 1:21 PM

I think manually idol-swapping on a 10-15 minute boss fight would drive me insane.

• Cryect · 03/27/07, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by Quasar

Sorry for the tangent, do you have macros that do that when you hit Shred or Rip? If so, mind posting them? Thanks =)

# showtooltip Rip
/equip [noequipped:Idol of Feral Shadows]Idol of Feral Shadows
/cast Rip

# showtooltip Shred
/equip [nostealth, noequipped:Everbloom Idol]Everbloom Idol
/cast [nostealth] Shred; [stealth] Ravage

So I just press the move as soon as right after the move before these moves I want to do so the GCD is overlapping in the move before it.

HaklePrime · 03/27/07, 2:18 PM

Originally Posted by Cryect

# showtooltip Rip
/equip [noequipped:Idol of Feral Shadows]Idol of Feral Shadows
/cast Rip

# showtooltip Shred
/equip [nostealth, noequipped:Everbloom Idol]Everbloom Idol
/cast [nostealth] Shred; [stealth] Ravage

So I just press the move as soon as right after the move before these moves I want to do so the GCD is overlapping in the move before it.

How does that account for dodges/parries/misses?

Also, equipping idols, unless my eyes deceive me, do not 'overlap' the GCD, they reset it, where ever it may be in time.

• Cryect · 03/27/07, 2:21 PM

Originally Posted by HaklePrime

I had 7 Watery Graves as well

Oh I forgot about those >_< even though i had a bunch last time I did it.

• Cryect · 03/27/07, 2:23 PM

Originally Posted by HaklePrime

How does that account for dodges/parries/misses?

Also, equipping idols, unless my eyes deceive me, do not 'overlap' the GCD, they reset it, where ever it may be in time.

What do you mean how does it account for dodges/parries/misses. I press the button when I see the move has gone off its like manually swapping the idols out except I don't have to keep changing the buttons I use.

And by overlap I mean I switch the idol during the last GCD and yes it still resets the GCD but considering on average we are limited to 1 move every 2 seconds and in catform the global cooldown time is 1 second this isn't a major issue. (heh even though it resets it they overlap as long as you start the change within 1 second of the last move of course)

Edit: BTW for PvP this is somewhat of an issue since you are doing of course burst damage from a full energy bar often instead of waiting for energy ticks to pull off your next move like you do for sustained DPS. In which case I recommend you don't use macros like I have.

• Cryect · 03/27/07, 2:28 PM

Ahh, also see you powerswitch based on the other thread. Wasn't doing that and that would explain some of the differences for sure (I need to setup an energy watcher and really try out power shifting).

HaklePrime · 03/27/07, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Cryect

What do you mean how does it account for dodges/parries/misses. I press the button when I see the move has gone off its like manually swapping the idols out except I don't have to keep changing the buttons I use.

And by overlap I mean I switch the idol during the last GCD and yes it still resets the GCD but considering on average we are limited to 1 move every 2 seconds and in catform the global cooldown time is 1 second this isn't a major issue. (heh even though it resets it they overlap as long as you start the change within 1 second of the last move of course)

Edit: BTW for PvP this is somewhat of an issue since you are doing of course burst damage from a full energy bar often instead of waiting for energy ticks to pull off your next move like you do for sustained DPS. In which case I recommend you don't use macros like I have.

Ah, I see, I misread the script. I thought that you had a macro for the idol switch to be 'automated' following firing off a Shred/Rip.

If anyone figures out a successful script for that however, I'd be greatly interested

Monsanto · 03/27/07, 3:18 PM

I reached the final stage of druid grief, and rerolled a warrior. I did this after the following confluence of events, which occured in roughly a 3 day time span:
1) The druid nerf
2) The very first thread tracking arena rankings, showing warriors (the #1 tank class) as #1 in PvP, and druids as the absolute worst
3) Eating a mortal strike crit for 3.7k in 5v5 arenas. Recall that 2k mangle crits while wearing cat gear were considered imbalanced, but this is somehow accpetable.
So now I'm a 70 warrior, 3 nethers away from a deep thunder, and can rest assured that I'll be able to tank every single encounter in the game, forever.

Tanking
The further that we go, the more convinced I am that druid main tanking is soon coming to an end, thanks in large part to crushing blows. Our early Gruul (pre-nerf) attemps used me as a main tank, and it was only a matter of time before I was killed due to a crushing blow.

Same thing on Magtheridon, where I would eat a crushing blow for close to 10k, followed by all kinds of other goodies.

A warrior can maintain 100% shield block uptime on relatively slow hitting mobs, guaranteeing that he'll never take a crushing blow.

PvP
I've tried it both as feral and resto, and I'm equally depressed for both specs. Let's start with feral.

Feral's first problem is lack of crowd control. Cyclone is great, but it's functionally impractical to be crowd controlling and having to shapeshift (and waiting for energy ticks). Feral's second problem is lack of survivability in our dps form. Cats are brutalized almost as soon as they pop out of stealth, and our only resort is to turtle in bear form where we contribute negligible dps and no burst. But probably feral's biggest problem is that our optimal dps style involves mangle and shred. Being a positional attack, it can actually be quite difficult to get shreds off. I've found that even against stationary targets like a priest who is healing, they often just spin in circles which makes it surprisingly difficult to get off a shred. Add in the cat form range bug, server lag, and positional attacks seem frustrating.

OK, now for resto...

In resto, we can at least use cyclone, which is probably our strongest role in the arena. But a resto druid's biggest weakness is our 3 second healing touch. I would estimate that only 25% of my healing touches are not counterspelled or earthshocked, or fail to land because someone died in 3 seconds or ran behind a pillar at the last minute. Our best arena spell, regrowth, is still slower than priest, shaman and paladin heals, and are also prone to counterspell, though it's not usually as bad. But regrowth's mana cost is obviously a problem, as you are forced to spam it in the arena, and we never benefit from the HoT.

Resto druids also have the worst survivability of all the healers, which really makes no sense. A priest with inner fire has more armor than we do, and blessed resilience is an amazing talent, as is focussed casting and fear. Druids have very few options in comparison, and shifting to bear form is as good as dying, because a smart team will just put a warrior or rogue on you every time you shift out of bear form. Getting a druid to shift to bear is the same thing as killing the druid - the heals stop, and that's all that matters. Our defense stops us from doing our primary job, and that's something no other healing class has to deal with.

Also, I believe that HoTs are pretty much garbage, as frontloaded healing is what is needed to counter burst damage. Ironically, HoTs are pretty much all we have once you realize that Healing Touch is just begging to be counterspelled.

Oh, and cyclone is considered a nature spell, not a balance spell. So a counterspelled absolutely wrecks as druid, as we have zero balance spells worth casting.

Arena Builds

I'm curious to see what everyone else has come up with. I bet most people end up with something like 8 balance / 11 feral / 42 resto. I actually have a few shocking ideas that I'd like to run by you guys:

Nature's Reach - it makes you dump 4 more points in balance, but it increases your cyclone rage and therefore makes it easier to take out their healers without getting too close to the fighting.

Naturalist - I can't believe I'm advocating this, but I'd consider dumping this talent entirely. As I said, only 25% of my healing touches aren't counterspelled/earthshocked, so most of my healing comes from HoTs (again, which are garbage).

Subtlety - Offensive dispelling on an assist train is standard practice, and having subtlety would help my garbage HoTs to stay on my mortal struck target.

The arena build I'm thinking of trying next would therefore look like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MzjM0bZxMhoZVVcxcq0xsb

◊ Greenexile · 03/27/07, 10:20 PM

I think that resto's arent really able to be a 5v5 'main' healer. In my (very limited) experience, we do pretty well as an off healer hybrid when using a balance / resto spec. This spec also has an added advantage of being a pretty good PvE spec. So far I've found that relying on a pally / priest to main heal seems to work best. You're able to cyclone / root / assist - but when the enemy assist train ends up on your pally/priest you can still NS/HT and then spam them with the big HTs. Hopefully that's enough.

You're right, we're a pretty lame PvP class right now. Argueably, we're a pretty lame PvE class right now, too. There are people out there who make the class work for them really well and that's great - but I'd say that for the most part, the druid class (at least, the restoration spec - which is what I have the most experience with) *is* fundamentally broken.

I'm happy to be proven wrong though

Solstice · 03/28/07, 1:43 AM

Monsanto, good post.

First of all, I personally dont feel that warriors are very well balanced in group pvp right now. For a class with reasonably good survivability their dps output is a little too high in my opinion. Perhaps it's just MS with the new crafted weapons that I'm finding imbalanced.. I find it hard to justify an ability does such insane damage while also adding a -50% heal debuff and only being on a 5-6 second cooldown. With heroism\bloodlust thown in for good measure it's not hard to see why pretty much every single 1900+ 5v5 team include an MS warrior. Anycase I wouldnt be at all suprised to see warriors "retuned" in an upcoming patch, particularly as they are the one class above all others that scales with gear. With bc only in its infancy I dread to think what they'll be like in a few months time.

Tanking
I couldn't agree more. It's my understanding that the druid nerf came about as a direct result of the arena system, which was proving that feral druids had it way too easy verses melee classes. This was undisputable and I'm pleased in a way that the issue was addressed to some extent. However, I really get the impression that the dev's somehow completely ignored the PvE implications that the changes would have. Why else would they give us a last minute reprieve by buffing lacerate and mangle threat on the same day we got patched rather than announce it along with the original PTR notes? Anycase, they nerfed bear damage which I guess I can live with, but to nerf our armour and hp too was frankly ridiculously unneccessary. One could argue that from a PvP perspective it was needed. I wouldnt agree, but one could argue this. However from a PvE perspective why oh why did they nerf our only form of crushing blow mitigation. Makes no sense to me.

PvP
I've tried both feral and (to a lesser extent) resto in arenas and I find it requires an insane amount of concentration to play well enough for me to feel like I'm contributing something valuable to the team.

As feral, I find it hard to even come close to competing with our MS warrior and elemental mage in dps. Most people in reasonably good arena teams know that if you keep the druid facing you it cuts off at least a 1/3rd of his potential dps. I generally feel more useful doing what burst damage i can at the start and when the opportunity arises shifting to bear for charge and bash, and to caster for root and cyclone. If they only have one dispeller and I cyclone him and root a melee and I'm effectively keeping 2 classes cc'd albeit for a relatively short duration. So I dont think that lack of cc is really the problem, but rather lack of the ability to cc and do any meaninful dps at the same time.

Resto I find more challenging as like you say survivability is so low compared to other healing classes. That said, there arent many teams who are stupid enough to focus dps on a bear form druid and unless you're the only healer (which you should never, ever try to be in a 5v5 arena) then you're buddy can usually heal through the assist train while ur dps ppl do their job. More often I find myself using bear purely for bash and to charge out of range, at which point the focus usually changes and i can shift out cc and heal.

For burst healing we dont have 1.5 sec heals which indeed sucks if the opposing team has an even semi-alert mage. But we do have regrowth -> SM which is some pretty nifty burst h/s, and somewhat negates the loss of the HoT component when we're forced to spam heal. With regards to efficiency I struggle to remember an occasion where i ran oom in arenas as most of my gear stacks up intellect over +heal. Providing the opposition arent assist training me at the time its pretty rare for a shaman or priest to notice me pop innervate.

I dont think HoTs should be undervalued, the only time they really get dispelled is against an offensive shaman or shadow priest but these are few and far between in my experience and I pretty much always throw a lifebloom on after a rejuv (if I dont SM immediatly) which tends to discourage purge spamming shamans. Lifebloom cant really be considered a HoT as such as the HoT duration is so short... to me its more like a small instant cast HT that takes 6 seconds to land. Which is useful in many situations. Then of course we have NS which is possibly the best "oh shit" button that any healer has at his disposal.

Spec
The one you posted is pretty much exactly what i go with apart from a couple of small exceptions. 13/11/37

Nature's reach: Fully agree. No reason not to take this, an extra 6 yards on moonfire, IS, root and cyclone is pretty damn useful.

Insect Swarm: Considering I've already put 12 point into balance I cant find a reason why not to make it 13 and take IS. The damage isnt exactly amazing but its instant cast and costs more mana to dispel than it does to apply. MF + IS on an assist trained target takes so little time and mana and it's things like this that can make the difference.

Naturalist Vs Subtlety: I'd still go with naturalist every time. I just dont value the benefit of 30% more chance to resist dispels.. if they dispel regrowth, /care. If they dispel rejuv, well that's slightly more irritating but I pretty much always either SM immediatly or apply LB too so its no big deal. If they dispel LB then gg, reapply and hope they keep spamming. HT I find useful later on in the games, when the enemy mage is hopefully either dead or has CS on cooldown. It kicks out alot more HpS than regrowth when improved so I really dont feel naturalist is a talent we can afford to ignore.

Empowered Rejuv\ToL: I value int more than +heal in PvP, and I dont value efficiency, being snared to 80% movement speed or being banished and unable to do jack for 30 seconds. As such I cant see why anyone would want to put points in these talents, at least until they fix ToL.

Just a few opinions anyway, not trying to suggest that any of them are correct. Oh, obligatory link to my armoury to show I'm not a complete nub

CasT · 03/28/07, 7:57 AM

In Resto speccs I have the following to add:

Naturalist, I don't want it but its to big of difference to ignore.

Nature's focus: Meh I go bear directly anyways...

Subtly: Not worth 5 talent points... ever.

HoT's are what makes us arena healers as above posters have stated. So we need much + healing. I currently have somewhere around 1000 in the arena and the difference between a 450 rej and a 650 is very big imo, especially when it comes to swiftmend.

I am starting to think that blizzard actually did something great with the Kodohide sets, staying alive in a showdown with high mana regen, priceless.

• Exewut · 03/29/07, 1:00 PM

After reading the Stamina is king (or, why star of Elune the only gem is that you'll want to use right now) thread I'm not sure how I should gear myself.

Basically I'm torn between choosing;
- yay HP!
- being able to survive a 3,5s worst case scenario and then yay dodge!

Fully gearing out for dodge is out of the question for me, while having 15 dodges on a row is great, I still want to keep some sort of main tank availability so I can perform that role if needed.
Right now I'm convinced that aiming for a healthy amount of armour (say nothing below 20k) and a decent HP pool so I can survive some crushes in a row, after which I max dodge so the healers have an easier time on me. (14 dodges in a row is my personal best ^^). The reason I started doing this was that when we started magtheridon I was one of the add tanks, but I was taking ~20% more healing (without overhealing, even with overhealing included I took heaps more healing, even though I had a 21k hp pool so my healers shouldn't have had any problems with timing there heals) than our worst equipped prot tanks (which have significantly worse gear than me).
My gear was focused mainly on hitpoints and armour.
The next day I replaced half of my +stamina or +resist enchants with agility, swapped out some pieces and now I'm running around with a more hybrid set (up to 45% dodge raid buffed)

However, reading that thread makes me wonder if I gave up my MT dreams a bit to soon (I'm a glorified offtank at the moment, but we are so short on good thanks, it's unbelievable)

Quasar · 03/29/07, 1:15 PM

After a Heroic Botanica run where I got the leggings off the last boss, I ended up spending over an hour sitting in Shattrath in bear form with a pen and paper, swapping gear combinations around and trying to see what I wanted to do. My conclusion? I have none. I picked a variation of my gear that reduced my dodge and upped my armor/hp, but I'm still at a point where I really have no idea what to focus on.

I have an absolute minimum of values I try to rearrange gear to exceed (unbuffed), namely 415+ defense, 20k armor, 10k hp (low, I know), 20% dodge. I had an arrangement that put me at 417, 21k, 10-11k, 22%... and I realized it put me at maybe 1.3% hit, which is abysmal. My options aren't that amazing, since aside from my Torque, there doesn't seem to be any tanking gear with +hit on it. And my dodge feels low, but that's what I was looking for since I'm trying to avoid being so spiky to heal. I've read all the itemization guides that rank gear, but I still play everything by ear to see what feels right, and I'm just lost in a sea of options.

Ah well.

However, reading that threat makes me wonder if I gave up my MT dreams a bit to soon (I'm a glorified offtank at the moment, but we are so short on good thanks, it's unbelievable)

As much as I like tanking in general and the feeling that comes with being the MAIN tank, I still feel Druids are better in an offtanking capacity simply because that's where our strengths lie.

• Zyla · 03/29/07, 1:25 PM

Monsanto, I did the same thing.

5 Primal Mana to my Deep Thunder

I MT'd karazhan last night for the first time, and what an absolute joy it is to play a warrior in this way. Tanking is so ridiculously fun as a warrior. There's so much utility you can add to a group over a bear tank, its really quite striking.

Maybe Someday I'll head back to Druid land, but for now playing as the king of wow is a refreshing thing.

• Exewut · 03/29/07, 1:32 PM

Originally Posted by Quasar

As much as I like tanking in general and the feeling that comes with being the MAIN tank, I still feel Druids are better in an offtanking capacity simply because that's where our strengths lie.

I was speaking only for encounters which would cater to a druid's strength, so fights like High king maulgar for example.