I'm very interested to hear others' takes on the 5-on-5 arena scene, too, since last week's changes.

Here's my contribution to the discussion:

In 5-on-5 arenas, my role is usually one of crowd-control. A typical fight starts with me stealthed in kitty form targeting a healer. Then it goes pounce->maim->cyclone->cyclone->cyclone. Then I shift into beaR form, bash, and feral charge the healer as he/she heals. Ideally, by then, the others in my group have taken out at least one of their players.

Basically, I'm the annoyance in the arenas. It varies from group to group, naturally, but that's what I've found to be the most effective so far.

As kind of some background info, my build is a PVE tanking/DPS one, and I typically rock a 4p Moonglade among other gear while I PVP.

*Edited for typos

Yeah moonkin can OT fine in normal. I think in heroic about the best you can do is take a couple hits before the MT picks it up off you if they're slow grabbing the cyclone release.

As a tank, I can tell you the strat that my 5 man group came up with for these guys:

I go into cat form, a hunter holds aggro on him while kiting, a rogue stunlocks (I help with pounce and bash), and I shred.

I've only been playing PVP in TBC (mostly anyways) and feral is the best way imo to go. Full feral spec and pick up the feral pvp pieces. Add some more int if you think its needed. Anyways. In arena im in at the first kill. Ravage => mangle=> shred=> Ferocious bite is alot of damage. The out and cyclone hopefully making us 5vs3 for just long enough to kill on more. I have never ever missed NS or swiftmend. Un-interruptable cyclone i have though :P

For pvp (imo) the best talents are in the top tiers of the feral tree. Stun fear resist, resist AEs .

Resto do not have enough survivability and are too easy to CC. One hunter kan easily force a druid in bear form. For mass group pvp (AV, AB, ES, wPvP) healing is the easiest way to go. Just stay back and do you thing But for pvp I think that most resto gear in leather just don't cutt it. Too little stamina and/ or some other stat. (where is the spi on the Refuge sets?)

Balance do have some nice options and the added armor makes them a hard target. I haven't tried that specc. But do think theres more utility there rather than resto. Moonfire for 1k dmg anyone?


I will specc and play resto when the there are survivability talents ( stun/fear/ silence resists) and gear for it ( im still very diverce if outdoor speed is worthy a 4pcs set bonus for a healer).

[e]
The day after spellediting

I dunno, I can still crush a rogue without shifting out of bear form, and some other classes without shifting out of cat. My gear is reasonably good (YAY Terestian staff!) but I took out a rogue in < 10s today (in the middle of enemy-controlled Halaa) who has the Kazzak sword and Fireguard, so...

I must say that rogues at level up to 66-67 was always a giggle. Having played one my self i know how hard it is to keep a perfect stun-lock and even if they added blind I was never terrified. Now at level 70 they do alot more damage and Druids have not scaled the same way. I feel threatend when jumped by a rogue at level 70 even pre patch it's no more a giggle.

To me a pvp-druid is much more than just leet dps. But mastering the utility it brings. To be able to cyclone and dps at the same time while having hots on as many team mates as possibly. Be it in AV, Arena or wsg.

30% extra damage to shred is too much to neglect mangle.

NS = Instacast nature spell 3min cd
Mangle 30% extra bleed and SHRED for 15 secs.

mangle is 15 sec CD. => 7,5 tics with 20 energy = 150 energy. 105 (need one mangle)nrg is the same as 2,5 shreds.

This is during 15 sec leaving us 165 seconds left on the timer or 12 possible cycles. Not possible in reality and not everyone will crit but it gives you a measure that you can either do one heal for 4k

Actually my guild has been experimenting with a Moonkin tank (me) in 5 mans and it has gone pretty well. It started the day before the 2.0.10 patch, we were running arcatraz with a bear tank and he had to go right after the first boss. We couldn't find another bear/warrior/pally, and I didn't like the prospect of trying to hold aggro in bear form with moonkin talents. I had been noticing that I was generating a lot of threat easily in moonkin (gogo no threat talents), so I suggested trying it with me tanking in moonkin. You can see the results here (my guildy posted it):

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

I have since MT'd Shadow Labs and Sethekk Halls as Moonkin, and even offtanked moroes adds as moonkin. I think if I was fully decked out in the arena or pvp wyrmhide gear I could tank in heroics and raid content as well. What is really funny about it is that when I tank as moonkin I top the damage meter (unless tthe decked out fire mage is there, but I am not far behind him), mostly because I get to land a Starfire>Wrath>Moonfire>Swarm before anyone else touches the mob. Tanking while topping the damage meters is exactly the complaint that was lodged against bear tanks resulting in the nerf.

Aggro generation is NOT a problem, if you get the first shot and have at least 350ish spell damage then wrath spam will hold aggro. Mitigation is a little tougher to get than for bear, but I think the pvp gear (ironically) would be best for moontanking (high armor, sta, resilience, and int/spell dmg for aggro).

Hopefully moontanking will catch on enough for blizzard to "nerf" it by giving Moonkin Form innate 20% threat reduction.

Full feral cat is pain. we have an overlarge 5v5 team going with people from the raidgroup (where overlarge means "good chance of people not getting their 30 % in any week) and this week we rose a full 200 rating because the people who were up for arenas that day acidentially looked one hell of a lot like a stacked "melee dps group" holy pally/arms warr/marksman hunter/Full Feral/rogue. So funny to see opposing teams walk into that meatgrinder. Feline swiftness and running around like a loon to land mangle buffed shreds with as much of your energy bar as possible is key as this tends to make things die. .-) the usual bag of tricks is very good (and the two fights where I got away with doing a full tranquility on my group where so. very. funny. ) but mostly? dps. Lots, and lots of catform damage is what a tankbuild does best in pvp.

Talking about PvP and arenas. Are Druids the only class that got a crappy On Equip bonus on their gloves? I read Mages, Warlocks, Shamans etc raving about their gloves bonuses and it just makes me cry.

-0.1 on Cyclone? Oh come on, where does that help? There is no chance you can use it as an interrupt vs 1.5 spells such as Poly or FoL or LHW just because of lag and reaction time, so what does this bonus achieve?

Theres so much awesome in this post, especially the sig.

Keep on this. Sounds awesome.

It could very well be what I was doing, but in 5v5s as feral I always felt like somewhat of a liability and couldn't keep up in dps. It's probably because I didn't "stick" with the main assist as well as I could have.

On the other hand, as resto/balance I'm finding myself invaluable. With control of nature (superb arena talent btw) I can easily decide who I want to take out of the fight and I can keep juggling it between players to leave them at a disadvantage. Being able to stop a paladin from healing for 9 seconds (2 cyclones in a row) is just amazing

My 5v5 team hovers between 2000 and 1900 rating depending on who plays. our usual lineup is holy priest/holy paladin/ms warrior/ap+iceblock mage and me as feral.
While I can put out a ton of damage in some situations, against the better teams (we almost always play top 10 teams) I feel almost completely useless. Often times our best shot is to assist train their warrior who I do the least damage against and that also puts me in cleve/sweeping strikes range. Against any team with a hunter or smart restro druid I am virtually useless between extrapment and the extra fear or hibernate on me.
The only thing I can do is run around at range staying out of forms cycloning, but I could be doing that and tossing heals around if I were resto.
It's to the point where I think resto is the only viable build for a top arena team, meaning I'll have to respec weekly to compete. I'd then swap in and out with the priest and we'd have our elemental shaman take my previous dps spot.
Against the lower rated teams I completely destroy people faster then anyone and often times top or come close to topping the damage done chart, but that means little when we gain 2 points and lose 20 because the next team had a hunter/druid.

I'm still undecided since I don't have gear resto pvp gear right now, but I'd like to hear from more people who made the switch for 5v5

That was my oppinion too. If i was able to get to the first assist target in stealth it was dead, more or less. Then out and cyclone and into bear feral charge next target down. But the further up the ratings we got the more I found my self out of feral form and more or less assist healing/ dispelling/ cycloning/ rooting.

Today I am the third healer(8/11/42) and we play alot more controlled games. Even though my gear is completly feral (gz to me for having 70k honor spent on 'wrong' gear) i feel that I complete the team. I have always been (and still am) certain that resto druids lack in survivability, alot. And that the resto trees survivability talents are wrongfully placed and shaded by their superior pve talents (Nature's focus vs. Naturalist). I also think its unjustified that the resto tree should have totally 68 talents compared to balance and feral trees with a total 57 resp. 58 talents.

The first thing that struck me was that my healing bounus went down around 150 points, due to nurturing instincts i guess. But I also lost a whole lot of mana, HotW. Nothing much really but consider that I didn't get any cheaper spells or mana reg but more healing efficiency.


But all in all i am glad I tried it and feel confident that it will be nice with some new gear (another 70k honor ). Yet I got the feeling that my regrowth didn't crit the 60% it should but alot less. I hope it's my imagination and has nothing to do with resilience (wouldn't be surpraised though).

Seems like the trend I'm seeing here is that everyone plays with 2 other healers for 5v5. That really confirms the issue I've been experiencing. As feral spec, I cannot fill the role of one of the 2 primary healers in a 5v5 group. Like the last few posters, I'm finding that playing the role of a feral druid does not seem overly effective. I end up spending most of my time healing and cycloning, not DPSing. Having the bear survivability is nice at times, but I can't heal in bear form. Usually when the opposing team notices me and switches to me, I'm stuck in caster for awhile and when I do get into bear, I'm already at low HP and the survivability doesn't matter much.

The only thing I've found really match turning about the class is tranquility, but I'm convinced it's only the bad teams that let you get that off.

I don't have any experience with Zereketh but both these bosses are virtually identical, (seed of corruption vs. shell reflect) and Pandemonius' dps on heroic is indeed insane. We had a tank with 150 shadow buffed and he was unable to mitigate enough; he was past the point of being bursted down, but the sheer DPS done was enough to make 1 healer unviable, and 2 healers left us with not enough dps to kill the boss (~20% with all cooldowns used, heroism shield wall etc). I'm confident that it's doable with 2 healers and a very weak shadow resist set as we tried it, but everyone in the group needs to be truly talented and probably KZ/Gruul geared.

The lack of shadow prot craftables is irritating but a green set can be gathered in mere days and is sufficient. (Keep in mind there is zero physical damage done on either encounter, so you can use shadow protection greens of any type, though tanking in cloth may hurt your ego.) It's still hilarious that the one resist they forgot to add craftables for is the first resist you will find a real need for.

Since the bear nerf I find I've been pvping in cat a lot more often and honestly it isn't that much of a liability. On physical classes like rogues and warriors I learned the trick of popping out, barkskin and popping back in to contine ripping face as a cat with 20% physical dmg knocked off. It's really helped. I don't see bear as anything more than a damage soak for focus fire in pvp anymore.

Lost some armor last night upgrading from a couple quested world drops to kara epics but stamina and dodge went up again. I've been more of a dodge build all along so it is nice to finally back it with stam.

I really, really, love my Moroes lucky pocket watch. I cannot express this love in text properly.

Reposting this here as it seems the thread I started got locked. (which I hope didn't piss any Mod's off - i merely started a new thread as this one seems to be going through a lot of different topics and I didn't particularly want it getting lost).

I'm quite interested in seeing exactly what people value as a Druid tank. Personally, I look to stack armour and HP (as that's generally what druid's are good at from a stereotypical view) and then look to get at least a decent amount of dodge (30%+), as well as getting 420ish defence minimum. However with the agility->dodge ratio being so low (14agi->dodge or so) it makes stacking avoidance pretty easy, and I'm considering if this is really the way to go for some fights at least - take in to consideration that I'm practically never MTing things, but I offtank a lot (gruul, magtheridon channelers, hydross adds, etc). Dodge is quite nice but I prefer the armour/hp as a pure buffer. On mag I was tanking an add and with 35% dodge I went through a string of 9 hits without it missing me - if my dodge was higher it's possible that I would've avoided one, but with my armour it may be that I took just little enough damage to be healed without actually dying, and that the higher dodge chance wouldn't have saved me regardless.

This leaves me with a few items that I percieve to be a lot better than many of the alternatives - Verdant Gloves, Umberhowl's Collar and Supple Leather Boots are the main pieces that I use. All quest rewards, and all massive armour-stacking pieces rather than avoidance based although all do have at least a small amount of agility on them. All my items are this basic premise: Get as much armour and health as possible (clefthoof legs/chest for health and sockets for meta gem, the quest rewards for armour, T4helm/shoulders for a mix of both, and looking to get both t4legs/chest) and then worry about getting the dodge% later, mainly by getting one item that stacks it almost entirely, or through enchants.

I'm also wondering how many people value Earthwarden over alternatives - I would personally prefer the epic staff from Botanica - although it's 200 armour less, it's also ~2.5% dodge more, and another 30 or so stamina more which is around 500hp in bear. 200 armour is around 1100 in bear though, which currently is a ~1.2% mitigation difference for me while hovering around 20k armour (although pure mitigation status means it's actually 3.5% difference in incoming damage). Although I like dodge and stamina, I really like to see 70%+ damage reduction, and while raiding with Inspiration proc up i'm just over 72%, which is really nice - however this means I'm pretty close to the cap and it's possible a bit more dodge would be advantageous over stacking more armour. It seems to me as though the natural order of preference would be Earthwarden -> Feral Staff of Lashing -> Wildfury Greatstaff, but I'm still not sure about which way round the Earthwarden and Feral Staff should be.

Also, what do people think about +hit/feral combat skill and it's impact on tanking? I've used both Terestian's and the Earthwarden for tanking, and can't honestly say I've noticed any difference between the two even though the Earthwarden should be coming out on top, mainly from a parry/dodge point of view. Using the FSoL you miss out on the hit/feral combat rating. Generally threat isn't much of an issue, but i still rage when a mob starts moving to me after fairie fire, then I get a parry/miss/dodge on mangle AND maul, and then the lacerate misses straight after too.

I've tanked Maulgar, Kazzak, Doomwalker and all of Karazhan. Lately I've decided to take a hit to base damage mitigation and stay at around 18k armor while boosting my dodge to ~50% fully raid buffed (dependent upon whether I get a resto or enhance shaman). When flasked (old world titans) I'm at about 18k hp.

I decided to start stacking all the dodge when I got a LoH on Maulgar that gave me all this extra armor to no avail. With inspiration/ancestral fortitude I was already almost capped at 75% armor mitigation, so why not go for more dodge?

I have to admit, though, I really don't like it. That extra few % I'm losing from armor wouldn't seem like much, but it's a ton. Sure, I can dodge a huge string of attacks in a row, but it seems bosses like to even it out by then giving me 3 crushings to the dome. Then I die because healers become lax when a tank isn't taking constant, somewhat consistent damage. On top of that, if I don't get hit at least 1/5 times, my rage starts to suffer. Using maul for that little extra bit of agro is necessary on these DPS zerg fights, but losing all my rage is (obviously) a huge threat killer. I'm thinking there's a good balance out there for armor/dodge ratios; maybe around 22-24k armor and 40% dodge, but I'd have to play with it and see how it works out.

I think this: http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=9725 is the thread for which you are looking.

Aha, thanks, must've missed that.

I've realized my +hit is impressively poor. Only around 2.4% in bear gear. I have noticed far too many occasions where my mob avoids everything for a few seconds, which is enough time for a DPS (even one waiting patiently) to get himself pancaked 10 seconds later. Problem is I honestly don't see much +hit on tanking gear. I'm using a neck right now that's 27 stamina, some Defense, and some +hit, and I'd been eyeing the neck from Maiden (like 36 stamina, defense and dodge) until I realize losing that +hit would be a big impact.

Random tangent: Were clearing to Prince, right after chess our Warrior accidentally pulled all three fleshbeasts and got promptly pancaked. I grabbed them and actually held all 3 for about 1-2 minutes before I finally died. It was pretty amusing. My screen was covered with green.