So far this season I've been running Resto Druid/Rogue, and after getting most of our strats down against the different combos it's proving to be a lethal combo. With the rogue's ability to lock up a DPS (especially melee with dismantle) it gives me ample time to chain cyclone, followed right after by a blind. We've found ourselves taking down Mage/Rogue, Priest/Rogue, and our arch nemesis from last season when we did Boomkin/Rogue, Ret/DK.

And also the double stealthie attack is always uber fun, usually allows us to get the open depending on the opponent.

So this is my first season as resto and I have a quick question. In this thread everyone seems to be talking about having a warrior or a DK as a melee dps partner, why no ret pallys? someone said they had been relegated down. Why is this, my partner who is much more well versed in arena then me thought that the resto/ret combo was a good idea. Is he wrong? Would it be better for me to be feral and he holy or he play on his hunter?

Ret paladins are a very good partner for resto druid, probably the third best after warrior/DK. Ret paladins play better with a healer who can help them burst someone down during a CC window, while resto druids want someone who can outlast.

I think you meant "aren't" there, Mearis?

Ret paladins aren't threatening to healers with gear (in 2v2) unless they get help during a CC window. I can facetank one in treeform pretty much indefinitely, and even on my Frostsavage-geared priest they can't kill me with any reliability. The lack of MS and a real interrupt, combined with vulnerability to fear (no wotf, no cloak, no lichborn, no AMS, no zerker rage, etc) are back to being the achilles heels they has always been.

If you want to partner with one, it would probably be worth taking a balance hybrid spec and being more offensive.

Ret/resto is actually very solid versus priest rogue, mostly on the power of thorns + ret aura though. Basically the priest has to trinket every repentence and / or cyclone because the rogue will die in a 6 second window with no heals.

Your best partner as a druid is no doubt a warrior, but aside from that, DK and retri are an equally good choice imo. A guy I know was like 1900 rating last season with this setup, now he's already up to 2200. Retri indeed lacks the offensive tools (snare,interrupt, MS) that a warrior has, but he has a lot of defensive ones to protect himself and his healer, and can easily target switch since his dmg is all bursty. You're gonna have to look for kill windows, where you repent+cyclone the healer and ret stuns the dps, pops wings and tries to drop him.

At the moment, as a paladin, I can tank all melee dps pretty much indefinately. In a week or two when all the DKs, warriors and retris will be packing furious weapons, it's gonna become a lot harder for healers imo.

At the moment a Druids best partner is a Rogue. Especially when a Rogue is able to get a decent opener (ie: sap one target) and force a person to use trinket on the kidney which can then lead to this cc chain on the player who trinketed:

Cyclone > Cyclone > Cyclone > Blind > Sap > Cyclone > Cyclone > Cyclone > Bash

If the cc chain can be pulled off, and to be honest it's not hard to pull it off, with a Rogue keeping one player controlled while the Druid is free too offensively crowd control then it causes someone to be in a state of constant CC for 36 seconds. Couple this with the fact a Rogue can keep up Overkill for probably 50% of this CC duration with the mutilate glyph and you have some huge damage that is unhealable incoming, without peels.

I'm still disliking the fact the burst from Rogues hasn't been nerfed in some way or another. As a 1000 resilience Shaman, playing with a Ret Pally, if we avoid the sap at the start (and I get started on) I either need to trinket the Kidney, or get Hand of Freedom, which generally puts me into a PS while the Rogue vanishes and then starts to obliterate my Ret Paladin. 2v2 really is stupid at the moment, I'm preferring 3's a lot more... Even though RMP is pretty much unstoppable at the moment due to the same reason - burst being to strong too be countered: 7k Frostbolts and 3-4k Mutilates while 2 people are in CC's is balanced, surely.

Those magical cc chains rarely if ever happen ( though they are spectacular when they do ) if you have a partner with half a brain.

For regen purposes, mp5 seems far superior in pvp gear. At 741 Intellect which is what I have self buffed in pvp gear, increasing my spirit by 100 (by equpping spark of hope) gives me 46 mana per five while not casting, and 24 while casting. With living spirit that increases to 53 and 27 respectively. For the same itemization cost of 100 spirit, you get 40 mp5 which of course is the same while casting or not. For me I'd have to be out of the five second rule 50% of the time or better for spirit to be a superior stat.

How so? It's simple to pull off the CC chain once it starts, and it's not hard to start it at all when you cannot remove Cyclone apart from trinket which can be used prior to the damage output a Rogue can do from stealthing. I don't want to argue, it's Blizzard's decision in the end and they think that Cyclone and Blind not sharing DRs is balanced because Rogue/Druid was never a 'great' comp.

To post below:
- much love, Druid of EJ from Mal'Ganis.

I'd rather not argue either, just saying your partner can assist with interrupting the cyclone chain, peeling the rogue, etc depending on class. But rogue/druid is definitely stronger.

According to wowwiki, the formula for mana regeneration is (at lvl 80):
MP5 = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * 0.005575)

Inserting your intellect of 741 into this formula gives:
MP5 ~ spirit*0.76

This would indicate that 100 spirit gives 76 mp5 while not casting. Is this formula not correct or am i missing something else?

It must not be updated for the 40% reduction.

76 mp6 * 0.6 = 45.6 mp5, which matches the 46 mp5 I get while not casting

Enhancement Shaman is actually a very viable partner as well. (Sorry if someone mentioned this.) Shab and I did quite well in S3 (~2100), and aside from his POS connection (he tends to DC or lag out 10-20% of the time) seem to be doing quite well now (as opposed to last season where we were the worst melee DPS and the worst healer).

For our breakdown match-wise:

Priest/Rogue - Easy
Priest/Ret - Easy
Mage/Rogue - Easy
Rogue/Ret - Easy/Medium

Our issues are warrior teams (particularly warrior/druid), or double plate - and this was generally the same situation in S3 for us. Warrior Paladin was pretty much a guaranteed loss, not as much now, but still very hard. We still can win these games, but we can also lose them just as easily. Double DPS is where we shine. The two of us can heal so if I get imp CS'd it's absolutely terrible and/or CC, if there is melee involved we do a lot of thorns damage just while staying alive.

That's pretty impressive. I always thought Enhancement (played it to 2.1k or so since S3 in a bunch of comps) had massive survivability issues and was especially vunlerable to double DPS but I guess the massive HPS and HPM of Resto Druids offsets that?

How do you do in long games without a MS, a mana drain, or the massive sustained DPS of a lock/DK?

I know mana isn't really a problem for Rets and I believe they can sustain a melee dps rotation almost forever, I'd imagine it's similar for an Enh Shaman.

I am able to do a fair amount of drinking. We can do pretty good coordination of getting pvp trinket used via clone and then a hex out so I can get away. Also if he has cooldowns, wolves/SR I can generally leave him on his own and head off to drink. I typically run with about 600 or so resilience. DK is a lesser issue than a Warrior for me thus far, generally divide and conquer work pretty well for us. DK comps, aside from Paladin don't run us into too much trouble. Warriors are a bit harder, but I think a lot of that is me being out of practice post the whole DK zerg arena era.

Locks are generally not an issue, most things in cloth are a happy sight for us actually. Tremor even lets me be a bit more aggressive.

Double DPS doesn't hurt too much with his cooldowns, my cooldowns, and we've survived some pretty nasty burst on him with lust popped and me at max range just pumping. Generally that leaves me a bit mana hungry, but since it's double DPS it's moreso getting through the first 5-10 seconds and then we're alright.

Is it a cookie-cutter gladiator comp? Nah, probably not. But we have good games and can win more than our fair share of them. It is definitely a decent comp when played well. As Ark said, if anyone was curious, his mana is never really an issue unless he's helping me heal for long periods and if that happens we're pretty well screwed anyhow. :P

One of my favourite comps is resto druid / frost dk (with imp grip ofc) and frost mage.

Druid plays agressivley with cyclone on healer during a nuke when it's not polyd
DK and mage goes for ranged dps if available while druid roots, dk grips/chains or if need be druid can cyclone melee dps (most likely going for mage to relieve some preassure on the range dps that may escape dk.

biggest counter (and yet quite easy to kill): warlock. being able to reliably fear the dk after ams / trinket and thus putting preassure on mage. also felhunter on mage hurts in combination breaking dps for a good while if mage isnt free to cs the lock (instead of healer)

usually win against good teams by putting preassure on their ranged dps while ccing healer and melee dps.
the only real trouble besides locks has been good rogues going for the druid. having to peel through CoS is a pain for this team but since druids can pretty much just tank the rogue now it should be as much of a problem anymore

I'm new so if this is in the wrong spot I'm sorry the druid itemization thread seemed to be pve only. This is the first season of arena that I have been resto so I'm kind of confused about what stats I should be taking for my neck, rings and back pieces. In pve I would of always gravitated to spirit > mp5>crit > haste, but from my limited 2 week exposure and my reading I'm beginning to think it's exactly opposite for pvp. What do you all think which of the cloaks and neck pieces are best for a resto druid in pvp?

Currently I'm playing resto/warrior, as the resto druid. Having a great time. Going up slowly, though, as we're stopping along the way to collect honor to get each new piece. What I've found, though, in dueling various melee classes is that I cannot tank my warrior even with a full hot stack on me.

I'm up to five furious pieces, 22k hp, 750 resilience and 2k healing. How are we supposed to deal with warriors? Between MS and insane crit overpowers I'm not sure how best to handle warriors on me.

I've had the most success with CCing them and trying to stay just outside of melee range. Since most of the warriors I have encountered don't seem to like leaving battlestance I don't usually have to worry about pummel. If they do choose switch stances to interrupt/reflect your cast you can see the stance change animation and cancel your cast. Since they just dumped all their rage on the stance switch/spell you have bought enough time for your hots to bring you back up. Once you manage to juke the overpower (to stop unrelenting assault) I just Nature's grasp or straight up cyclone the warrior. It is crucial that you avoid the unrelenting assault debuff or you will not have a snowball's chance in hell of keeping up with the incoming damage.

The trick to this tactic is once you actually manage to get the warrior CCed do not run away and try to kite them. Juggernaught's auto crit is far too powerful to risk and will just get you behind on healing again. Stay just out of melee range so that you can buy yourself an extra second or two of hot time before the onslaught begins again. If the warrior seems to be running away from you chase after them so they don't get enough range for the charge/autocrit. Save barkskin for bladestorm.

I guess I did not word this question properly, so here is a retry.

Given the games I have played this season I see 2 weaknesses for druids in 2s , inability to take double burst dps right away and oom problems. In 3s it seems that our biggest problems is burst heals compared to other healers, as I have not yet gotten into the ring in 5s I can only imagine the problems in there. I'm still at the lower side of the rankings and would like some collaboration from those higher up. Are these problems correct or just in my head? and which problems are more pressing and thus need priority in stats to address?