Druid PvP Tips & Tricks

This post will be all over the place.

In the current state of the game, the following comps are "tier 1", in order:

1. Druid/spriest/mage
2. Druid/warrior/enh
3. Druid/mage/lock
4. Druid/dk/lock
5. Druid/warrior/lock

There are several more comps that can shoot to the top, but those are the 5 best, statistically.

You will require a few addons to perform optimally:

• Gladius
• Some sort of DR tracker
• An interrupt cooldown tracker
• A HoT tracker (pitbull is awesome)

Your heals:

Lifebloom is very efficient. Spam it. Remember you can only have it on 1 target. Rejuvenation is quite efficient as well. Don't cast it on yourself if you're just about to dip under 50% (a talent does this for free). Use regrowth when you get a freecasting proc (forget what it's called). This is optimal for mana. Nourish sucks donkey balls. Most druids wont use healing touch. Use nature's swiftness to cast a cyclone, not a heal. It's higher net health gain.

Other Stuff:

• Use innervate asap. LoS (line of sight) any dispeller and druids when doing so. Otherwise you will get dispelled or cycloned (which negates the mana gain).
• Always ALWAYS stand near a LoS object. This allows you to LoS fears, sheeps, charges, etc etc. I like to constantly dance in and out of LoS while throwing out HoTs. Makes it very difficult to control a druid outside of instant fears, deathcoils etc. You can also shift to anything to avoid sheeps. Tree of life breaks sheep.
• Speaking of instant fears, always be aware when a priest of warlock beelines it for you. Ask your partners to peel them off. Travel form away.
• Versus enhance shamans, locks and mages, you need to bait and fake interrupts. Cast a heal/cyclone and cancel it immediately. See if you can get them to throw an interrupt at you. Once you've "juked" their interrupt, cast your spells. Keep an eye on its cooldown.
• If you're getting tunneled by melee, travel form behind a pillar and cast nature's grasp. Casting this spell pre-emptively really fucks with people. You can use this spell to LoS warlock pets as well.
• Soothe fury warrior enrages.
• Instant hibernate anything that has fur (behind a pillar).
• Monitor rogues and IS/faerie fire them before they restealth.
• Bind 1/2/3 to a macro that cyclones arena1, arena2, arena3 (requires gladius).
• Make innervate macros. You dont want to accidentally innervate the wrong person.
• Use 2 wyrmhide, 3 kodohide for the extra resil (or 3 and 2).
• Use glyph of swiftmend, rejuv, lifebloom.
• Feral sucks, play resto.
• You cant cyclone a target that is already cycloned. You must let off the cast just as the first cyclone ends. This makes cycloning challenging.
• If you land a clutch cyclone and the enemy's trinket is up, he will probably trinket. Cast another cyclone immediately after the first, you might land a cyclone as he trinkets the first. This costs no extra mana if you land an "imune" cyclone.
• Use bear form bash when chasing someone you want to cyclone badly. Skull bash is useful too.
• Prowl > dash > pounce > cyclone is not a bad opener against comps with no rogue, feral or ample AoE.
• Don't mash your cooldowns when you get swapped to. One cooldown should do the job. Get your partners to peel! Otherwise you die on the next switch.
• Night elfs can shadowmeld to get pets off them. Ideal for dropping felhunters and cycloning.
• Be wary of priest teams dispelling your hots. This is the nastiest thing you have to deal with.
• Mana burn is also nasty. Line of sight it.
• Cyclone can be used offensively. Has your melee facerolled a mage to 20%? Cyclone him if he blinks away, plenty of good things can happen here, you might even watch his healer cast a big important heal into the cyclone.
• Cyclone blessing of protection, pain suppression, shield wall, or weak targets when possible. Cycloning when triple lifebloom is about to bloom is also key.
• Cyclone other druids' innervates. Do the same for shield wall, bop, and dispersion.
• Make use of your melee swing to kill totems. Mana spring, tremor, grounding. These are important totems. Call out if you see a mana tide and RAPE it.
• Abilities to watch out for (all classes really): Shadow Dance, Recklessness, Wings (ret), Bestial Wrath, Spirit Wolves, Arcane Mages, Dark Transformation, Metamorphosis, Berserk. These abilities = incoming heavy damage. Be prepared.
• Versus comps that can switch hard (most cleaves), leave a rejuv on anyone who steps into a vulnerable spot.
• Versus rogues keep an eye on the cooldown of kidney shot. Cyclone the rogue as he uses it. This will prevent heavy damage from the rogue during KS.
• In terms of strategy, it depends on the comp really. I like starting the match with an instant cyclone. I suggest reading some arenajunkies.

2v2 Strategy Resto/Warrior (discontinued, no longer viable)

HPal / War - 3/10

This matchup is much easier than it was in WotLK. Warriors can kill paladins with more ease than ever, and should tunnel the paladin the entire match. As a druid it's your job to control the warrior, instant roots/cyclone/bash should do the job. To fill in the DR gaps, deadzone the warrior or jump his charge. Throw insect swarm / moonfire / roots / wraths onto the paladin when possible to force a kill.

Rogue / Mage - 7/10

The opener is everything vs this comp. I found more success running in mounted, and popping tree of life immediately. This allows me to avoid sap while my warrior gets in combat. Avoiding polymorph is extremely important once ToL fades. They will most likely attempt to blow up the warrior while CC'ing you. NS cyclone is pretty clutch vs these teams, allowing you to take control of the game with good CC on the rogue or mage. Since recuperate pretty much outheals warrior damage (particularly at low hp), it's more advisable to kill the mage. Keep in mind, this isn't WotLK and switching targets often is very helpful. An ideal match would start with a good opener, a cycloned/rooted/faerie fired rogue. If and when the rogue cloaks, your warrior should be quick to charge + bleed him. This should make the rogue much easier to handle while your warrior works on the mage.

Resto Shaman / Warlock - 10/10

Insanely hard to beat (haven't beat one of these teams yet). The damage throughput of affliction warlocks is nuts and cannot be dispelled due to UA. Killing the pet has not worked, this team has too much CC and resummoning is far too easy for them. I think the best strategy is to sit on the warlock and mitigate as much damage as possible. The druid needs to play flawlessly and do the following:

• Position himself to avoid fears and summoning circle (due to teleport + howl)
• Root and LoS felhunter due to spell lock
• Knock down mana spring when it's used (mana tide with the warrior's help)
• Knock down grounding totem, bash + cyclone the healer while avoiding the felhunter

As you can see this is a very tough comp to beat. If you have any tips on beating this comp, I'm listening..

Resto Druid / Warlock - 11/10

Somehow harder to beat than shaman / lock. There is no viable kill target, and you might as well just leave this one. Luckily this comp is fairly rare.

Hmm I would think in either case the target would have to be the healer. Locks are built so well to counter close combat that I think a warrior simply couldn't generate enough burst. Have you tried CCing the lock and bursting the sham? What issues are you running into when you try that approach? As for druid/lock I would say the same thing but have the warrior be stingy with his trinket and wait for just the right moment to pop it.

Definitely not an easy match-up.

I agree with Lazorbeam about entangling roots being great for self-peeling to get melee away for a few seconds. I do have a few questions both from a spec standpoint as well as some class specific strat issues.

First, I am not seeing any resto druid with the Naturalist Talent. I have been thinking about adding that talent, but was wondering if anyone has had any experience with it or has a definitive statement about why it is a bad idea. With the amount of purging I am experiencing with shamans, and the lack of a downside for other classes, it looks like a worthwhile talent to have.

Second, and speaking of shamans, they seem to be the bane of my existence in 2v2. I play with a frost mage. We generally just sheep and cyclone our way out of the bloodlust, so that is not really much of a problem. It is generally the purging that I seem to be having problems with.

Third, given the mana costs of Remove Corruption, how much are you using it in arenas?

Fourth, is there any reason to use Nourish? Other than the significantly cheaper mana cost, it has the same cast time as Healing Touch and heals for much less, even with the extra 20 percent.

@Fennis, I have 1 point in Naturalist, just for those occassions when I use HT. If needed I take that one out and switch that one around to wherever I find it needed.
I removed Nourish from my bar as I never use it, it is too slow for arena's imo. I mainly spam LB (which is lovely in combination with DarkFlight (the sprint racial of Worgens) as you can run from assailants while healing (and save you your NG cd).

I tend to remove curses,etc as much as possible, but if mana is an issue and you're playing against a setup which puts 2 kind of disspellable debufs up; wait for 2 before you use Remove Corruption. A lot of players won't keep restacking the curses/etc anyway. But then again I'm not too experienced in druid pvp yet.

Bloodlust in arena? If it's in BG's you can let your magefriend spellsteal it (however it will prevent him from benefitting his own TimeWarp as it shares the same debuff).

Since my Bear and me have been in winters lair/ hibernation I haven't been playing for ~2 years. Is Resto druid still the same playstyle? Is it kiteing, and long fights basically depending on whos got the most mana/mana regen??

Or is there another game up'n coming, is rdruid still viable?

Very nice post. Didn't know nature's swiftness should be used for cyclone.

What would thé going spec be for a resto pvp druid? Currently im looking at a 7/2/32 spec (leaving out Naturalist and BotG and Malfurion's Gift in t4).

Just wondering if the spec you noted for resto druids would be suitable for RBGs or would something else work better?

It should work great for RBGs as well, yes.

Any reason you don't have Perseverance? Given how much dmg we take from melee surely softening anything incoming from casters would be a good thing? I'm just starting out in PvP after years of PvE so i'm trying to understand reasonign behind decisions that's all.

It works with any nature spell, If you think of it in terms of healing potential, 6 seconds of Cyclone provides you with 2 full cast time HT's or 3/4 Regrowths plus you gain the extra from HoT's as well (and take time off your SM cooldown) so CC is technically better healing output than just using it for an instant HT.