Both work well. I've seen videos where Warriors and Paladins tank Sartharion and a Death Knight is just sitting beside Sartharion taunting the breaths with cooldowns up.

Feral druids seem really attractive, ofcourse Twilight Dancing can sometimes be random, but you can bypass the RNG god with Guardian Spirit if you are close to removing the 100% fire damage taken Aura. DK's on the otherhand can bypass the RNG with thier own cooldowns, only problem is if they run out of cooldowns I don't think they can actually survive Melee + breath when the second drake is alive, nevermind the third. (Could be wrong here though.)

Just wondering how should I spend my last 6 point on a general purpose build.

SHould I....

1) 5 in shapeshifter, 1 in rend and tear
2) 5 in rend and tear, 1 in improved mangle
3) 3 in improved mangle, 3 in predatory instinct

Assuming you mean a hybrid tanking/dps spec when you say "general purpose"

I tried to answer each point individually but it didn't really work..

Basically, don't get master shapeshifter for a hybrid spec, you need at least 60 points in feral (for a hybrid spec with all the trimmings you would need 65 points in feral but obviously 11 in resto is mandatory).

Your spec is already going to be suboptimal for either tanking or dps (infected wounds and imp lotp are more tanking talents, kotj is really only a big deal for dps).

Rend and tear 5/5 will be bang for your buck for tanking (threat) and for dps (since you have shredding attacks I can assume you arent planning to mangle spam, R&T is mandatory for shredding)

The last point won't make much difference, it's generally considered that imp mangle is all or nothing, so you might put it in predatory instincts.


As a side note, I have never tanked in wotlk without 3/3 imp mangle - how much of a threat nerf is it? I imagine quite a bit, especially in rage starved situations where you can't rely on mauling every attack.

For a while I was using a hybrid tank/dps spec where the only "imporant" talents I was missing for either role was master shapeshifter, imp leader of the pack, and infected wounds. At the time we had 2 other kitty ferals who could spec imp lotp and 2 prot warriors who could thunderclap, although admittedly I didnt tank much since we had 2 prot warriors :P Only really naxx trash and the occasional boss that required 3-4 tanks, where not having infected wounds was no big deal and I had all the dps talents except master shapeshifter

I´ve found this macro in the Hunter class forum thread Macros
Basically it works like the common macro to mount either a flying or ground mount depending on the area with the slight diffrence of checking wether you´re in Dalaran or Wintergrasp and use the ground mount there too and it works like a charm for my hunter. I couldn´t get it to work for my druid using the diffrent forms though because unlike the CallCompanion function CastSpellByName and CastShapeshiftForm are both protected functions. Now using the addon Mounted recommended in the same thread I managed to mimic the behavior but seeing as the addon goes far beyond the scope of what I want to accomplish I wonder if it´s possible to get a simple macro like the one above to work after all.

At this level of content, you shouldn't need to worry about a hybrid build. You can off-heal as a Moonkin and do so effectively. You will not be at the top of your healing game as if you were spec'ed for healing, but your heals should be fine, particularly if you're switching to healing gear for the encounter.

For a fight like the Four Horsemen, you'll be fine as Balance. Resto-specific gear does help for mana regen purposes (spell/spirit instead of spell/hit/haste) but you should be able to handle any of the healing assignments on this fight; healing one of the melee tanks or healing yourself against one of the caster tanks. If you want 3 healers for a fight such as Sapphiron, you will need to consider your other two healers. If you have aoe healing covered, you can continue to heal as Balance with the other healers able to cover your raid's aoe healing needs. You always have Tranquility as a worst-case for your group. If you don't have enough aoe healing, I'd plan on a respec so you have Wild Growth. Having healed this fight as Resto with a Paladin and Shaman, Wild Growth was quite nice as it allowed me to spread a lot of healing around the raid quickly.

A Druid is certainly a reasonable choice. Given that you have all the mana regen talents, you have good mana regen potential. You will lose out on the tree form mana cost reduction, however.

There's been a small debate about this in guild and on the wow-europe official forums about how effective this is....

It's known that it is now equivalent to Demoralizing Shout from the warriors and the 5 possible talent points are equivalent between the warrior and druid talent trees... however what I'm looking to find out is how much it will reduce incoming damage by and if the 5 possible points in it are worth it should there be no warrior with imp demoralizing shout in your raid.

I have searched the EJ forums but have found nothing concrete outside of tests on Maxxaena in Naxx with a hunter and a warrior/druid showing that it is between 4 and 5 talent points (so effectively 5 talent points) to reduce the boss AP to zero... but what damage reduction does this typically represent?

Even with all the changes to feral weapons, Journey's End will be far and away the best cat DPS weapon. Check out Toskk's Feral DPS list for more possibilities, including maces and polearms. The numbers he is calculating off of there are very close (1-2 FAP off at most) to the final damage that weapons will now provide for druids; Journey's End is still very much the leader of the pack.

Does anyone know the exact mechanics of Living Seed?

I understand that the amount it heals for is equal to 30% of the effective amount healed when Regrowth, Swiftmend, Healing Touch or Nourish crit. What I'm not sure about is when and how that heal takes effect. If anyone knows, which of the following is true of Living Seed?

1. It shields damage taken, such that a 1k Living Seed would mitigating the damage taken on a 10k hit, causing the effected target to only lose 9k hp.

2. It preemptively heals the target when damage is taken before the damage takes effect, such that a 1k Living Seed on a target who is already down 3k health will heal the target so that he is only down 2k health the moment he is hit by a 10k swing, which would then reduce his health by an additional 10k.

3. It heals after the damage takes effect, such that a 1k Living Seed would not take effect until after a 10k hit reduced the target's health by 10k, at which point that target would gain 1k health from the Living Seed.

Two examples to illustrate my point:

1) The tank has only 9.5k health and takes a 10k swing while having a 1k Living Seed. If case 1 is true, the tank will only take 9k damage, and will survive the hit with 500 health. If case 2 is true, the tank will be healed 1k, giving him 10.5k health (assuming he has at least 10.5k max health) at which point he would take 10k damage and be left with 500 health. If case 3 is true, the target will be instantly killed by the 10k swing.

2) The tank is at full health and is hit by a 10k swing while having a 1k Living Seed. If case 1 is true, the tank will only take 9k damage. If case 2 is true, Living Seed will have no effect and the tank will take the full 10k damage. If case 3 is true, the tank will take the full 10k damage and then be healed by 1k, leaving him with only 9k reduced hp.

18:23'55.290 Patchwerk Hateful Strike hits Drsensimilla for 21019 Physical.
18:23'55.700 Dashmidu Living Seed heals Drsensimilla for 2702.
18:23'56.493 Patchwerk Hateful Strike hits Drsensimilla for 20818 Physical.

Target gets hit -> heal proc after damage is taken & wont safe your life if the blow was deadly.

I *think* it's like prayer of mending - damage first, then healing/bloom. That's what the talent description says.

edit: seems I was right

Thank you, Ashaera. Though I find that to be very disappointing. I had hoped that we druids would have the means to save a tank from an overkill Sarth breath on the 3-drakes encounter. Unlike any other healer that can be brought to that fight, we have no means or cooldown to protect a tank from a 1-shot breath.

How the the damage from Ferocious Bite calculated?

Can someone give me an example of how much damage on average FB does when a druid has 7000 AP and you apply all modifiers?
Modifiers (if I missed one, please correct):
Savage Roar, Feral Aggression, Predatory Instincts and Naturalist)

I am looking for the normal hit and the critical hit value.

Thanks you.

There's also 4-piece Tier 6, not sure if you care about that particular modifier.

Silly question but I have been unable to locate an answer (apologies if this is a repost).

We had a few attempts on You Don't Have an Eternity and I noticed that Entangle would sometimes break early. Can the spell still break on its own damage and/or does it have a periodic resist check?

If neither of those are true, does an early break mean that someone was hitting the Entangled target and does anyone have an idea of the damage threshold required to break the spell if that is the case?

I'm pretty sure that it breaks on a percentage-based amount of damage. Our druids also noticed the roots breaking early. We had to ensure everyone in the raid was staying well away from those AoE spells. After becoming infuriated, we looked into it and found that Living Bomb was causing the breaks. However, even without LB being used, the roots still do break early - we've just learnt to live with it.

Thanks for that, I'll pay more attention in future. It's just that I'm not very good at Balance and I find that babysitting Entangle really cuts my DPS down.

From what I understand from what our resto druids have told me regarding roots; Roots have a "resist/break check" every few seconds which is apparently decreased with hit, and this is in addition to damage breaking roots early. Only solution being to spam the spell.

As for getting around the more powerful spell problem, we've had our 4th "root" druid simply cast on the spark in question, which removes the more powerful message, and allows the first druid to root it immediatly afterwards.
Hope that helps.

The "more powerful spell active" thing I also get when casting rip. The thing is either Savage Roar dropped off or for example at Malygos the active Rip was cast with 1 or 2 "debuffs" more that each increase damage by 50%.

For your druids I would advice to never cast entangling roots when they are staning int he spark area. Further let em unequip every trinket that can proc +spelldamage. I am not that familiar with the Balance tree, but if there are any +spelldamage procs that occur because of talents they should cast a lower rank entangle during that proc.
Some other tricks then using different ranks:
Casting in moonkin for and non-moonkin form.
Trinkets with "use" to increase spelldamage.
Sending a wrath the mobs way to break the entangle. While it flies towards them recast entangling roots. When wrath hits the next entangle isn't far away.

This sounds to me like a bug.
If I recall correctly previously it was possible for 2 druids to both cast roots on one target at the same time. They removed this but then allowed the roots form a different druid to be seen as a different spell. This is unlike MotW for instance, where one druid without iMotW is unable to cast his MotW on a target that has iMotW casted on him (even if there is only 10 seconds left).

As a sidenote, what is wrong with a DK pulling the spark behind Malygos (I know it sometimes is not possible).

This happens with spell power increases. The badge trinket has a spell power proc and that has at times been awkward to deal with, but if you're on your toes, you can keep your root target more or less in the same spot.

One culprit for getting the "A more powerfull spell is already active" message could be a shaman spell power totem being up when roots is cast and not being up when they try to refresh it. Totems are easy to miss in your buff list.

I've tried this a couple of times and had issues with my roots breaking early on almost every cast, so I ended up doing a root/other spell/other spell/root situation and that almost always worked. Make sure your druids set their root target to their focus target and use a focus target root macro (/cast [target=focus] Entangling Roots) so they don't have to re-target their spark to root it. Another option is to use 2-3 DKs and pull each spark further back so you have more breathing room if roots do break early.

Theres only 2 times in which its right to reroot : 1) When its about to run out / 2) Just before vortex. Root->other spells->other spell->root is just wasting casting time you could spend on dpsing or healing.

Bad luck breaks during vortex occur, sometimes you can death grip em down before its over - But else you wipe & go again.
If your roots keep breaking then check Recount or wws & figure out who is hurting them.

Easiest way to fix "more powerful" is to start with root rank 5, if it refuses to let you reroot then you go to rank 6. If it happens again you go to rank 7. If it happens 3 times in 1 fight you are either rooting too much or have seriously bad RNG.

Correct. I had a bad situation where I was extremely unlucky and our dps was acting up and that's why I was doing that rotation. Edited my post so folks don't think that that should be a normal practice.

I did 2h worth of tries on "You Don't Have An Eternity" normal, and I had a lot of early breaks on my root before I put some hit gear to attain 4%. I see some people saying hit does reduce heartbeat breaks but is there any source or math on this ? 2 hours is not what one can call a large sample, it could be RNG.