Druid Questions

[TheWall]

I'm a pretty new 70. I leveled feral and have recently respecced to heal my guild in heroics. Tree of life is interesting but I was wondering if anyone out there has a dreamstate build? If so, could it heal heroics well enough? I like the idea of this build for pvp as well. I know balance isn't that great in the arena but I'm hoping that this build would let me heal in 3v3 well enough.

Thoughts?

[Fordel]

The main difference between a 'pure' resto build and a dream state build is the loss of Feral Charge and Swiftmend in exchange for Moonkin and Insane regen.

A Few people have success with the build, but it requires a much larger investment in team coordination and gear. It came about due to the +heal/dmg bonus added to the raw +heal gear a few patches back. So a really well geared healing suit, also has 800+ spelldmg. This allows the healer to add his own pressure DPS to the focus target in a game. Of course this all assumes the healer will be able to apply said pressure DPS, since a Moonkins primary DPS is tied up in standing and casting... which is something you don't get to do often in the smaller brackets. The other crux is while a dreamstate build with a proper gear setup will have truly absurd regen numbers, it also burns through mana 2-4x's as fast as a pure resto build.

If you play conservatively, just heal and CC, you'll virtually never run OOM, but you then defeat the purpose of being dreamstate by not applying your own offensive pressure. It's a delicate balancing act. Often not worth it really. Essentially, a Dreamstate druid is emulating a Disc Priest, but it doesn't have a all the Disc Priest tools, notably Mana Burn, Pain Suppression and Dispel/MassDispel. Of course, depending on your group comp, the druid tools may be more important to you and worth the trade off.


As to an actual build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xcrziIoxuZZxEI0co

Something like that is usually common.


-edit- Yes, it could heal heroics assuming you aren't wearing greens or something.

[Ingmar]

if PVE is a priority for you, missing tree of life is going to be painful. The regen you get from dreamstate doesn't really make up for the spell discount on tree + the extra healing you get, IMO.

Healing druids are one of those places I really feel like we could use the dual spec thing they keep talking about for the expansion, since a PVE spec and a PVP spec are quite different.

[TheWall]

Thanks, that helps a lot. I was worried that I would need really good gear to pull it off based on the talents most people pick. I guess I'll probably stay rejuv until I finish getting all the kodohide stuff together. Do you have an arena spec that could also be used to heal heroics? I'll be doing a mix of both as I try to get gear together.

Edit:

If it helps you provide info. My 3v3 team is a subtlety rogue, cat druid, and I.

[cevik]

Thanks, that helps a lot. I was worried that I would need really good gear to pull it off based on the talents most people pick. I guess I'll probably stay rejuv until I finish getting all the kodohide stuff together. Do you have an arena spec that could also be used to heal heroics? I'll be doing a mix of both as I try to get gear together.

Respec cost is only 50g, easier to run two good specs than one hybrid.  4-5 dailies covers your respec cost, I tend to respec on the weekend for raiding and during the week for pvp myself.  Hell, a kara clear tends to net enough cash for one of the respecs! :)

[Rasix]

Just based off experience, I've found most trees to be suboptimal heroic healers.  This is, however, may be just due to luck of the draw/player skill.   There are certain pulls/situations in heroics where there's a need for large continuous heals (even for a full t4/5 tank) and most trees I've seen under perform in this area.  You can run into the same problem with holy paladins that insist on using the dinky little heal while the tank is getting stomped into the ground.

Trees do awesome with raid healing.  Better than resto shaman in many situations. 

Just my experience and likely more attributable to a druid in less than fantastic gear and isn't that great at their class.  Sample size is pretty fucking large though unfortunately.

[Ingmar]

Just based off experience, I've found most trees to be suboptimal heroic healers.  This is, however, may be just due to luck of the draw/player skill.   There are certain pulls/situations in heroics where there's a need for large continuous heals (even for a full t4/5 tank) and most trees I've seen under perform in this area.  You can run into the same problem with holy paladins that insist on using the dinky little heal while the tank is getting stomped into the ground.

Trees do awesome with raid healing.  Better than resto shaman in many situations. 

Just my experience and likely more attributable to a druid in less than fantastic gear and isn't that great at their class.  Sample size is pretty fucking large though unfortunately.

Some trees don't spec the HT talents and are unwilling to drop out of tree form at all (even for NS+HT), which is a pretty limiting playstyle - it sounds like you may have run into one of those. I think the years and years of regrowth sucking has also soured a lot of druids on using it too, but in Kara gear mine crits reliably for enough to be worth spamming in times of crisis, even though it is inefficient mana-wise to do so - tree regen is so ridiculous that it isn't a problem. My innervate restores more than my total mana bar right now.

There are a few spots where it is hard to keep up with just the HoTs, but there are also a number of spots in heroics where the ability to heal on the run is really nice (Nethermancer Sepethrea, the last 2 fights in Magister's Terrace, anything with 'stand in fire' issues), and nobody does that better than druids. Also there's a lovely bug with the TIME FOR FUN ogre in Shadow Labs that really benefits tree druids - he won't take you out of tree form or cast any spells when you're mind controlled so as long as you're a good distance off from teh rest of the group when it hits you are safe and your mana is safe for the recovery afterwards. (It is possible they have fixed that in one of the last couple patches I guess, I haven't visited him recently.)

[Nonentity]

I'm a pretty new 70. I leveled feral and have recently respecced to heal my guild in heroics. Tree of life is interesting but I was wondering if anyone out there has a dreamstate build? If so, could it heal heroics well enough? I like the idea of this build for pvp as well. I know balance isn't that great in the arena but I'm hoping that this build would let me heal in 3v3 well enough.

Thoughts?

Balance can be devastating with the right team setup.

Shadowpriest, Rogue, Balance Druid in my guild - rocked the 2200+ bracket in season 3.

[Fordel]

It's also astounding how many Tree's forget they have Swiftmend.

A large part of it, is in non-heroics, a Tree can just roll his face across his life bloom buttons and keep everyone alive.

[slog]

Steps to getting 1800 in 2v2

1) spec resto on your druid
2) find a warrior that doesn't suck
3) spam lifebloom, dispel poisons, run away and drink in Arena matches.  Don't forget to shapeshift if you get targeted
4) Endlessly cyclone  if your warrior needs help

[Paelos]

Steps to getting 1800 in 2v2

1) spec resto on your druid
2) find a warrior that doesn't suck
3) spam lifebloom, dispel poisons, run away and drink in Arena matches.  Don't forget to shapeshift if you get targeted
4) Endlessly cyclone  if your warrior needs help

This pretty much works in 3v3 as well. Both the winning teams in the final matches had a druid and a warrior on the team.

[TheWall]

Sounds like I won't be seeing 1800 in the arena with my friends then. We have no warriors in our guild. You said spam lifebloom. If I overlay the previous lifebloom with a new one does that act to dispell it and give its big heal? Sorry if this is a noob question, but I am still a noob to healing.

[slog]

Sounds like I won't be seeing 1800 in the arena with my friends then. We have no warriors in our guild. You said spam lifebloom. If I overlay the previous lifebloom with a new one does that act to dispell it and give its big heal? Sorry if this is a noob question, but I am still a noob to healing.

it stacks up to 3 times (LOL).

If you can't find a warrior, a rogue will due.

[Merusk]

Yeah, the HoT stacking combined with the ridiculous amount of mana efficiency on lifebloom is just retarded.   That change was made back in the 40-man days so there's no excuse for not understanding (on Blizz's part) why it's so awesome in pvp.

[Ingmar]

If you keep stacking it, you will never see the final bloom happen. (That's ok.) My druid with ~1800 +heal unbuffed has a 3 stack of lifebloom ticking somewhere in the 700s with full raid buffs, so it can be really effective, although warriors will cause some issues as always with mortal strike.

[slog]

If you keep stacking it, you will never see the final bloom happen. (That's ok.) My druid with ~1800 +heal unbuffed has a 3 stack of lifebloom ticking somewhere in the 700s with full raid buffs, so it can be really effective, although warriors will cause some issues as always with mortal strike.

In PvP, its even better.  When it gets dispelled, it goes off.  Just stack it up again.  don't forget to run behind a pilllar and drink

[ajax34i]

Just based off experience, I've found most trees to be suboptimal heroic healers.  This is, however, may be just due to luck of the draw/player skill.

Played a priest and a druid, and 5-man was a lot easier as a priest than as a druid, for me.  There's a lot of reactionary healing needed in 5-man, especially if the group sucks, and most groups aren't used to staying at 75% health (and not dropping); they expect to see health bars jumping up and hitting full every time they take damage.  IMO a druid really needs the NS + Healing Touch combo to be able to function in 5-mans, because you can get the HOTs going, but very often you need to land an instant big heal on some idiot who's not doing what he's s'posed to.

[kaid]

I got into the wotlk beta and that kind of hybrid build works a LOT better now given how the spell power stat works. Hell my pure boomkin can heal pretty darn good now and could probably heal through most heroics as is. Right now the dreamstate build works fine but as others have said it takes a bit more gearing up to do it.

[kaid]

Oh I forgot to mention if you are pvping you should almost never apply more than one life bloom at a time. You want it to be blooming as fast as possible and if somebody is stupid enough to dispel it you can heal people very rapidly using this trick. In pvp its a lot hugging pillars and throwing single lifeblooms and rejuves with some regrowths as time permits while also throwing cyclones when possible.

A well speced resto druid is damn near impossible to actually kill and mana burning does limited good because lifebloom costs almost nothing to cast so you can heal very effectivly even with no mana.

[TheWall]

Tried my first 5 man games last night. I was the only healer. We had 3 hunters, a rogue, and I. We went 7/10. I was dead early a lot. Of course I only have about 7000 health right now. Still working on gear.

[Nebu]

What setup gave you the most trouble?  Or should I ask if opponent quality was more a factor than setup?

[TheWall]

We had the most trouble with teams that had 2 healers. Admittedly we were doing a poor job of keeping them CCd. But we are playing at the sub 1400 level. So I really don't know that any of the teams we played were quality to speak of. I seemed to live longer when I was patient and stayed in stealth till the last minute rather than trying to dps a bit early on.

[Merusk]

Yeah the 1400 teams are awful, but have probably been doing Arenas since at least S2.  They'll have more HPs and Resil than you, and probably a fair bit of Merciless, Vengeful and perhaps even a Brutal gladiator piece.  Even at ~1400 they probably hit 9khps and 210 resil without hurting their damage output much. 

Just try not to get frustrated with the losing and have fun. I have to keep telling myself that as well, since I started an Arena team with the wife for her 'welfare epix.'  Lock/ Mage gets wtfpwnd very quick when the mage only has 90resil and 6k hps to go with 400 spelldam. 

[Nonentity]

Playing lower rated teams is always the fun part of starting a new arena season! 

Then again, having 12k HP unbuffed with 375 resil with 90% season 3 gear (everything except shoulders, including weapon) lets me stomp around on people.

[TheWall]

Was that sort of like saying, "Look how rich I am, I'll crush you with my wallet?"

Heh heh, either way, its nice to know that some day I'll be doing well. Probably not before the WOTLK gear reset though.

[Nonentity]

Was that sort of like saying, "Look how rich I am, I'll crush you with my wallet?"

Heh heh, either way, its nice to know that some day I'll be doing well. Probably not before the WOTLK gear reset though.

Kinda, yeah - with absolutely terribly geared people, I can just kind of roll my face on the keyboard and still beat them.

For people who have done any decent amount of honor grinding, though, they can still have good gear and be competitive.

[TheWall]

Two weeks into my new druid and I've only managed to pick up the S2 healing mace and the S3 bracers. I'm working on the S4 belt right now. In two weeks we have managed to win less than half of all our 5v5 arena matches and have ended up around 1340 or so rating. I tried to do 3v3 and 2v2 but I get killed so fast that my partner has no chance. I try to kite, but I can usually not survive the 2nd stun. I'm hoping it gets better soon. I really didn't think the teams in the 1300s would be so much better geared than I am.

[Fordel]

It's the fundamental flaw with WoW's pvp system currently. You have to maintain a substantial gear grind, to even keep the status quo, let alone compete or move ahead.

[Shrike]

If you're in the Arena with less than full S2 gear you're in for a very rough ride. You really should have over 400 resil or you'll find yourself in a world of hurt.

Advice: do BGs for a full set of S2, then transition to the Arena. The S2 stuff is pretty good and should be considered a baseline for arena play.

[TheWall]

I'm basically doing that. But I figure why let the weeks go by without at least getting some welfare arena points. I mean even with losses in 5s, I'll be able to pick up the S4 gloves in another week of play.

[Dren]

I'm basically doing that. But I figure why let the weeks go by without at least getting some welfare arena points. I mean even with losses in 5s, I'll be able to pick up the S4 gloves in another week of play.

That's what I did.  Just be resilient to losing a lot.  Hell, I learned a ton just by losing all the time.  Once in a while you can actually out strategize a team.  Those are the best wins, in my opinion.

[Ingmar]

The entire pvp gear system is basically built on a failed model.

Let's see, we've got Team A, who is made of up extremely skilled players, and Team B, who is made up of average players. Put them on a level playing field, and Team A will win most of their games against Team B. Now let's reward them by giving them a giant gear advantage (and yes, in the aggregate, the difference between full season 4 and say full season 2 with a few pieces of 3, which is the best B will aspire to, is pretty huge.) Genius!

[Dren]

The entire pvp gear system is basically built on a failed model.

Let's see, we've got Team A, who is made of up extremely skilled players, and Team B, who is made up of average players. Put them on a level playing field, and Team A will win most of their games against Team B. Now let's reward them by giving them a giant gear advantage (and yes, in the aggregate, the difference between full season 4 and say full season 2 with a few pieces of 3, which is the best B will aspire to, is pretty huge.) Genius!

You forget that Team B is also able to build their gear up too.  At some point their inability to get better on their own merits will limit them though.  Without some system of allowing the mediocre to continue to get rewards, you'll just end up with a very small number of elite players that would win regardless of gear or not.  That kind of system doesn't play well to the masses, screwed up system or not.

[Ingmar]

The entire pvp gear system is basically built on a failed model.

Let's see, we've got Team A, who is made of up extremely skilled players, and Team B, who is made up of average players. Put them on a level playing field, and Team A will win most of their games against Team B. Now let's reward them by giving them a giant gear advantage (and yes, in the aggregate, the difference between full season 4 and say full season 2 with a few pieces of 3, which is the best B will aspire to, is pretty huge.) Genius!

You forget that Team B is also able to build their gear up too.  At some point their inability to get better on their own merits will limit them though.  Without some system of allowing the mediocre to continue to get rewards, you'll just end up with a very small number of elite players that would win regardless of gear or not.  That kind of system doesn't play well to the masses, screwed up system or not.

I mentioned it actually. Team B can't get their gear as high as Team A, because the best gear has rating restrictions on it.

[K9]

I have to say, there are a LOT more low-ranked teams this season than previously, and far fewer people around with S4 weapons and shoulders. So I guess they got some of the win-trading and team boosting/remaking issues straightened out. Now I think they just need to re-evaluate the ratings requirements. They can't use this system when people hit 80 in wotlk because the powergamers will get an insurmountable lead.