The Resto arena thread for TBC seemed to be full of excellent advice, but it was mostly aimed at 8/11/42 and variations. A week into the new season seems like a good time to start collecting information for the new expansion and a more aggressive spec.

I've tooled around some 2s in my pve gear with a pve spec playing with a Ret Paladin in pve gear. We started horrifically since he had never stepped foot into an arena before and since all my arena experience was as resto. I noticed quickly that Starfall and Force of Nature are both amazing for double dps 2s. Add in Moonfire and Insect Swarm and you can immediately apply pressure without even opening yourself for interrupts. Most of our successful games involved me opening with a Cyclone on one target and Force of Nature, Starfall, Moonfire, Insect Swarm on the other. Granted, this is all around 1500.

What are other druids and other comps seeing be successful?

Higher in the ratings we see more moonkins with arcane mages, because of the insane burst potential and their excellent peeling skills. Be aware that you are currently "squishier" than your partner, even as moonkin. CC before DPS, always, and let your mage / ret / whomever get their CC off.

Does Starfall avoid CCed targets?

I am very curious to see what becomes of this thread.

I have decided to go Moonkin for Season 5 and I am going to stick with it. I am sick and tired of playing Resto as it has become beyond monotonous. (Even though it has snagged me a Gladiator title)

I played on some more comps over the weekend and last night. I did some 3s Saturday with a DK and Arcane Mage. Every team that correctly switched to me when I came out of cat stood a good chance of winning. Double melees were literally killing me inside 3 seconds. TBC conditioned me to save my trinket for the KS or the Blind, but at this point it looks like it's better to pop it immediately unless you get an instant BoP. We clearly need better coordination on poly and death grip, but I was definitely the punching bag here.

Last night I did some 3s with an enhance shaman and a rogue. The enhance was the clear target. Hunters were annihilating him before he ever managed to engage. Ret paladins were trouble, but he finally starting blowing every timer before running in and was able to force a bubble and live long enough for the rogue and I to kill the teammates. Our conclusion after 18 games was resto or bust.

I did some 2s with the arcane mage from 3s. We started 6-0, got screwed by the LoS in Sewers and then played terribly against double feral (yes, I'm ashamed) and stopped at 8-2 with 7 min queues. Rogues would open on me and unless they immediately blew cloak we'd just kill them. Any class without immunity or major timers was dead very, very quickly. The only class that really felt dangerous was a rogue.

Starfall is still amazing. I'm really not sure if it was breaking poly. I don't think it was, but we weren't actually using poly that much and frequently when we were it was after I had cast starfall and presumably the poly glyph removed the DoT. I also switched to using IS and MF glyphs and I can deal significant damage without ever using a spell with a cast timer. Dotting three people with starfall and treants lead to people asking "what happened to X" when someone in addition to the main target died at the same time as the main target.

You want to play with some type of paladin for BoP.

Mookin/Holy or Shock Pal/+ Class with healing debuff = really good

When playing with your arcane mage in 2s, did you fight DK / Ret? It is looking to be the cheese fotm for 2s right now, and I am curious to hear what it is like from the other potential cheese setup (Moonkin / Arcane).

Rogues aren't as dangerous in 2s as they are in 3s, they need that second DPS partner to get through the defenses of several classes, especially paladins. Rogue and Shadow Priest would likely be a good comp too.

What we've seen:
-The arcane / moonkin setups that we have been fighting have been sheeping first, and leaving the Druid stealthed, because Arcane mages + Ice Block make them hilariously frustrating for anything but a rogue to kill, and the rogue will either be looking for you, or will get cycloned off of the Mage.

-You shift out somewhere sneaky, apply 3+ hots to your frozen mage, go Crit-chicken, re-cyclone and cook up a starfire if you can, it will likely be the only chance you get of basically 2shotting some-one. With co-ordination, you can take paladins from 100 to 0 with ap/blast into pom/pyro, plus a starfire.

- If two people are still alive after you have done that, then you start the instant cast cheese, imo. But see how far opening up with Starfall and treants gets you and let me know, I haven't seen it in the 1700s area yet.

The shaman. He just got focused down immediately. I'm sure they would have happily killed me, but I have the advantage of starting in stealth. Any shaman is a high priority to kill just because they have no outs. Shamanwall is a joke in the face of the dps currently in game. I'm not sure that with a full complement of arena gear and good CC you wouldn't win plenty of games, but I think you'd be much better served as resto right now.

You don't need a paladin. Rogues and mages both offer more control and better peels. Playing with a Ret was fun, even if we were less successful due to inexperience.

I think we faced one. We burst the paladin and made him bubble while the DK was CCed and then killed him after the bubble. I died as the Ret died and the mage finished off a wounded DK. No idea about the quality of the opposing players, but I know we were making plenty of exploitable mistakes.

Can DKs be Cycloned while Anti-magic shell is up?

Also hope that he doesnt see you doing it, because I tend to grip the first cyclone, and Strangulate, in to chains of Ice (5 second silence and snare). That tends to lead to dead druids. Also, I am unsure if Anti-magic zone provides similar protections, but either way it can shut down a great deal of burst from your setup, so I'd avoid casting into it, and go for a match "reset". by backing off if you get caught with both opponents under the zone.

I'm curious to what gear setups you guys are using. I've bounced through 7-8 teams of various different makeups doing about 60 games on each. Trying to find something that works. I notice that once I'm out of stealth I die 5-8seconds just enough time for 2-3 casts and maybe a hot or two on my partner in my death throes. So my two thoughts on it were stack hp/res and lose tons of spell damage to maybe live longer and be more useful or just go full out pve gear and try to do as much in those 2-3 casts before i die as possible.

PVP gear is 18k hp 1300 sp, 600 resilience ( I can switch that to abotu 17k hp 1300 spell and maybe 780 resilience but dont know how much more effective it would be? ) And PVE is 1850 spell, 27% crit, 15k hp. Any thoughts? Anyone with higher resilience want to speak to its benefit or against it maybe? I'd appreciate it

Have you tried that survival spec I linked? I really have no idea how well it works in practice, but it sounds like it might be worth a shot for you.

Amera, no I didn't try that hybrid spec. I'm just too reliant on Starfall and trees, every match we do win is almost always during the point when both of those cooldowns are doin their thing.

I'm startin to think dk/moonkin just doesn't complement each other well enough in practice as well as i thought it should in theory. After about 2-300 games we still get beat back down once we approach 1700. Barkskin doesnt have a big enough affect to save me.