Well, I worry that Druids under pressure will not be able to do much except bear up - which kills a large bulk of their utility. We can't have him become little more than a large fuzzy punching bag, and our group does not boast any CC outside of what the Druid provides. Does this become a major problem in 5v5, or do Druids perform admirably by constantly staying on the move and shifting out to toss heals.

I play in a ele shaman/frost mage/ms warrior/holy paladin/resto druid 5on5 team (or used to, our ele shaman quit) and we tried subbing out the ele or the mage for a rogue which didn't work at all. The big strongpoint of a resto druid is his (or her for that matter) cc with the added abbility to always keep lifeblooms/reju running on players who're taking damage. Together with the mage we were able to shut down 2 targets nearly indefinently (if the opposing team went for our ele shaman, if they didn't he was able to really open up ), and I think if we'd add a warlock instead of that shaman in s3 we'd be able to cc up to 3 people, effectivly making 1 warrior teams losing their MS letting us win the mana war by default. When I had to play without a second CCler we had really big problems because the enemy warrior was open at least 50% of the time and I was pressured and often couldn't really be an asset at all (normally the mage and I would help each other out).

I think the only real options as a druid in 5on5 would be 4 dps as a healer or a 2-3 CC team as cyclone then really begins to shine.

I'm considering playing moonkin in 5s, and resto in 2s/3s. The problem is of course that it means having to get twice the gear. Still, I really can't see resto working with our current 5s team.

Basically we're all fresh 70s - warrior, ele shaman, shadow priest, and druid. We also have a well geared holy pally playing with us. With 0 resilience, 7000 health, and blue weapons, we decided to try me as moonkin for a 4dps 5s team, which was a lot more successful than our original 3dps effort.

Ultimately though, once S3 hits I'm going to buy all the honour gear, as well as 1-2 pieces of S3 then quickly get a couple of pieces of S1 with more honour points to hit 4 piece bonus (correct me if I'm wrong and that doesn't work). This'll give me a pretty pro resto set. At this point (and assuming my team mates have been able to get similar upgrades), does resto as a second healer in a 3dps team become more viable? Or would I be better off grinding another 150k honour for full S1 moonkin and S3 honour loots?

Without 2nd real CC I think you'd be better off as a moonkin for 5on5, yes and your assumption that 3 s3 pieces + 1 s1 piece will lead to a 4 piece bonus is correct (which is a major buff imho).

I don't know of successful 3dps 5v5s with a resto druid. I suppose it's possible but generally you're better off with 4dps or tri healer if you're resto.

The bottom line being that you either need to survive when focused (with two other healers keeping you up) or you need to make it so when they try to focus you they die horribly (4dps).

Moonkin can work well in a two healer team. There's one team in particular (can't remember the name unfortunately) that just destroys our 5v5 consistantly that runs a moonkin, along with a resto shaman, holy paladin, warlock and warrior.

Resto druid's 5v5 viability is directly inverse to the popularity of 2345, because that setup punishes everything about druids - controlled burst/2D2O dispel/totems/freedom/sheep vs hots/root/cyclone/lackofdispel. It is not really a Blizzard balancing issue rather than the popularity of 2345 variants. Regardless of what buffs we get, as long as 2345 is here to stay, being the 2nd heal in a 3dps2heal is going to be difficult.

And... it looks like 2345 will be stronger next patch as elemental shamans got majorly buffed.

I kind of see this damage reduction as a nerf. Before we could cap resilience at 494 and have three free talent points. Now we more or less need this talent since the 3*5% all damage reduction is very much. Sure one could put other gear in to go down in resilience, but serioulsy, pvp gear is the best for pvp.


Another thing is the Hunter dispel option. It seems that 4/9 classes can now dispel but it doesn't cost them anything, Warlocks UA makes palas and priests pay, to the extent that they do not dispel it. I would like Lifebloom to be able to blow threestack just to make them pay

Wow, #1 team in all 3 brackets? That's pretty respectable.

Are you OK with giving us some tips/advice on how you heal in the arenas? I could really use a tutorial.

It's not my team, it was just an example of a successful 3 dps 2 healers 5s teams with a druid. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Interesting how that he has focused almost entirely on sta gems to get himself above 11k health unbuffed. I know that quite a few druids say that more healing orientated gems are better, but looking at the amazing win record Biomojo has I'm inclined to gem up by s3 gear in a similar way.

On another note, I play 2v2 with a combat swords spec Rogue, and we are currently struggling to get from 2100 to 2200 amongst an annoying array of double dps teams.

Against a mage/rogue for example, he would go for mage first. Their rogue then opened up on him, making me pop out and heal... this inevitably led to my rogue being chain sheeped while their rogue blows every cd he has to get on top of me. Now I can usually get out of the first little tussle with trinket -> NS HT -> feral charge back to mage, but with the mage's slows combined with the rogue all over me I seem to just get caught very quickly and burned down very very fast while my partner potters about as a sheep. What course of action should we take against these?

Against SP/Lock teams it seems to go either way, sometimes I can just about keep my rogue up while they burn burn burn him down, other times they get some fears/silences off on me while CloS is down and he's dead in seconds. Atm we usually open by killing the felpuppy to stop spelllocks, and then go on lock. Is there a better plan than this?

We are both full S2 geared players but we still seem to get ripped apart by some combos, and any help you guys can give us in getting to 2200 and the gladiator title would be very much appreciated.