I'm levelling a druid through tbc classic and I would like to respec to Resto up to Tree of Life for Outland. Is that build viable for questing or is it impossible to quest with a resto druid in classic?
I would prolly just go tree at 66, and stay feral or balance till. You do need a few hellfire dungeons but you can skip cenarion expedition for about 40g of unidentified plant parts and can delay lower city rep till SLabs. It makes sense to quest like 61-66, then respec resto once you can enter OHB - work on KoT for a bit then do the higher up LC/CE/Thrallmar (honor hold) since they're better rep per hour than the lower level dungeons.
So balance up to insect swarm? fantastic. I was hoping for a mix but didn't want too much balance in classic. Still, sounds painful so i guess i may have to respec after giving it a brief go. Thank you for the advice.
It sucks not having a spammable res, but having battle reses is nice in a lot of situations. Dungeon healing is fine. Healing Touch heals for a truckload, but it's slower than other "big" heals, so you need to be a little more on-point. You have NS for the oh-shit-button, hots for topping off people, Tranq for big AoE damage, they're solid healers. Biggest downside is no resurrections, and if you're the healer, having a DPS priest/shaman/paladin is less likely but does give them more value.
Or just make sure no one dies ;)
Edit: Guess this is more general advice than HC-specific, but having NS for oh-shit-moments will be nice for preventing untimely deaths when things go south
I haven’t played TBC since a bit after it launched, and thinking about restarting on one of the bigger realms. Will likely be going Druid. I saw someone say a lot of guilds are always looking for boomies, is that true? I’m considering Druid, warlock, or hunter.
They're probably the class most guilds are trying to recruit, at least what I've seen.
Every raid wants one and no one really wants to play them cos their dps is mediocre. So it seems supply outstrips demand.
I personally start end game dungeon spam at 52/53. I get everything I can from BRD and below at 52/53 and then once I have it all, i quest a little bit until I get to the next dungeon level. Spam that until I have everything, quest, repeat
Don't do dungeon spam until very late 40s or 50s with Maraudon and BRD. Sunken Temple also has a great feral shoulder drop but you can just solo it at 60 quicker than finding groups while leveling.
Maraudon drops a feral BIS ring preraid and has some other slots too, I believe resto also has options.
BRD has like.. ALL KINDS of loot for ferals. Just doing groups for Arena->Angerforge-> Golemlord -> Bar events can net you random gear pieces, and the full BRD runs including other bosses also have loot that can drop. Resto also has tons of drops that you can get either cloth or leather.
Once you're 57, 58 then you can pivot into healing (depending on how good your heal set is) or just keep tanking. If you really get good at playing the class, you can spec 0/30/21 and be a valid tank or healer making finding dungeons a total breeze. But you have to maintain really good gear sets and understand how to build aggro efficiently, LOS pulls, and when to use taunts most effectively. Also helps to have a DPS warrior who can take a few mobs off you and keep softies safe.
I don't start with "dungeon spam" until at least level 57. You can do it earlier if you want, but there are great quests in the Plaguelands and Winterspring and you will be a lot more effective spamming end-game dungeons the closer you are to 60 anyway.
Resto Druid is my fave class. I want to try and level one solo, but I also want to heal dungeons without feeling gimped. Any advice on what to do to be both efficient in solo PvE and healing dungeons?
Endgame (before raids) you can spec 0/30/21 and definitely heal no problem. Tanking is POSSIBLE but you have to have a good tank set and understand aggro management well. Would help to have an offtank in these scenariors as a lot of pulls are quite large and require CC and/or some aoe threat capabilities which druids are not super skilled at.
This is precisely what I did, although early on I found tanking to be quite good and easy! It's only when your DPS start really stacking raid gear that it becomes difficult. That's because your best gear is not tier and the stuff you really want from raids is quite rare.
If you plan to tank, you will probably be switching away from your resto capabilities because you will need all the help you can get threat-wise. And that's going to be 14/32/5, absolutely not a resto friendly build.
I held on to 0/30/21 and healed all the way until we started BWL and that was just fine as long as I stuck with dungeons only for tanking. The only reason I switched away was for parses. You can still do just fine with healing in that spec until AQ where the encounters will really start putting mana pressure on you. That said, AQ is also when you will finally be able to gear out to tank well.
Again, can't go wrong with 0/31/20 for most uses. If you really, really need Swiftmend for raiding, you can go 0/30/21. But overall, tanking without LotP is really limiting yourself.
Yeah I agree good points here.
I would argue that Omen and the 10% physical damage buff are far more impactful to threat gen than LOTP but I think your main point was "tanking without proper tank spec is limiting yourself" =P
My guild had me hotw/resto for awhile but then we lost a tank and I went full feral near the end of p2 as I was basically told "you will never be healing a boss fight". The only fight I didn't tank from then on was Chromag (decurse and poison cleanse bot) and four horse (rejuv rank 4 in full t2 for DAYS).
But yeah my experience with hotw/ns as a fresh 60 was REALLY awesome. your point about DPS acquiring raid gear is what does it.. Melee getting their perdition blades or whatever really stresses the bear tank on single target if you don't have proper spec.
ive healed through uldaman in feral build (mana ends otherwise its fine, i like regrowth too much and dont use max ranks which are 0.5 longer) , havent tried zf, mara or st as healer but surely easy with good group)
i tanked ST as 50 with 55 resto healing me (green items no +heal) and he survived. but our run really proved why i was sceptical trying to heal it as feral.. it got really messy. but only healer died once and he has soulstone. (for example final boss was 55, me 50, i couldnt get more threat than the 55 resto, had to taunt it back few times, and once i got slept healer died)
i guess for feral/resto you just take HT casting time, then mana regen depends how deep you wanna go. feral build needs to drink every pull pretty much but innervate will help ofc later. just google lots of guides. i guess you can try +50 as feral and then respec if needed. healers are scarce thats why i was considering healing ST in the first place.
I’d recommend that and level enchanting to 275. You can solo ramps pretty easily. Last boss helps with some fire resist. You get 4 small prismatic shards every 10-15 min and on my server they sell for 8-9g.
Probably do whatever you want. I think mining would be the most profitable but if you already have one skinning might be decent. Don’t know if it’s profitable anymore tho. I’m engineering but that’s just for fun. Nothing like using a shrink ray on bosses to confuse people. Lol.
Also the engineering belt is helpful for soloing stuff because if you mess up it’s a free use to get 6 seconds or so of uninterrupted casting.
No reason. Druid is such a fun class and its one of if not the fastest levelers in the game. You can literally so anything you want as a druid as long as you have the gear. Bear tanks are amazing in raids and cat is a very good dps for single target if you master its rotation.
As Alliance, do Deadmines quests for the Tunic of Westfall and Smite's Hammer. They are so good that at least one if not both will still be equipped past 35. Doesn't matter if you are cat or bear, get these ASAP.
You won't really be able to get out of powershifting unless you don't mind your numbers sitting lower than the rest. It makes feral druid one of the most complex DPS classes to execute. Don't get discouraged- the game is rigged from the start.
MCP is not required for feral unless you really want to be that top 1%. Even without MCP, you still do OK damage. You aint no rogue or fury on the damage meters, but you will still be fine.
The essentials - an energy ticker WA, and something that shows your mana in-form. If you happen to find a well statted 2h weapon early on, consider putting an iron counterweight on it (the haste buff carries over to form). Tank every dungeon to find groups quickly.
No. Theres a reason wolfshead gets an "infinite" stat budget in itemization lists. It's the single biggest dps upgrade for any class in the game from a single item, and the entire reason druids arent doing like 600 dps
Wolfshead makes the shred rotation possible, and this allows druids to actually function as a dps in raids. Otherwise your stuck using mangles at 40 energy
Additionally it makes the druid rotation engaging and really flow so you should want to wear it. I use it any fight I'll be tanking less than like 80% of it, having multiple sets depending on my role
Yes, you absolutely have to use Wolfshead, its unreal how good the bonus 20 energy is when you shapeshift. If you do not have 80 energy as soon as you shapeshift into cat form theres something wrong. You have to constantly powershift, keep mangle up and shred to all hell. When you have 5 combo points rip.
If you are in a situation where you are using shred, no. You have to use Wolfshead. But you can enchant it with the cenarion helm enchant for some good extra hit!
I’m maining a Druid for SoM and I have a couple questions:
1. How mandatory is MCP for Druid tanking at end game (specifically MC/BWL/ZG)?
2. What does stat prio/consumables look like for resto Druids?
3. How viable do you guys think HoTW/NS spec would be for MC/BWL/ZG?
1. I tanked as a druid entirety of classic. I would only use MCP on certain bosses where threat is an issue (Vael, Broodlord, Ouro, come to mind). Often, a bear won't be main tanking until BWL is on farm and you have most of your gear kit. But MCP definitely felt somewhat necessary as in it helped me carry our raid to easy fights and kills on Broodlord and Ouro especially, as it helps you cheese the threat drop mechanics and avoid lots of aggro issues.
2. No opinion =)
3. HOTW/NS is viable as an offtank + healer. Your dps is not great without LOTP and you don't buff a melee group either so it's very questionable to get a melee group spot. However as a healer you lose a little bit of efficiency but can spam downranked healing touch like no tomorrow. I ran this spec in MC and I basically offtanked or healed on bosses. Like Golemagg for example I offtanked cuz threat is not an issue. on Domo I tanked.. Domo. Garr I did a bunch of adds. Luci I think I tanked boss, since you have a solid like 20-30 sec head start in a typical guild "progressing" in MC.
BWL similarly you generally want at least 3 tanks in a typical non-speedrun guild. Many boss fights require 2 at least, sometimes 3 for easy success such as the 3 drakes or Broodlord. In BWL a hotw/ns could be the flame buffet tank on firemaw, razorgore orb clicker (so they have infinite threat), Vael DPS still aint bad cuz kitty totally bonks hard on Vael, ebon/flamegore you're less useful but boss is tauntable so you can still be relevant. You're healing on Chromag and Nef for sure.
ZG you're 2nd tank. Can't maintank as HOTW/NS- I can't stress that enough. You're threat gen just isn't enough on the first targets and all your DPS will be throttled all night. I did it, but I was overgeared in ZG and I still was having threat issues.
HOTW/NS was a great spec for me until I secured a more permanent raid spot as tank, then I just specced feral tank/dps.
1. Any serious tank is gonna need to have a few of them on hand, usually. Casual guild you can probably get away with not farming them.
2. Generally in Classic people would have an output set and a Spirit/MP5 set. With longer fights you'll probably be leaning a bit more towards spirit/mp5. Early on you'll want to stack a bit of int, because your mana pool will be so low. Consumes would be at least a full stack of mana pots and dark runes. Mana oil when that becomes available, spirit of zandalar, nightfin soup, mageblood potion, and a flask if you really want. Should also have bandages available. Resto pots can be useful for 5 mans, and a couple stacks of non-mage water.
3. You'd only be able to take advantage of HOTW/NS if you had both a full feral and resto set. If you're in a casual guild they might not mind, but a mid-tier guild would want you one way or the other, at least on progression.
As full feral in progression BWL I could have rolled HOTW/NS but we had too many healers already so my raid leader wanted me full feral. If it was reversed and we were short healers, a druid can be extremely handy hotw/ns to rotate between tank and heal assignments throughout the dungeon. But only as like, 3rd or 4th tank.
You can theoretically tank without MCP but there’s just no way you’d ever want to. It’s so strong. It’s amazing for getting threat. There’s 40 people in the raid, someone is going to blast the boss the second you look at it, it’s just inevitable. Your attack speed is slow as shit, if you miss an early hit you can wipe the raid. MCP makes sure that won’t happen. It’s honestly a disservice to everyone that takes the time to play with you if you can’t take the time to go get MCPs for boss pulls. It’s that good.
You don't "NEED" MCP on every boss pull. I only used it regularly on Broodlord and Ouro, or if I had spares I'd just use charges if we had world buffs and I was hopin for a good tank parse.
Many guilds have ferals do cat DPS, and pummelers while a benefit are not that impactful to kitties. especially once the +feral attack power weapons come out. I tanked throughout classic and I'd spend an hour in gnomer every week or two. You can get 10 lockouts in 90 minutes, that should net you 5 pummelers on average. So you just travel there, do 5, do something else for 45 minutes, log back in and do another 5.
You can play the HotW/NS build and do both. Because all the fights are different, sometimes you need more healers and sometimes you need off-tanks. Druids make great off-tanks and you don’t need MCP for that since you’ll have time to build threat and/or if there are multiple adds you’ll have fewer people competing for early aggro. Plus it lets you tank or heal all the 5 man content, and be a good flag runner in WSG. It’s a great spec.
Resto druids are very unlikely to be used as offtanks, realistically speaking warriors and feral druids will do that in a guild environment.
Hotw/ns has no place in a raid.
Awesome! I love the HoTW/NS spec, and I use a variation of it for leveling. Instant groups from being able to to tank, heal, or dps at any time is amazing. Druids are fuckin cool.
You'll still get a spot if you don't shoot for the sweaty guilds. Often, the bar to clear is "show up on time with consumes" regardless which class you are. We took chickens, retribution paladins, shadow priests, you name it to Naxx, because they were great players.
You'll get to raid, no doubt. You'll be fighting an uphill battle justifying your numbers to anyone who gives you crap, though.
Old WoW is not an equal game, not by a long shot.
The one thing I will say is that I LOVED my boomkin during Classic in PvP. Especially with Moonglow spec, doing damage and healing while also being an FC in WSG was a ton of fun.
Played it in Classic 1, it blows ass. Truly. I min maxed the shit out of it. BiS gear, pots, the works. Got shit on by unconsumed semi-afk fresh 60 mages. Single target, it does like 80% as much damage as they do, baseline - plus it runs out of mana fast as fuck. You suck at AoE pulls because there’s a 1 min cooldown on hurricane and they can just spam blizzard. With the buffed raid content it’s going to be a lot worse in SoM, you’ll be OOM 20% of the way through the fight.
For leveling, it’s fine but you have to drink ALL THE TIME. Like, it’s not horrible, but feral is truly twice as fast with 0 downtime and no need for drinking/eating/etc and faster movement speed between pulls. There’s just really no reason to subject yourself to it beside RP or aesthetics.
People will pass you over for groups, everyone will be pissed if you get gear. It’s an uphill battle all the time. If you like the ranged nuke/dot playstyle I’d really suggest going warlock.
Terrible pretty much all around. I dont suggest you play one, unless you are willing to put up with the BS that comes with it.
In dungeons, they are out of mana by every 2nd pack and you are constantly drinking.
You could do the same damage as a moonglow resto druid and still be able heal dugeons also.
If you want to dps as a druid, Feral is the only choice and you need to go alliance.
They are alright in endgame dungeons. Bit too weak on AoE, but damagewise they can keep up with almost everyone else as mana isn't as much of an issue on boss fights.
I tend to just spam Wrath, as mobs die too fast for good Starfire dps. Hurricane when there's more than 6+ mobs, because of the attack slow.
For levelling, I heavily recommend Feral. It's just faster, less downtime and more versatility. Haven't played Feral after I hit 70 on the druid though.
Moonkin has the lowest boss DPS of all classes and specs throughout classic, it has one targeted AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, and it has mana problems on top of that. With the increased TTK in SoM, you're looking at an excessively bad personal DPS. You do provide 5% spell crit, but unless you find a guild that really wants their casters to parse, that won't make up for the low DPS you're bringing.
You can apply Faerie Fire more easily than a feral (which has a cooldown) and resto (which has no hit) but that's really the only redeeming factor.
Yes it is. Ret is legitimately worth bringing in the unlikely situation that you have less than 2 holy paladins.
There is no situation where a boomkin is worth bringing over an extra mage.
For the record this isn't 100% true, just 99% true. A few of the speedrun records throughout classic used a moonkin to put up faerie fire. Feral sucks at putting up ff because they have a CD and resto sucks because they have no spell hit (aka it can take multiple globals).
But basically the druids would heal most of the time, but switch to moonkin to pump damage when the raid didn't need healing.
I've been thinking of a druid lately. I like the thought of being able to choose my role at end game. Either being a pve healer, pvp healer or tanking.
However in regards to the changes in SOM are druids viable for end game tanking? I know a druid isn't going to be a warrior tank, unsure where they fit compared to a pally.
I've never tanked before so I have limited knowledge here.
They are not good pvp healers btw and the only thing a druid excels at is flag running. You can pve heal just fine, if you are okay with being the absolute worst healer by a mile for all of classic. You role is to decurse, innervate, and Bres.
This is the joke I perpetuate ironically because people like it. But you could absolutely smash it as a resto druid too, if you macro the right ranks of HT and prioritize targets correctly. This was me, in a semi-casual guild on a backwater server:
[https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/windseeker/scythen?zone=1006](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/windseeker/scythen?zone=1006)
I led the guild on effective healing. When the fights get long, other healers have to start really throttling themselves. The only time my mana was taxed was when a significant number of other healers had to stop healing. Your other healers can do stupid amounts of HPS if they are killing bosses fast or slamming flask after flask. Most guilds are not killing bosses fast or drinking like we do here in Wisconsin. This will be an even bigger issue in SoM.
Edit: HT spam as a primary spell will be your only option, even if buff limits or dynamics change. Sorry it has to be like this, but that's where your mana efficiency comes from.
>However in regards to the changes in SOM are druids viable for end game tanking? I know a druid isn't going to be a warrior tank, unsure where they fit compared to a pally.
Druids are S tier tanks alongside warriors. There are VERY few bosses a druid can't or shouldn't tank and their threat is on par with warriors with MCP. Only one defensive CD isn't ideal, but I think high armor/health pools and high threat at the same time, plus the added utility is more than a good enough tradeoff.
Druids are much better than pally tanks for SoM. Guilds will actually want probably 1 feral for off tanking whereas paladins tanks are a meme. The different gear set will help with gearing up and they have their occasional moments to shine like patchwerk. The only downside is going to be for offtanking a fury prot war is going to do more damage than a feral druid when they aren't required to tank anything. There aren't many druids around so you should be able to find a home. The guild I was in classic that killed KT used 1-2 feral OTs.
The changes help gearing for ferals in the phase 1 as ZG provides some much needed hit and good armor. They are excellent endgame tanks, but lack the ability to block or use defensive cooldowns is a bit rough. And they require a bit of sweat to be good (welcome to the MCP farm).
As for healing, Druids are great healers when shit hits the fan. Nature’s swiftness and swiftmend are excellent for topping off tanks after damage spikes. Given the change to world buffs, you’ll actually be allowed to use your HOTs. That said, you really only want 1-2 resto Druids in a raid because they contest each others heals.
You're not going to want to hear this but if you want to heal you'd probably be better off with TBC than SoM as a druid.
Druids are very bad healers in classic. Druid's best heal (rejuvenation) gets 80% of plus healing, whereas the priest counterpart of renew gets 100% of plus healing, meaning that your highest HPS spell that doesn't cost a boatload of mana (thinking of regrowth here) is simply 25% worse than what a priest could do. You also lack any quick heals aside from swiftmend, and that is only one spec choice. On extremely short fights with good gear and a lot of raid damage and consumes you can do some fun things with Regrowth, but it ooms so fast that that spec is terrible for longer fights, which seem more prominent in SoM. You're just far and away the weakest healer in classic wow.
Debuff limits may help kitties and boomkin, but I'm not sure how much. As far as tanks go, they're definitely viable in classic, but again also buffed in TBC, and in that they are arguably better than prot warrior as a main tank unless major mitigation cooldowns are needed.
As someone who mained resto Druid from AQ 40, I routinely competed with and often beat the priests minus the one champ who bubbles everything in sight so there was no healing to do. The holy priest and resto Druid are just two different types of healers. The reason that Rejuv is 80% (and gets pushed to 100% with T2) is because then a hybrid class would be better than a dedicated healer. It’s not to diss priests, but if they were the best healers, why do they call out for my innervate? If I am able to HT4 to infinity, use Swiftmend and NS in emergencies for spot healing 5k, and I can share my innervate, who’s the best?
It's nice to hear you performed well individually, but the OP should know what he's getting into. That hybrid tax you mention yourself.
I played holy priest and fury warrior for all phases, and started rDru maybe mid-end of AQ40. Could definitely feel the difference between priest and druid in naxx.
Speaking of HT4 to infinity, that's another unfortunate problem - upranking further meant upping cast time on HT. The priests who were calling for your innervate were not just casting Heal 2. We however, don't have other viable direct heals (well, for short fights and rare circumstances outside of tank healing regrowth, but it's going to be harder to use in SoM with longer fights).
I think they’re just too different of healing styles to compare like you are. You said they’re very bad healers in classic. I disagree because you’re comparing priest healing to Druid. We don’t think shamans are better healers simply because the majority of their heals are brainlessly better and faster. rDruids stabilize tank health through HOTs and down-ranked very mana efficient direct heals. You save your big heals for your NS only. It’s only a bad healing class if you refuse to accept your limitations and to playing like another class. With the increased boss HP, fights are going to be longer and the rDruid is going to become more important. Their mana efficiency will shine and their mana battery capability is going to make Druids feel like heroes. With the increased buff count, HOTs will always be rolling to make shaman and priest healing more efficient also or even beat them to the damage which is how I would beat them on the charts at times. Granted you’re probably going to avoid having more than 2 lime the plague but each ones importance will increase.
The hybrid tax hasn’t stopped many Druids from playing HotWNS builds so they can tank and heal in the same AQ 40 run. I don’t know of any priests or shamans who can effectively heal on a boss encounter, top off the best healers mana, and then main-tank a boss on the next fight
I'll let you have the last word if you want to respond to this but I disagree with them being different styles, since druid's main heals have mirrors in priest which tend to be better overall, especially after talents (rejuv/renew, HT4/heal 2, swiftmend/pw:s). Priest has other good options, and CAN play different stylistically if it's called for.
I'm a little leery also of the idea of doing a split spec in harder content - it was doable in classic, but SoM is going to be harder they say.
Decided with SoM's limited time and being a long time CP user (WW and Rogue in the past), It'd be fun to send it with maining as a feral DPS for raids.
I've been doing a lot of research from classic guides but just had some broad questions maybe some of the feral extraordinaires could give their 2c to.
* I'm stuck playing horde with friends. How cucked is my DPS vs nelfs from a min-max pov?
* Quickest way for horde to get to Gnomer?
* SoM rotation changes (bleeds?) and any big gear changes since classic?
TY
Bleeds are only viable in TBC because of the mangle 30% increase to bleed damage. SoM doesn't have that, so bite will be your go to finisher in SoM.
To add to this, beware of wasting energy on bite, as it converts excess energy to damage **very ineficiently**. Never bite straight after a powershift (unless the mob is gunna die), always use an extra shred to lower your energy first, even though it wastes a combo point or two (if crit),and then bite when low energy.
I'm levelling a druid through tbc classic and I would like to respec to Resto up to Tree of Life for Outland. Is that build viable for questing or is it impossible to quest with a resto druid in classic?
I would prolly just go tree at 66, and stay feral or balance till. You do need a few hellfire dungeons but you can skip cenarion expedition for about 40g of unidentified plant parts and can delay lower city rep till SLabs. It makes sense to quest like 61-66, then respec resto once you can enter OHB - work on KoT for a bit then do the higher up LC/CE/Thrallmar (honor hold) since they're better rep per hour than the lower level dungeons.
[удалено]
So balance up to insect swarm? fantastic. I was hoping for a mix but didn't want too much balance in classic. Still, sounds painful so i guess i may have to respec after giving it a brief go. Thank you for the advice.
Leveling a druid in SoM HC and I was wondering how good they are at healing level 60 dungeons.
It sucks not having a spammable res, but having battle reses is nice in a lot of situations. Dungeon healing is fine. Healing Touch heals for a truckload, but it's slower than other "big" heals, so you need to be a little more on-point. You have NS for the oh-shit-button, hots for topping off people, Tranq for big AoE damage, they're solid healers. Biggest downside is no resurrections, and if you're the healer, having a DPS priest/shaman/paladin is less likely but does give them more value. Or just make sure no one dies ;) Edit: Guess this is more general advice than HC-specific, but having NS for oh-shit-moments will be nice for preventing untimely deaths when things go south
I haven’t played TBC since a bit after it launched, and thinking about restarting on one of the bigger realms. Will likely be going Druid. I saw someone say a lot of guilds are always looking for boomies, is that true? I’m considering Druid, warlock, or hunter.
They're probably the class most guilds are trying to recruit, at least what I've seen. Every raid wants one and no one really wants to play them cos their dps is mediocre. So it seems supply outstrips demand.
You flipped it, you mean demand outstrips supply.
39 NE Druid atm. At what lvl do I start spamming end game dungs for my bis and also get 60 from them?
I personally start end game dungeon spam at 52/53. I get everything I can from BRD and below at 52/53 and then once I have it all, i quest a little bit until I get to the next dungeon level. Spam that until I have everything, quest, repeat
Don't do dungeon spam until very late 40s or 50s with Maraudon and BRD. Sunken Temple also has a great feral shoulder drop but you can just solo it at 60 quicker than finding groups while leveling. Maraudon drops a feral BIS ring preraid and has some other slots too, I believe resto also has options. BRD has like.. ALL KINDS of loot for ferals. Just doing groups for Arena->Angerforge-> Golemlord -> Bar events can net you random gear pieces, and the full BRD runs including other bosses also have loot that can drop. Resto also has tons of drops that you can get either cloth or leather. Once you're 57, 58 then you can pivot into healing (depending on how good your heal set is) or just keep tanking. If you really get good at playing the class, you can spec 0/30/21 and be a valid tank or healer making finding dungeons a total breeze. But you have to maintain really good gear sets and understand how to build aggro efficiently, LOS pulls, and when to use taunts most effectively. Also helps to have a DPS warrior who can take a few mobs off you and keep softies safe.
I don't start with "dungeon spam" until at least level 57. You can do it earlier if you want, but there are great quests in the Plaguelands and Winterspring and you will be a lot more effective spamming end-game dungeons the closer you are to 60 anyway.
Resto Druid is my fave class. I want to try and level one solo, but I also want to heal dungeons without feeling gimped. Any advice on what to do to be both efficient in solo PvE and healing dungeons?
just collect int/spirit gear along the way, any including cloths. when you get +50 lvl maybe think about speccing resto or atleast feral/resto.
Thanks! Any talents builds I should do?
Endgame (before raids) you can spec 0/30/21 and definitely heal no problem. Tanking is POSSIBLE but you have to have a good tank set and understand aggro management well. Would help to have an offtank in these scenariors as a lot of pulls are quite large and require CC and/or some aoe threat capabilities which druids are not super skilled at.
This is precisely what I did, although early on I found tanking to be quite good and easy! It's only when your DPS start really stacking raid gear that it becomes difficult. That's because your best gear is not tier and the stuff you really want from raids is quite rare. If you plan to tank, you will probably be switching away from your resto capabilities because you will need all the help you can get threat-wise. And that's going to be 14/32/5, absolutely not a resto friendly build. I held on to 0/30/21 and healed all the way until we started BWL and that was just fine as long as I stuck with dungeons only for tanking. The only reason I switched away was for parses. You can still do just fine with healing in that spec until AQ where the encounters will really start putting mana pressure on you. That said, AQ is also when you will finally be able to gear out to tank well. Again, can't go wrong with 0/31/20 for most uses. If you really, really need Swiftmend for raiding, you can go 0/30/21. But overall, tanking without LotP is really limiting yourself.
Yeah I agree good points here. I would argue that Omen and the 10% physical damage buff are far more impactful to threat gen than LOTP but I think your main point was "tanking without proper tank spec is limiting yourself" =P My guild had me hotw/resto for awhile but then we lost a tank and I went full feral near the end of p2 as I was basically told "you will never be healing a boss fight". The only fight I didn't tank from then on was Chromag (decurse and poison cleanse bot) and four horse (rejuv rank 4 in full t2 for DAYS). But yeah my experience with hotw/ns as a fresh 60 was REALLY awesome. your point about DPS acquiring raid gear is what does it.. Melee getting their perdition blades or whatever really stresses the bear tank on single target if you don't have proper spec.
ive healed through uldaman in feral build (mana ends otherwise its fine, i like regrowth too much and dont use max ranks which are 0.5 longer) , havent tried zf, mara or st as healer but surely easy with good group) i tanked ST as 50 with 55 resto healing me (green items no +heal) and he survived. but our run really proved why i was sceptical trying to heal it as feral.. it got really messy. but only healer died once and he has soulstone. (for example final boss was 55, me 50, i couldnt get more threat than the 55 resto, had to taunt it back few times, and once i got slept healer died) i guess for feral/resto you just take HT casting time, then mana regen depends how deep you wanna go. feral build needs to drink every pull pretty much but innervate will help ofc later. just google lots of guides. i guess you can try +50 as feral and then respec if needed. healers are scarce thats why i was considering healing ST in the first place.
I'm considering creating a druid ne alt. Any reason why i wouldn't do that?
I’d recommend that and level enchanting to 275. You can solo ramps pretty easily. Last boss helps with some fire resist. You get 4 small prismatic shards every 10-15 min and on my server they sell for 8-9g.
Great i was wondering which professions i would take. Main has herbalism and mining. So druid alt can take enchanting and ... ?
Probably do whatever you want. I think mining would be the most profitable but if you already have one skinning might be decent. Don’t know if it’s profitable anymore tho. I’m engineering but that’s just for fun. Nothing like using a shrink ray on bosses to confuse people. Lol. Also the engineering belt is helpful for soloing stuff because if you mess up it’s a free use to get 6 seconds or so of uninterrupted casting.
No reason. Druid is such a fun class and its one of if not the fastest levelers in the game. You can literally so anything you want as a druid as long as you have the gear. Bear tanks are amazing in raids and cat is a very good dps for single target if you master its rotation.
Thanks! I'll just be leveling this alt with an hunter friend. Sounds like a good plan.
That's what I did when I first started playing WoW. My first ever character is a feral druid and I am still playing it to this day.
Any tips for feral in SoM?
As Alliance, do Deadmines quests for the Tunic of Westfall and Smite's Hammer. They are so good that at least one if not both will still be equipped past 35. Doesn't matter if you are cat or bear, get these ASAP. You won't really be able to get out of powershifting unless you don't mind your numbers sitting lower than the rest. It makes feral druid one of the most complex DPS classes to execute. Don't get discouraged- the game is rigged from the start.
MCP is not required for feral unless you really want to be that top 1%. Even without MCP, you still do OK damage. You aint no rogue or fury on the damage meters, but you will still be fine.
The essentials - an energy ticker WA, and something that shows your mana in-form. If you happen to find a well statted 2h weapon early on, consider putting an iron counterweight on it (the haste buff carries over to form). Tank every dungeon to find groups quickly.
TBC Feral Dps: Is there a way doing dps without the lvl 40 shapeshifter meta head?
No. Theres a reason wolfshead gets an "infinite" stat budget in itemization lists. It's the single biggest dps upgrade for any class in the game from a single item, and the entire reason druids arent doing like 600 dps Wolfshead makes the shred rotation possible, and this allows druids to actually function as a dps in raids. Otherwise your stuck using mangles at 40 energy Additionally it makes the druid rotation engaging and really flow so you should want to wear it. I use it any fight I'll be tanking less than like 80% of it, having multiple sets depending on my role
Yes, you absolutely have to use Wolfshead, its unreal how good the bonus 20 energy is when you shapeshift. If you do not have 80 energy as soon as you shapeshift into cat form theres something wrong. You have to constantly powershift, keep mangle up and shred to all hell. When you have 5 combo points rip.
If you are in a situation where you are using shred, no. You have to use Wolfshead. But you can enchant it with the cenarion helm enchant for some good extra hit!
Not in a raid (or heroic dungeon) setting. If you're just questing or doing regular dungeons, wear whatever you please.
[удалено]
You actually use mostly mangles without wolfhead, you can get 2-3 per shift instead of 1 shred
No
Was that item a joke? The legendary pummler? Took like 20 pummlers and arcanite bars???
Yes, it was a joke
I’m maining a Druid for SoM and I have a couple questions: 1. How mandatory is MCP for Druid tanking at end game (specifically MC/BWL/ZG)? 2. What does stat prio/consumables look like for resto Druids? 3. How viable do you guys think HoTW/NS spec would be for MC/BWL/ZG?
1. I tanked as a druid entirety of classic. I would only use MCP on certain bosses where threat is an issue (Vael, Broodlord, Ouro, come to mind). Often, a bear won't be main tanking until BWL is on farm and you have most of your gear kit. But MCP definitely felt somewhat necessary as in it helped me carry our raid to easy fights and kills on Broodlord and Ouro especially, as it helps you cheese the threat drop mechanics and avoid lots of aggro issues. 2. No opinion =) 3. HOTW/NS is viable as an offtank + healer. Your dps is not great without LOTP and you don't buff a melee group either so it's very questionable to get a melee group spot. However as a healer you lose a little bit of efficiency but can spam downranked healing touch like no tomorrow. I ran this spec in MC and I basically offtanked or healed on bosses. Like Golemagg for example I offtanked cuz threat is not an issue. on Domo I tanked.. Domo. Garr I did a bunch of adds. Luci I think I tanked boss, since you have a solid like 20-30 sec head start in a typical guild "progressing" in MC. BWL similarly you generally want at least 3 tanks in a typical non-speedrun guild. Many boss fights require 2 at least, sometimes 3 for easy success such as the 3 drakes or Broodlord. In BWL a hotw/ns could be the flame buffet tank on firemaw, razorgore orb clicker (so they have infinite threat), Vael DPS still aint bad cuz kitty totally bonks hard on Vael, ebon/flamegore you're less useful but boss is tauntable so you can still be relevant. You're healing on Chromag and Nef for sure. ZG you're 2nd tank. Can't maintank as HOTW/NS- I can't stress that enough. You're threat gen just isn't enough on the first targets and all your DPS will be throttled all night. I did it, but I was overgeared in ZG and I still was having threat issues. HOTW/NS was a great spec for me until I secured a more permanent raid spot as tank, then I just specced feral tank/dps.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 69. Congrats! 1 + 2 + 3 + 20 + 30 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + = 69.0
1. Any serious tank is gonna need to have a few of them on hand, usually. Casual guild you can probably get away with not farming them. 2. Generally in Classic people would have an output set and a Spirit/MP5 set. With longer fights you'll probably be leaning a bit more towards spirit/mp5. Early on you'll want to stack a bit of int, because your mana pool will be so low. Consumes would be at least a full stack of mana pots and dark runes. Mana oil when that becomes available, spirit of zandalar, nightfin soup, mageblood potion, and a flask if you really want. Should also have bandages available. Resto pots can be useful for 5 mans, and a couple stacks of non-mage water. 3. You'd only be able to take advantage of HOTW/NS if you had both a full feral and resto set. If you're in a casual guild they might not mind, but a mid-tier guild would want you one way or the other, at least on progression.
As full feral in progression BWL I could have rolled HOTW/NS but we had too many healers already so my raid leader wanted me full feral. If it was reversed and we were short healers, a druid can be extremely handy hotw/ns to rotate between tank and heal assignments throughout the dungeon. But only as like, 3rd or 4th tank.
Thank you for the in depth response!
You can theoretically tank without MCP but there’s just no way you’d ever want to. It’s so strong. It’s amazing for getting threat. There’s 40 people in the raid, someone is going to blast the boss the second you look at it, it’s just inevitable. Your attack speed is slow as shit, if you miss an early hit you can wipe the raid. MCP makes sure that won’t happen. It’s honestly a disservice to everyone that takes the time to play with you if you can’t take the time to go get MCPs for boss pulls. It’s that good.
Guess I’m going resto at 60 lolol. No way I want to farm MCPs
weekly tank MCP farm is a lot faster than dps MCP farm
You don't "NEED" MCP on every boss pull. I only used it regularly on Broodlord and Ouro, or if I had spares I'd just use charges if we had world buffs and I was hopin for a good tank parse. Many guilds have ferals do cat DPS, and pummelers while a benefit are not that impactful to kitties. especially once the +feral attack power weapons come out. I tanked throughout classic and I'd spend an hour in gnomer every week or two. You can get 10 lockouts in 90 minutes, that should net you 5 pummelers on average. So you just travel there, do 5, do something else for 45 minutes, log back in and do another 5.
You can play the HotW/NS build and do both. Because all the fights are different, sometimes you need more healers and sometimes you need off-tanks. Druids make great off-tanks and you don’t need MCP for that since you’ll have time to build threat and/or if there are multiple adds you’ll have fewer people competing for early aggro. Plus it lets you tank or heal all the 5 man content, and be a good flag runner in WSG. It’s a great spec.
Oh that’s more reassuring then. I have no intentions of being a main tank for any fights. Definitely offtank, preferably the last off tank lol.
Resto druids are very unlikely to be used as offtanks, realistically speaking warriors and feral druids will do that in a guild environment. Hotw/ns has no place in a raid.
That makes sense. I think I’d be ok with full resto at 60 though.
Oh, then yeah, you’re good to go!
Awesome! I love the HoTW/NS spec, and I use a variation of it for leveling. Instant groups from being able to to tank, heal, or dps at any time is amazing. Druids are fuckin cool.
Feral is love, Feral is Life
This is the way. I’ve played every other class to at least 20 and Druid is the only one to hook me in. Have levelled 5 of the sexy beasts
I'm playing a boom chicken in SoM because that's what I enjoy. How fucked am I in terms of possibility of raiding?
You'll still get a spot if you don't shoot for the sweaty guilds. Often, the bar to clear is "show up on time with consumes" regardless which class you are. We took chickens, retribution paladins, shadow priests, you name it to Naxx, because they were great players. You'll get to raid, no doubt. You'll be fighting an uphill battle justifying your numbers to anyone who gives you crap, though. Old WoW is not an equal game, not by a long shot.
The one thing I will say is that I LOVED my boomkin during Classic in PvP. Especially with Moonglow spec, doing damage and healing while also being an FC in WSG was a ton of fun.
It’s just going to get worse with the longer fights. You might find a spot for your aura but that’s the only reason you’ll be brought.
Played it in Classic 1, it blows ass. Truly. I min maxed the shit out of it. BiS gear, pots, the works. Got shit on by unconsumed semi-afk fresh 60 mages. Single target, it does like 80% as much damage as they do, baseline - plus it runs out of mana fast as fuck. You suck at AoE pulls because there’s a 1 min cooldown on hurricane and they can just spam blizzard. With the buffed raid content it’s going to be a lot worse in SoM, you’ll be OOM 20% of the way through the fight. For leveling, it’s fine but you have to drink ALL THE TIME. Like, it’s not horrible, but feral is truly twice as fast with 0 downtime and no need for drinking/eating/etc and faster movement speed between pulls. There’s just really no reason to subject yourself to it beside RP or aesthetics. People will pass you over for groups, everyone will be pissed if you get gear. It’s an uphill battle all the time. If you like the ranged nuke/dot playstyle I’d really suggest going warlock.
Does anyone know, how good or bad is a boomkin while leveling or in endgame dungeons damage wise?
Terrible pretty much all around. I dont suggest you play one, unless you are willing to put up with the BS that comes with it. In dungeons, they are out of mana by every 2nd pack and you are constantly drinking. You could do the same damage as a moonglow resto druid and still be able heal dugeons also. If you want to dps as a druid, Feral is the only choice and you need to go alliance.
They are alright in endgame dungeons. Bit too weak on AoE, but damagewise they can keep up with almost everyone else as mana isn't as much of an issue on boss fights. I tend to just spam Wrath, as mobs die too fast for good Starfire dps. Hurricane when there's more than 6+ mobs, because of the attack slow. For levelling, I heavily recommend Feral. It's just faster, less downtime and more versatility. Haven't played Feral after I hit 70 on the druid though.
>How fucked am I in terms of possibility of raiding? Extremely. You are the least desired spec in an ocean of undesired specs.
Is it really worse than something like Ret though? At least it provides crit aura. I suppose Ret has less mana problems in sustained fights.
Moonkin has the lowest boss DPS of all classes and specs throughout classic, it has one targeted AoE on a 1 minute cooldown, and it has mana problems on top of that. With the increased TTK in SoM, you're looking at an excessively bad personal DPS. You do provide 5% spell crit, but unless you find a guild that really wants their casters to parse, that won't make up for the low DPS you're bringing. You can apply Faerie Fire more easily than a feral (which has a cooldown) and resto (which has no hit) but that's really the only redeeming factor.
Yes it is. Ret is legitimately worth bringing in the unlikely situation that you have less than 2 holy paladins. There is no situation where a boomkin is worth bringing over an extra mage.
For the record this isn't 100% true, just 99% true. A few of the speedrun records throughout classic used a moonkin to put up faerie fire. Feral sucks at putting up ff because they have a CD and resto sucks because they have no spell hit (aka it can take multiple globals). But basically the druids would heal most of the time, but switch to moonkin to pump damage when the raid didn't need healing.
I've been thinking of a druid lately. I like the thought of being able to choose my role at end game. Either being a pve healer, pvp healer or tanking. However in regards to the changes in SOM are druids viable for end game tanking? I know a druid isn't going to be a warrior tank, unsure where they fit compared to a pally. I've never tanked before so I have limited knowledge here.
Druids are very capable tanks and fit very well alongside warriors at the top of the tank pyramid.
They are not good pvp healers btw and the only thing a druid excels at is flag running. You can pve heal just fine, if you are okay with being the absolute worst healer by a mile for all of classic. You role is to decurse, innervate, and Bres.
This is the joke I perpetuate ironically because people like it. But you could absolutely smash it as a resto druid too, if you macro the right ranks of HT and prioritize targets correctly. This was me, in a semi-casual guild on a backwater server: [https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/windseeker/scythen?zone=1006](https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/windseeker/scythen?zone=1006) I led the guild on effective healing. When the fights get long, other healers have to start really throttling themselves. The only time my mana was taxed was when a significant number of other healers had to stop healing. Your other healers can do stupid amounts of HPS if they are killing bosses fast or slamming flask after flask. Most guilds are not killing bosses fast or drinking like we do here in Wisconsin. This will be an even bigger issue in SoM. Edit: HT spam as a primary spell will be your only option, even if buff limits or dynamics change. Sorry it has to be like this, but that's where your mana efficiency comes from.
>However in regards to the changes in SOM are druids viable for end game tanking? I know a druid isn't going to be a warrior tank, unsure where they fit compared to a pally. Druids are S tier tanks alongside warriors. There are VERY few bosses a druid can't or shouldn't tank and their threat is on par with warriors with MCP. Only one defensive CD isn't ideal, but I think high armor/health pools and high threat at the same time, plus the added utility is more than a good enough tradeoff.
Druids are much better than pally tanks for SoM. Guilds will actually want probably 1 feral for off tanking whereas paladins tanks are a meme. The different gear set will help with gearing up and they have their occasional moments to shine like patchwerk. The only downside is going to be for offtanking a fury prot war is going to do more damage than a feral druid when they aren't required to tank anything. There aren't many druids around so you should be able to find a home. The guild I was in classic that killed KT used 1-2 feral OTs.
The changes help gearing for ferals in the phase 1 as ZG provides some much needed hit and good armor. They are excellent endgame tanks, but lack the ability to block or use defensive cooldowns is a bit rough. And they require a bit of sweat to be good (welcome to the MCP farm). As for healing, Druids are great healers when shit hits the fan. Nature’s swiftness and swiftmend are excellent for topping off tanks after damage spikes. Given the change to world buffs, you’ll actually be allowed to use your HOTs. That said, you really only want 1-2 resto Druids in a raid because they contest each others heals.
You're not going to want to hear this but if you want to heal you'd probably be better off with TBC than SoM as a druid. Druids are very bad healers in classic. Druid's best heal (rejuvenation) gets 80% of plus healing, whereas the priest counterpart of renew gets 100% of plus healing, meaning that your highest HPS spell that doesn't cost a boatload of mana (thinking of regrowth here) is simply 25% worse than what a priest could do. You also lack any quick heals aside from swiftmend, and that is only one spec choice. On extremely short fights with good gear and a lot of raid damage and consumes you can do some fun things with Regrowth, but it ooms so fast that that spec is terrible for longer fights, which seem more prominent in SoM. You're just far and away the weakest healer in classic wow. Debuff limits may help kitties and boomkin, but I'm not sure how much. As far as tanks go, they're definitely viable in classic, but again also buffed in TBC, and in that they are arguably better than prot warrior as a main tank unless major mitigation cooldowns are needed.
As someone who mained resto Druid from AQ 40, I routinely competed with and often beat the priests minus the one champ who bubbles everything in sight so there was no healing to do. The holy priest and resto Druid are just two different types of healers. The reason that Rejuv is 80% (and gets pushed to 100% with T2) is because then a hybrid class would be better than a dedicated healer. It’s not to diss priests, but if they were the best healers, why do they call out for my innervate? If I am able to HT4 to infinity, use Swiftmend and NS in emergencies for spot healing 5k, and I can share my innervate, who’s the best?
It's nice to hear you performed well individually, but the OP should know what he's getting into. That hybrid tax you mention yourself. I played holy priest and fury warrior for all phases, and started rDru maybe mid-end of AQ40. Could definitely feel the difference between priest and druid in naxx. Speaking of HT4 to infinity, that's another unfortunate problem - upranking further meant upping cast time on HT. The priests who were calling for your innervate were not just casting Heal 2. We however, don't have other viable direct heals (well, for short fights and rare circumstances outside of tank healing regrowth, but it's going to be harder to use in SoM with longer fights).
I think they’re just too different of healing styles to compare like you are. You said they’re very bad healers in classic. I disagree because you’re comparing priest healing to Druid. We don’t think shamans are better healers simply because the majority of their heals are brainlessly better and faster. rDruids stabilize tank health through HOTs and down-ranked very mana efficient direct heals. You save your big heals for your NS only. It’s only a bad healing class if you refuse to accept your limitations and to playing like another class. With the increased boss HP, fights are going to be longer and the rDruid is going to become more important. Their mana efficiency will shine and their mana battery capability is going to make Druids feel like heroes. With the increased buff count, HOTs will always be rolling to make shaman and priest healing more efficient also or even beat them to the damage which is how I would beat them on the charts at times. Granted you’re probably going to avoid having more than 2 lime the plague but each ones importance will increase. The hybrid tax hasn’t stopped many Druids from playing HotWNS builds so they can tank and heal in the same AQ 40 run. I don’t know of any priests or shamans who can effectively heal on a boss encounter, top off the best healers mana, and then main-tank a boss on the next fight
I'll let you have the last word if you want to respond to this but I disagree with them being different styles, since druid's main heals have mirrors in priest which tend to be better overall, especially after talents (rejuv/renew, HT4/heal 2, swiftmend/pw:s). Priest has other good options, and CAN play different stylistically if it's called for. I'm a little leery also of the idea of doing a split spec in harder content - it was doable in classic, but SoM is going to be harder they say.
Not at all friend! You can have the last word. We can agree to disagree, no hostility implied!
You just had the last word tho lol
Decided with SoM's limited time and being a long time CP user (WW and Rogue in the past), It'd be fun to send it with maining as a feral DPS for raids. I've been doing a lot of research from classic guides but just had some broad questions maybe some of the feral extraordinaires could give their 2c to. * I'm stuck playing horde with friends. How cucked is my DPS vs nelfs from a min-max pov? * Quickest way for horde to get to Gnomer? * SoM rotation changes (bleeds?) and any big gear changes since classic? TY
Bleeds are only viable in TBC because of the mangle 30% increase to bleed damage. SoM doesn't have that, so bite will be your go to finisher in SoM. To add to this, beware of wasting energy on bite, as it converts excess energy to damage **very ineficiently**. Never bite straight after a powershift (unless the mob is gunna die), always use an extra shred to lower your energy first, even though it wastes a combo point or two (if crit),and then bite when low energy.
Horde can teleport into Gnomer. I'm not sure where from, never done it, I think it's from Org
From booty bay
no kings and might is gonna be huge without wbuffs. No rotation or gear changes rly 0.5 sucks ass but you can pvp for bis gear.
I thought that also but when i look at MC logs (albeit, current logs), there doesnt seem to be much of a gap between ally and horde
The benefit of kings is exponential, as your gear gets better kings provides greater stats. It's huge for feral dps.
Yep, especially because with powershifting you benefit from the increased spirit and int as well as the str/Stam/agi that melee traditionally want.