Mearis

The druid is not putting pressure, the druid CC's and heals. The less the priest has to heal, the more he can put pressure. It is much better to have the druid focus on CC/heals and leave the priest able to offensively dispell/manaburn.

Sorry but I really can't take this kind of shit seriously when it's coming from the guild that thinks drawing swastikas with chain heal and relentlessly abusing someone whose only 'crime' is that he takes himself a bit too seriously is the height of humour.

 

sodah

I could use some help concerning spell penetration and spell hit, and its relation to surefooted and percentages for resists. Refer to this thread on arenajunkies:
going beyond 3% spell hit - Arena Junkies Forums

It has some excellent discussion and lots of math so far, but there's some dissonant opinions. Any extremely informed fellows able to help me here? Read through the thread if you've got the time and see if you can help with some input. I'm most curious to know if having "None" spell resist compared to "Poor" spell resist changes resist chance regarding hit or miss spells like cyclones/roots in any drastic way.

 

◊ Yes

Best way would be go to TR and test it Sodah, preferably vs a rogue with combination of Heightened Senses, fleet footed and surefooted. Most certainly a partial resist on a binary non damage spell does not give a resist, because I've been using 0 spellhit all these seasons. And certainly spell penetration has no effect on those talents.

e: Going from the formula, the relative weight of some talents/enchants

Of course, NR totem takes part of the coveted WF/Grounding slot.

My other main | My PvP Blog

 

Jeddius

I'm brand new to the forum and relatively new to the resto druid class. I had a couple of questions I need some help on. The first are somewhat general. I run a 2v2 with an SL Lock. My lock does a great job but I feel like I'm letting him down somewhat.

When we hit another team with a resto druid I am being outplayed...how can I fix this? Are there any good resto druid videos out there? Another question I have is what cc rotation should I be using? Let's say there's another druid. Generally I'll try to pounce them, then do cylcone, cyclone, cyclone, feral charge and bash if everything goes well...then I'm back to cyclone again. Is that what I should be doing?

Basically I'm finding it hard to keep the other team's healer locked down long enough for my lock to kill his partner and keep everybody healed!

Ok, now I have somewhat of a more specific question. How do we beat our mirror image? We ran up against a lock/resto druid twice tonight. What would happen is I would pop out to cyclone their druid, then immediately when I stood to cc the druid the lock would switch his focus to me. Then I'd have to run away in kitty and heal myself and was unable to maintain cc...how can we beat this combo? It was impossible for me to keep the druid cc'd with the lock and pet on me trying to burn you down.

I love this class and am having a blast in arena, but I just need to improve my play! Thanks so much.

 

◊ Yes

Try concentrating on using as most mana efficient spells ever (stack 3 lifeblooms and refresh right before they fall off, if you do this right you should lose almost no mana at all). Run away out of LOS and run in a circle around a pillar, and let your warlock kill people slowly. You don't need to CC as much as you want, you're best off playing defensively and making sure you don't die and let your warlock slowly get a kill. If you cyclone>cyclone>cyclone>Feral charge, you just used 1000 mana or more. Don't worry about stopping other people for now, worry about keeping yourself up and your partner up.

Against mirrors focus on taking the least amount of damage / fears / burns while healing mana efficiently. Remember, 3 stack lifebloom is amazing but there is no need to heal if no one is taking damage. To climb the ratings make sure you don't *lose* at first, and then focus on winning faster.

My other main | My PvP Blog

 

Grunge

I started playing with a druid recently in 2's, haven't faced much trouble yet (aside from my undergearedness), but I was wondering, since he has access to t6 and swp loot, should he sub in some pve gear? This is him (might be logged in pve gear), but any tips on what pve gear to use, ie, should he use his t6 healing chest over merciless(later brutal) piece or not. Also he has the Sunglow Vest. Obviously he can regem/enchant t6, but not the Sunglow.
What kind of pve gear combination would you use, if any?

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

Saige

I'm a little new to the druid class in pvp and run on a 5v5 team that can't seem to get over 1600 atm. Our team set up is Marks Hunter/Enh Shaman/Resto Shaman/MS Warriror/Resto Druid and we sometimes switch the warrior or hunter for a Rogue. My spec is 11/11/39 and I'm trying to get down healing the grp and keeping my CC down at the same time.

Our gear isn't that bad most of us have 350+ resil with some members having S3 and some S4 gear. I was woundering if anyone had any tips or anything for me cuz I feel like im letting the team down and would like the step up my game, I looked through most of this thread but theres not much on 5v5s.

Any tips, macros or mods I should have would be great.

 

• Calantus

Not that I'll be giving the advice because I have too little experience with druid, but you're unlikely to get answers without being a little more specific on what information you need. It's actually a very common problem on this forum. You can't just say "teach me how to play druid in 5v5" and hope you get fed answers. Tell us exactly what's wrong. Are people dying to bursts? Are you running out of mana? Are you being CCd too often to be effective? Are you dying too quickly?

Analyse your game yourself and figure out the problems that are causing you to lose. Try to come up with solutions to those problems and only come to us if you can't find the solutions. We can't and wont do all the work for you.

 

Saige

Well it seems when ever I go to CC something a team member gets brusted down and our shaman can't handle it. I don't ever rly get CC'd myself and my mana almost never runs out.

 

• Amera

You are on a team without a paladin, so you don't have the constant steam of big heals to rely on. Your team should be concentrating on stopping damage rather than healing it. You should definately be splitting DPS - at the very least, put the hunter on one target (mage or other caster) while the melee wreck another one. As long as the hunter is on a class that eats pushback, he can really limit their damage. The enh shaman should be doing the same to a second target; along with the warrior on it, they shouldn't get anything off. Combine that with a frost trap, roots, and cyclone, and you should be able to limit teh damage on most teams to very healable levels.

The biggest problem I see with your lineup is no defensive dispel, which means you have to be insane about shocking/interrupting polys and other CCs.

 

malthrin

I like wearing a few pieces of PvE gear - 2pc T6 for the Swiftmend bonus, which can be a big help vs. double DPS teams, and the Kalecgos pants because they have sockets. I've logged out in my PvP gear. With a couple of pieces of PvE gear, you can boost your +healing and regen significantly without compromising much on survivability.

 

Leetkrewgoosejimmi

Ive been hovering around 1650ish on my druid, with 300 resil and 1600 healing. With a 2v2 partner being an MS pummel warrior, using the season 2 mace (he has savagery on it, were now working on executioner). Ive been wondering if the executioner will be the huge push we need, making most fights with healer teams go that much faster. Were both players, playing with high ability.

Im going to pin down the usual strat's we use per team lineup (most of these work decently and would be nice for new druids to get used to using) but any input would be gladly accepted to go in another favor for victory.


Resto Druid/MS warrior.
These are the most commonly seen on my server. Its basically an outlive fight, where he goes to the healer, and the warrior goes to me. All I can really do is toss up cyclone on the warrior, and then entangle juggle for a bit. Leaving barkskin on when hes a bit freer, and tossing on entangling grasp. I'll switch to bear form, to charge the healer as he'll be doing the same thing to my warrior, and wanting to get away to drink. Then ill bash. (While still in bear i use the attack reduction). These fights take upwards of 8-10 minutes.

i'll run down each class and how i avoid what they can toss out at me.

Warlocks.
Obv with a healer team, the warrior is almost always on the healer, and their other dps follows suite onto me. If the locks demo, with felguard its cake. But otherwise with the hunter, you have the counterspell and purge. Honestly, i try and only use lifebloom for this fight. I remove every curse. There have been countless times that i find myself fully out of mana, (0%) and can live for another 4-5 minutes just based on regen lifebloom 3 stack. Seeing as how warlocks are a instant casting class, i find myself using feral charge and bash on their healer. Cyclone is for the lock, where as Entangle is for the healer. It can be a risky procedure, but if you have a decent burstish class like an ambush rogue or something, take out that pet. The pet goes down quite quickly to melee. Just watch that they don't resummon.

Rogue.
More often then not i'll have a rogue on me, and its quite laughable actually. Save your trinket for kidney shot. Per situation i mean it can be used if your melee is going down quickly while your blinded.. but almost always its for kidney shot. (6 seconds where they can hit you, its a no brainer). It also confuses the rogue, and fucks up his rotation badly. You can easily get to 100% full after trinketing a kidney shot, and be fine until the 20 second cool down runs up. Biggest thing as a druid healer, with a rogue on you... always watch and use abolish poison. I wait till atleast 2 stacks are on me. Rogues are quite easily the hardest class to entangle, obv. Spam use it to clear their spell list, but after 1-2 use cyclone, travel form away... drink and shadowmeld. (sorry horde). When you come back, odds are the rogues on your dps, or looking for you.. just make sure you move first if your spotted, or cat stealth, get to a very far away location, and lifebloom him. Odds are if the rogue is shadowstep, just prepare for it best, soon as you hear it barkskin. (dont forget to fire him)

Shaman.
I feel kind of bad for shaman's, of all classes they go down so easily from a good melee dps class (or caster sometimes). Their have been times where vs a shaman druid team... my warrior almost took down the enh/ele shaman before the druid could pop out and use Natures swiftness-healing touch. This is based on your team, and how set you are. As a druid an enhance shaman on you, will eat your soul, with those windfury crits and purges... so as a healer, enhance shaman team... i say hit the shaman. Based on say 3500-5000 armor exposure, with executioner proc, they take a good 25% more damage as is. (Have fun healing that healers)

Paladin (ret).
I've been hit for 6k by a retpaladin before, so dont underestimate them entirely. Obv, CC on a ret paladin doesnt work, with freedom. (cyclone does =) ) This is one of those fights where you (basically) no matter what, want to try and bash the retadin, feral charge... and travel form. Your best bet, is not getting hit at all... Trinketing hoj, asap (dependent on their partner). I forget at the moment, but if memory serves correctly, the travel slow debuff they can give you, can fall off based on shape shift. If you have a warrior team, the warrior can hamstring spam him as well, just waiting for that paladin to run out of mana (intervene, hamstring, intercept healer). A ret paladin can be the most threatening to a druid.

Mage.
In 2v2 you never have to worry about mage healer teams, as they are horrible. So it will always be mage dps, and as we can almost all assume its never gonna be arcane. A frost mage is easy enough to heal through, having to swiftmend a few spells (your warrior should kill the elemental at exact second its up). Based on the route of your initial cat stealthing, can determine a whole match. The warrior will reflect that first frostbolt, and kill the pet.. then you can breath easy, and just juggle through the iceblocks. Id highly suggest trying all you can to balance healing your partner, while LOS juggling like crazy. Pyro mages, using the scorch stacks with dual pom pyro.. just plan it out.. based on how much HP assume that you need to natures swiftness. One natures swiftness, then get to 100% and you can rest easy with hot rotations again. Rogue mage is your worst enemey. If they can cheapshot you, then have the elemental pet out, to kidney shot (which of course based on my information you trinketed right?) the counterspell. your in quite a thick battle. Your best bet, knowing your going to get cheapshotted, based on an unbuffed mage... with a stealther, is to hang tight and use that pounce ASAP on either of them, and then rej yourself/LB if you have time, then travel form away.. while they persue, your teammate will split it up and make it tolerable.

Hunter.
Hunters think druids are dumb, and allow viper sting to go.. always abolish it and assume it will be right back on after abolish is gone. wait for the hunter (if BM) to make his pet red, then catform, dash.. asap. That BM damage that your avoid right there is the bulk of the fight. Two things you can always assume base on a hunters spec. If hes BM, and you know this... you know he will go down quickly with a thick hitter on him (if no healer is in the match this is a likely target) or if he is marks (based on the trueshot aura) then his pet will go down extremely fast. Ive moonfire killed a pet, in 3 casts... while pole dancing. Hunters aren't to be taken lightly, just keep barkskin on and use entangling grasp. Cyclone the hunter, entangle the beast. (play their kite game). Some of the times with BM hunters I'll Bash, the pet and charge the hunter. Its a quick, GTFO button. This way, you can cyclone him and entangle the pet before he gets uncycloned. then travel and gtfo.

Boomkin/feral.
Honestly i run into neither, that often. A feral druid can be a heavy ass hitter, but obv its just a bear vs cat, or bear vs deal in feral (if hes getting hit by your dps). This is where we all can LOL to nubs that get hibernated. Most druids if in bear, will bash your hibernate, which in itself is a mission accomplished. with 3 cc, you can just assume to always hold a feral druid somewhere, Be weary that in a feral/healer team the feral can heal the healer.. so just keep an open head. Almost always just stay on the healer. Boomkin. Boomkins can be a challenge, they have a hefty bit of armor, good dps.. and still have the healing of a pre kara'er. Its a simple, you stay away from boomkin however possible, while your teammate, kills is other dps. (if they have a healer, that druid will run out of mana and it will just be a win). Out mana a boomkin, is pretty easy, just try and LOS him enough for your lifebloom to tick.

As a final note, i have to mention that most of the time as a healer, on my partner i 1 stack lifebloom, where as on me ill have to rolling lifebloom it. Any questions ask, and suggestions are highllllly wanted. Either PM me or reply to this forum.

Ive had experience on a 5v5. If everyone is doing fine, and you have great burst as in you can get one target down quickly, your problem can be easily fixed. As a druid on a 5v5, im gonna have to suggest that you drop that resto shaman. Switch in for a great disc priest. The disc priest is the target dummy. If you stay stealthed, for the first 20 seconds of combat, he'll take it all.. and can pain suppress and etc. While they get the targets down they will all probably lean to the priest, this is when you can pop out. Full heal the priest, and hold everyone up hard. This is the best way to keep them trying to hit on the priest, or a dps.. and it would take them quite some time to find you. Id suggest pillar hiding and just hotting up. every 5v5 ive ever been in, ive doubled the other resto druids healing (with them having a disc priest), and over 45%ed out disc priest, as hes more of a shield bot. If you stick to the out of sight, full heal everyone at all times method, blowing swiftmend, and regrowth hitting on those getting burst (with lifeblooms being passed all around) and that ever popular tranquilty (use when 3 people have damage only, or 1's going down super fast with no swiftmend, or natures swiftness/time to heal with regrowth).

It's all about getting that first target down, then things just get petty easy :P.

 

Saige

Well I left my old 5v5 cuz we weren't doing anymore games. I'm now running druid/warrior/rogue/hunter(dont know his spec)/and discP we havn't done any games yet but I'll try to take ur advice and see how this plays out.

 

traejan

Thanks for the rundown of the strats against different classes above. As a druid who is new to arenas, that's pretty helpful.

 

doogless

I disagree with a lot of what you posted.

Kill the Warlock's pet against Warlock/Rogue?
Trinket the Rogue's first KS?
Your entire section on Shaman is devoted to fighting Enh Shaman.

There's more, but those are the ones that stand out right away. I doubt very strongly your post will be stickied, at best a lot of the information is misleading.

edit: the poster below me explains it a lot better.

 

Cythera

I am by no means the world's greatest druid having only played up to around 2100 and not having much playtime with my druid this season beyond 10 games a week (darn RL!), but there seems to be a lot of misleading and just plain wrong information in eetkrewgoosejimmi's post. His ideas and impressions of the class and team match ups seem to be solely based on low level, low coordination play.

"you never have to worry about mage healer teams, as they are horrible" Actually mage/disc is a viable setup and completely counters druid/warrior. If you play a competent mage/disc you will simply never kill either of them, and they will eventually kill you, although it may take hours. They will set up a kill shot once every three minutes or so when all their cool downs are up. Check out YO GC WHERES MYGBANK DOG and MAGE PRIEST LOLWUT for some of the more well known mage/disc teams.

"Warlocks. Obv with a healer team, the warrior is almost always on the healer" Against well played warlock/druid teams this can set you pretty far back. Enemy druid just drags your warrior away from you and begins an endless CC rotation. The warrior is doing close to 0 damage while the lock is free to run amok with dots on both the warrior and you. One deathcoil away from a pillar followed by spam fear + drain mana while your warrior is sitting in cyclone/roots and all the sudden you are 3000 mana behind and their druid is drinking.

A more viable strategy is for your warrior to target swap a lot to create pressure on the druid that way. Build rage on the warlock, quick swap to the pet (druid has to freak out and starting healing a 0 res low HP target that may be out of LOS) then a strong swap to the druid. This way the druid is burning a lot of mana throwing hots up on 3 different targets and eventually you should probably get a kill shot on either the druid or the pet.

"More often then not i'll have a rogue on me, and its quite laughable actually" Rogues are extremely dangerous in almost every team flavor they come in. Spriest / rogue is extremely difficult if they play well, Rogue / Restokin will be a difficult uphill fight for druid / warrior, as will mage / rogue and to some extent warlock / rogue. You can win these fights but they are most certainly not "laughable".

"if he is marks his pet will go down extremely fast. Ive moonfire killed a pet, in 3 casts... while pole dancing" This is just plain misinformation. Killing a pet against hunter / druid will be difficult if the hunter is well played and knows how to micro manage his pet. And it will certainly take more than 800 damage from three moonfires to do it. And even when you do they will laugh in your face as your warrior is scattered into a trap while you are cycloned and they resummon the pet in 4 seconds.

I don't mean to trash your post, its obvious you put some effort into it and people willing to help others out by spreading some knowledge is a good thing. I'm just afraid that aspiring druids are going to take this post and read it as gospel (OMG it was on EJ!) when there is a large amount of of both incorrect and misleading statements and strategies contained in it.

My advice to all druids is, yes, read all these ideas that people post but in the end you have to take them with a grain of salt. You are only going to get better by experience and playing a lot of arena, during the course of which you will figure out your own approaches and strategies to match ups. After each match try to examine when things started to go wrong. (Well, when the priest was able to fear me and start landing mana burns, the momentum of the match really changed. Next time I will call when the priest is peeling twords me so you can intercept him and get him re hamstrung.) Just play play play and don't get raged when you lose in the beginning, it'll take some time to work out coordination and team strategies.

 

Leetkrewgoosejimmi

To comment back to the user before me, of course none of this is for sure combat styles. Within the first few moments of fighting you can tell how much skill your opponents have. As I stated im merely in the 1650 bracket, this saying that the teams are sub par, and that most of them aren't to full ability. Yes to me rogues now are laughable, and predictable, but when you take it a step further, there have been times that ive been completely cced for up to 15 seconds, based on very well timed teams. Most of the inexperience that I get to play with is newer teams, not used to doing chain-anything. As in with the hunters, most of the ones i fight with are nub (and moonfire does more then 800 with ticks usually also mace hitting) But that was merely an exaggeration. I like the idea for the warlock druid fight, where we split the crazy heal train. So that will be used to advantage. 90% of the time for me, these strategy are what works, but their are those teams, that just leave you breathless at the end of a round, by pure ability. And to be honest, with the shaman comment, I next to never fight ele shamans. (my realm is a bit on the predictable side). Their are of course amazing teams, like Ele-rouge, or ele-warrior, with dual healing/dps on the ele's part, but they have ascended to the correct rating. I'm sure when i get out of the 1600's shit will get real. Keep up on the helping me with strats on other combats.

What i typed was simply what ive learned thus far, and if i had read my exact post when i had started, id be just that much better today. So hoping to pass on some simple help, to steer in the right direction, not right the guidelines for every scenario.

 

Cythera

Totally understood. : ) Just reminding people that their own experiences and reactions will have to take them most of the way. I simply hear too much, "but I read this strat on ARENAJUNKIES" and the like, when most of those strategy postings are two seasons old and/or completely incorrect.

Carry on, and I think some interesting postings will be to see how your strategies develop and change over time as you move up the rankings, as I'm no doubt you will.

 

Lerrielin

Hi everyone,

I've been following this thread for a while now, having started as a total arena resto novice mid S3. I was able to catch on to the basics very quickly all thanks to the contributions here. However, recently, I've been perusing replies post-S4 release, as well as pre-S4, as I've been feeling like I have a crucial information gap in between what I've been able to gather here. I apologize for the noobishness, but as I raid PvE as feral, I don't know how much of my troubles in arena is due to just lack of comfort with the resto spec, lack of familiarity with the arena environment, or lack of proper coordination with my partner(s).

S3, I started doing arena by going 8/11/42 with an MS warrior 2v. That was how I did the bulk of my learning, and after reaching 1850 with that team we stopped. I then joined a new 2v with a mutilate rogue while running 11/11/39. We capped out at around 1900 by the end of S3. My rogue partner and I are also in the same 3v and 5v teams, and while I understand that the style of play is very different in each bracket, I'm wondering if there's some sort of inherent things that we're not doing right.

Lately, nothing seems to work out for us. Namely, I find that I have a hard time keeping my rogue partner up. I have 1820 +heal and 254 mp5 in full arena gear, and he has 11044 health, 330 resilience, and 29.36% dodge. It seems like with those stats he's a pretty tough rogue, and I'm finding that a triple stack of lifebloom (I use Idol of the Emerald Queen) + rejuv + regrowth ticking would not overcome the incoming DPS from the opponent team. I run OOM pretty quickly due to having to spam direct heals to keep him up above one-shot crit hp levels, and it doesn't seem like the approach that other druids have to take in this thread.

I can't really understand what's going on here. Against 2 DPS teams, if I CC one of the DPS to reduce the healing pressure, the time it takes to get the CC off means I'd be healing a dead rogue. Most of the time I can't even open by pouncing because I'd have to start healing right off the bat -- taking the time to close to the opponent would mean either falling massively behind the healing curve, or not having a partner to heal. If we face off against healer/DPS teams, it really depends on what the DPS is; against warriors it's especially brutal. Sure, my rogue can hit obscenely high mut crits regularly, but warrior + MS + stun procs just shreds him. I don't know if he needs to play more defensively, running away more and such. If he breaks from his target, Wound Poison fades, and it makes target-switching seem like an unfavorable approach for us. I don't know if maybe I need to CC more aggressively vs healer/DPS teams -- but once again, I observe the same issue, if I try to close in on their healer in opportune moments my HoTs' HPS just isn't enough to overcome the incoming DPS. I don't think it's a problem with not having enough burst damage, and with the healing pressure already being so high I think that going restokin would only make the situation worse for me.

Sorry if these questions are pretty basic, but I feel like I've been missing something pretty important. S4 has just felt completely different from S3 and I can't figure out the reason behind it.

 

Leetkrewgoosejimmi

I myself, having a rogue know how this goes. Most people will tell you, under the 2100 bracket and what not you'll see some "special" teams. Builds that wouldnt hold their own against hardcore, skilled cookie cutter teams, yet just do decent against those learning. Most of the ones Ive encountered, are all about burst. While im assuming based on your ability and etc, that your healing to full extent, maybe your rogue is not saving his cooldowns for the correct times. Im not a rogue pro at all, just in my head it makes sense to not save COS (1 min cooldown, for dot remover, and spell dodge for 4 seconds). Also Evasion is saved a lot more. People always assume to use it when they are near death, which just seems wrong.

The cooldown will come back faster, when you use it, and it will do nearly the same job. (yes i understand situations arise where the healer is not available and it'll save your ass) In my opinion though, dodging that burst, whatever the teams are can be a stepping stone. Using COS or Evasion at the correct time should fix this minor delima. If you are referring to 3v3 combat, that is another story.

While druids 3 stack lifebloom can add about 1400 health, or so.. it doesn't stop dual damage. You'll be pretty certain to have to spam rej, swiftmend, regrowth, rej swiftmend regrowth, just to stay afloat. The main point of the matter would be to outlive the craziness by mana dump, so that you can get on a steady even keel. Hoping that your teammates can knock out the other healer, or an other dps.

 

Thugga