With Nature's Splendor and Gift of the Earthmother there is no real reason not to keep a lifebloom stack up. Its throughput relative to tank health is decreased, but it takes significantly less time to keep up (without haste, 1.2 seconds every 9 instead of 1.5 seconds every 7, a 38% reduction). Even with poor healing gear it's still 900 HPS, which is nothing to sneeze at.

When you put it that way, then my only reaction is "d'oh!" Thank you for putting that into perspective for me.

A note on JC: you have to factor in not only the ability to meet meta requirements without using sub-par gems, but also the socket bonuses achievable by using prismatics. Obviously it would depend on the exact gear, but it can be a significant advantage. And the trinkets, while not amazing on their own, offer two additional sockets in a slot that would otherwise never have sockets available.

JC/BS combo effectively offers 4 (six if you can get away with doubling up on the JC trinkets) extra sockets, 3 socket bonuses, no wasted slots to meet meta requirements, and 3 gems with significantly better stats. I think it's a fairly clear winner here.

The JC trinkets are replaceable already in this first Tier of Lich King raiding, so I didn't factor them into my decision to go Jewelcrafting. The Dragon's Eyes alone both in stat contribution and meta requirement were more than enough to sell me on JC. I personally chose Leatherworking as my other profession for both the wrist emboss benefit and for the ability to cheaply and on the fly re-enchant my leg armor based on situation or raid upgrade.

I'm really confused reading this thread (and many others).

I'm new to playing a Druid, and i guess most of the stuff i do know, i learnt from TBC. Now, because i didn't play a Druid in TBC, i don't really notice the effect the LB nerd had on how people prioritize their heals, be it in raids, 10mans or heroics. No matter what instance i'm doing, nor what size, i always roll 3xLB on the tank(s). I've read a lot about how it's not mana efficient anymore, but i'm not finding myself running out of mana. Infact, in most heroics i'm not even using Innervate half the time and only do if people are making silly mistakes that cause the extra damage, or if i need to CR someone. I used Innervate on Kel'Thuzad and Sapph 10 man due to me really running around like a headless chicken healing anything i could and probably over spamming my heals. But i didn't go OOM. With a combination of Innervate / Mana Potion, i don't even think i've been in the position where i cannot heal due to mana problems. If someone takes 10-20% damage in a heroic, i will just throw a lifebloom or 2 if it's recurring damage to keep them up. I heard of people using rejuv for raid healing, but to me rejuv just seems really slow when it comes down to it and i'm worried if they take another spike then they'll die. I only really use rejuv on tanks where i keep it active 100% of the time to use Swiftmend.

I just can't get my head around people not rolling lifeblooms, especially on tanks.

We have a semi-regular shadow priest in our 25-mans, but not for my particular 10-man. We do sometimes have a moonkin. However, he doesn't even spec Imp. Faerie Fire, claiming that it's a DPS loss to cast it. Reading the thread, it looks like there is some support for that. But since we often run 2-3 other DPS casters in our 10-mans, I'm wondering whether the individual DPS loss is offset by the gain by letting the casters gem/gear for less Hit and more Crit/Haste/SP/etc.

What are two good professions for a tanking druid? keep in mind that I am still deciding whether i should go Feral or Restoration... its probably gonna be that i get gear for both and depending on what my guild needs for the week ill choose that.


Any ideas? Currently I'm mining/skinning.

Each class has its own benefits. Herbing and Mining are the 2 most interesting but the bonuses are boring. A bit more armor and a hot. Nothing really you should count on much. Get those on an alt. Same for skinning.

Now lets look at the non gathering ones:
Alchemy: Some trinkets, Pots only you can use, more effect from pots.
Blacksmitting: Extra gem sockets on bracer and gloves.
Enchanting: Can enchant rings.
Engineering: hmmm? Epic headgear?
Inscription: Shoulder enchants better then any.
Jewel Crafting: The best trinkets. Better gems then the rest.
Leatherworking: The best bracer enchants. Some BoP craftables. Can make and use drums (I think they still work at 80?).
Tailoring: Flying carpet?

Don't think I missed anything did I?

Looking at it the best seen Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Jewel Crafting and Leatherworking.
Leatherworking would be one definitely worth taking. The bracer enchants are superior by far. You can craft great items and are not that much bound to drops.
Alchemy is very good too though I would prefer JC to alchemy. JC gives you early on very good trinkets and will give you 7 stats ectra per gem (if I am not mistaken). Using about 10 gems you get stats + 70. That +70 stats is better in my opinion then the extra use of a potion you can only use once per fight.
Inscription has good shoulder enchants which are equivalent to the ring enchants you get from enchanting. These last 2 are very, very costly to level to 450.

Since I had Enchanting already and was herbalist wanted to try inscription. Too costly to ever give up now.
Unless you are really active these 2 don't make that much money either.

If I had to do it over again I would get Leatherworking and JC. Though it would be nice to have a Mining/Skinning alt to get the mats needed. Since that is what you are dropping, before you drop it, see what level you want to reach, and calculate what mats would be needed to level it to 440 or so. Grind that and better to have a little surplus you can sell or keep for future needs.

Grid question.

At one point I had my HoTs (GridStatusHots) set to show a timer in the corners rather than just the little coloured boxes. It required some lua editing but I know so little about addons that I wouldn't dare to play around myself. Has anyone done this with the newer GridStatusHots and would be able to share what needs to be done with me?

A quick note to what Monedula said: Drums no longer work.

For a tanking druid, leatherworking can offer the following:

Fur Lining - Stamina

and a really cheap pants reinforcement compared to the BoE one:

Jormungar Leg Reinforcements

To LW I'd like to add:
Enchanting and inscription have the same bonuses. The values are the same compared to the alternative.
Inscription was to be had an extra glyph but that was removed from the game.
There 2 are the same, where leather working has sickly good bracer enchants. As far as I know there is no BoP leather gear recipe yet. There might be in the future, at least I expect there to be.

I would also like to note that those are not the only fur linings there are.
Feral cat: Fur Lining - Attack Power - Spell - World of Warcraft
Balance / Resto: Fur Lining - Spell Power - Spell - World of Warcraft

So LW is good for any spec, though in resto / balance you will need a tailor to make you the leg enchants.

How important is it for a tank to have high Hit values?
I have only 80 hit rating or so (though I have 6.5% of expertise). I miss a good deal still but I don't think it is that important since no other class has caught me in threat yet (and if they would, most of them have a way to reduce threat)

Maxing out hit and expertise is preferred of course, but do I see it wrong if I say expertise is better? Don't some bosses have the ability, as hunters do, to do an extra attack when they parry an attack? So maxing out expertise, making sure the boss can not parry will remove that extra attack, making your survivability a lot higher?

This might come off as a stupid question, but I figured I'd go ahead and ask it regardless;

Looking at Genesis (Increases the damage and healing done by your periodic damage and healing effects by 1%)x5, would this only include Moonkin spells, or would this also include Rake/Rip from Ferals?

Well, I've never tested it, so I can't be positive, but I don't think feral abilities count as "spells". You can check pretty easily by speccing into it, it should change the tooltip since it's additive.

Thank you for the profession replies!


I think I'm going to go with JC/LW once I get to 80 but until then I'm gonna save up the mats that I gather with mining/skinning in order to save money. Though I might give up skinning once I get enough mats to get past Knothide Leather (or altogether depending on what mat prices are when I get home tonight) since the Borean Leather is reasonably cheap and since my hunter has a huge surplus of Borean Leather because he is a level 80 leatherworker/engineer.

Get GridStatusDuridHoTs, it's a newer rewrite of the old GridStatusHots. It even has WG!

Stupid Question time from the village dunce - How exactly is Tranquillity working. I have used it and seem to see it heal a lot of people from different groups who are in range, but now I don't know. I feel so stupid

oops sorry i meant a numerical timer in the corners. i've downloaded GridStatusDuridHoTs but it appears to do the same thing as the previous version with coloured boxes that change colour.

Genesis did not include rake, rip of lacerate on the PTR before the 3.0 patch. I haven't bothered to check it since, but I doubt it has changed.

I've been reading that around 50% dodge, defense gives more avoidance than agility. Is this 50% dodge including base+talented dodge? Or is it purely 50% dodge from dodge/defense rating and agility?

You might want to check Profession Perks - WotLK Loot.

It's a fairly useful summary of all PvE profession benefits.

JCing seems particularly good due to easy socket bonuses & meta requirements.

Dear fellow druids

I'm gunna ask a pretty noobish question here but I don't really have time to read every thread on this or other forums so apologies for that but i'm wanting to know what stats I should be pushing for and what gems I should be picking.

When i just got lvl 80 my main aim was to get gear for tanking so I could do Heroics and Naxx which I have managed quite nicely and I've now tanked the majority of 10 and mand 25 naxx without problems so I'm turning my attention to cat and getting my dps up. I'm currently hitting around 3K dps which is on par with other dmg classes in my guild so I'm think I'm doing the right things but I get some confusing messages form my fellow guild druids.

Basically I've been stacking agi as much as possible, one for crit as my lvl 70 crit was 50% when I got lvl 80 it had obviously dropped quite substantially so I'm trying to push crit back up. Currently its about 46% fully buffed. My hit rating give or take what items I'm wearing is about 120. Now I know the current hit cap is 296 for lvl 80 vs bosses so I guess I'm a long way off so that should be my priority in terms of maxing my dps but several people are telling strenght is the way to go to increase my ap and ofc with savage roar working off AP it seems local. My current savage roared ap is 12.4K which I'm fairly happy with I've no clue how my stats compare to other raiding druids so that would be useful info as well.

So heres the question ... hit or agi or str or crit or even haste? What should I be going for? I beleive it is this...

hit > agi > str > haste > crit

I can understand why strenght is so good but so far I've not got a single lvl 80 leather item with any strenght on it so I don't see how people can truely say str is a stat they are going for. Ok you can get the rings and necks etc with strenght on but as the T7 10 and 25 man doesn't have strenght on it is never going to be your aim attritube compared to agility.

Ofc I'm using agility for mitigation as well as ap and crit but I'm almost at a point where I'm getting a full set of t7 10 man and a 25 man so I can maybe gem / enchant one for dps and one for tanking.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to response and flames alike :p

Have a nice day.

You can use Rawr to calculate what you should be going for, but the general order i have observed is str > agi > expertise/hit > crit/haste > ap > arp. haste/crit will move up the scale once you get to the best in slot items.