How to Fix Feral Druids in Rated BGs

I know a lot of the PvP feral druids have complained about their state in Rated BGs.  In 4.0.6, they lost the ability to shapeshift out of snares.  In 4.1, they are nerfing Lifebloom, one of the few healing spells that feral druids can use that was somewhat helpful.  They used to be the ideal flag carriers due to the fact that they had travel form, which could help them move across the map quicker, and bear form, to help mitigate damage by increasing their stamina and armor.  However, they have been religated to about 4th line, behind protection warriors, protection paladins, and blood death knights.

So looking at, there could be some ways to save the Feral Druid in rated BGs.  Here are a few non-game breaking things that could be done to fix it.  I'm not suggesting do all of these, because that would break the game.  I'm saying maybe do one or two of them.

1) Make Shapeshift Useful Again - This used to be their biggest advantage.  Even as a moonkin, I routinely practice changing in and out of moonkin form to break snares.  (Mainly because I still can.) Giving them this back would give the advantage needed for them to become competent flag carriers again.

2) Kitty Heroic Leap - While a giant bear jumping the distance that a warrior can is absolutely ridiculous, the idea that a cat could do it is much less so.  Feral kitties already get Feral Charge, which is basically a jump behind an opponent, just use the same animation for heroic kitty leap. 

3) Fear - This is likely not gonna happen, but couldn't a bear have a roar that scares everybody off of him for a few seconds.  I don't think it is completely unreasonable to have.  Call it Terrifying Roar and make all enemies fear for 8 seconds.

4) Nerf Lifebloom Only For Casters - In other words, the game can already recognize if you have spellpower gear on and what your spellpower is.  Make it that if your total spellpower is above 6500, your Lifebloom is nerfed appropriately. Again, very unlikely to happen, but would give some benefit.

5) Make Barkskin Protect From CC. - Barskin is the ability that decreases the amount of damage you take.  Why not have the added benefit to have it free you out of snares, traps, etc. for its 8 second duration?  Paladins have Hand of Freedom, which removes movement impairing effects.  It would act very similarly to that but would also have the damage mitigation.  Either that, or make it a glyph that would decrease the amount of mitigation, but give you the CC protection.  Heck, if they make it a glyph, I would consider getting it for my moonkin/resto.

I'm sure there are other ways to get bears back up to the flag carrying positions they have held prior to 4.0.6.  I'm also sure that Blizzard is working on a way to balance it out so that all the tank classes can be reasonable flag carriers in rated BGs.  Hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Resto Druid PvP - The Major Gear Question

Just wait and see how much you will be freaked out when it turns back into a person or a dog.

Yes, this old moonkin has decided to try out being a resto druid in PvP for a bit.  My main spec is still moonkin.  However, the PvP gear does not have any hit on it which makes it nice to also use it for resto druid spec for PvP.

I have said mutliple times that the balance 4 set PvP bonus is incredible and every moonkin should have it if you are PvPing.  However, if you are building a resto set, should you go for the 4 piece bonus or get the additional resilience?

 My suggestion is to go 2 and 3 on the resto PvP set with the balance set in order to get the 400 additional resilience. (Note:  This will hold true until 4.1 at least.  With the resilience change, this answer may or may not change.)

Let us take a quick look at the restoration 4 piece set bonuses.  The 4 piece set restoration bonus  for PvP is:

4 Piece: Reduces the Cooldown on your Swiftmend ability by 2 seconds.

4 Piece: Increases Intellect by 180.

Swiftmend is currently on a 15 second cooldown.  It also should be glyphed anyway so that you can keep HoTs up while using Swiftmend.  In addition, if you have talented into Efforvesence, which I have, then you have another HoT being used.   The difference between 13 seconds and 15 seconds is neglibile if I'm not alive though.

As for the 2 piece + 400 resilience bonus for the restoration set, it decreases damage by 6.87% going from a full resto set to breaking it up between 2 restoration and 3 piece balance set or vice versa.  6.87% is alot of damage mitigation.  If someone hits you for a 30k hit in the 4 piece restoration set, you will decrease the hit to 28k hit with a 2 and 3 setup.  The 2k difference could be the difference between saving yourself or a flag carrier and dieing.

So, the next question is if you are like me and have the full balance PvP set, what two pieces of restoration gear do you pick up for honor.  Looking at the difference betwen balance and restoration, here are the importance of stats as of right now.

  Moonkin: Spirit (to 5% hit cap) > Hit (to 5% hit cap) > Intellect > Haste > Resilience > Critical Strike > Mastery

Restoration: Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Resilience > Mastery > Critical Strike

Some explanation.  In the moonkin order of importance, spirit is only useful to the PvP hit cap (which is 5%).  Hit can be used but none of the PvP gear for moonkins I have seen has hit on it anyway.  Then as a DPS, you want the things that will increase your DPS, mainly intellect and haste.  From there, you want to stay alive, so you get resilience (although you would never gem for resilience anyway).  From there, critical strike rating and mastery.  However, for healers, this changes up slightly.  The purpose of the healers is to stay alive and to keep their target alive.  To keep their people alive, you need the strongest heals you can get.  You will get this from Intellect, Spirit, and Haste.  Spirit also helps with in combat mana restoration.  From there, resilience is the next most important stat in order to keep yourself alive.  Again, I wouldn't gem or enchant for resilience, but you can if you want.  From there, mastery and critical strike rating with mastery being ahead of critical strike for restoration.

Since spirit is the second most valuable stat to a restoration PvPers, it should go without saying that you want to pick up the PvP pieces with spirit.  With the spirit PvP set, there are only two pieces with spirit, while the moonkin set has no Spirit on it.  The Bloody/Vicious Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders and Robes (links are for the Vicious set) would be my choice.  Combined, they give you and additional 311 spirit in the Bloody set and 360 with the Vicious set.  In addition, you should have picked up some other gear with spirit already to hit your hit cap as a moonkin so you should have a good amount of spirit.

So, if you are doing both balance and restoration in PvP, you shouldn't have to change up your gear alot.  You may however, want to get the resilience bonus from not going with your 4 piece restoration set by splitting up your moonkin set into a 3 balance and 2 restoration piece set.

Patch 4.1 - Druid and PvP Perspective

Well, 4.1 has finally hit the PTR and combing through the patch notes, there are several intersting things that need to be pointed out related to both druids and PvP.  Here are some of the interesting things I have found so far.

1) Zul'Aman is Back - Ok, I know this has nothing to do with PvP, but Zul'Aman is a druid dream.  Every boss from the 10 man raid during BC had to do with druids.  From the bear boss to the lightning boss, all of them were druid related.  I can't wait to get in there and go crazy.  I mean Zul'Garab is cool, but Zul'Aman was my second raid instance ever cleared.  Of course, I wonder if they are going to kill off Harrison Jones again.

2) DKs get a Battle Rez - I will be honest, I never would have seen this.  First of all, they have had Raise Ally for quite some time, but it made you into a ghoul.  Now, it actually brings you back to life.  It is the first time a melee has a rez (Yes, I know feral druids and enhancement shaman melee, but it is the first time a dedicated melee get it.) and it is only the second class to get a battle rez.  After mages got Time Warp, which was equivalent to Heroism/Bloodlust, I guess we should have seen some class was gonna get a battle rez.  I just thought it might be priest or shaman, I never could have guessed DKs would get it.

3) Resilience Scaling - Now, just reading through what they say about resilience scaling, it could be a little confusing.  What is the reason behind this change?  You know that Blizzard said they wanted to stop people from doing the 2 and 2 on dps/healing caster gear to get the additional resilience.  This is partly an answer to that.  Once you get above 32.5% damage mitigation, the effect decreases.  What does this mean?  Assuming season 10 starts around the time of patch 4.1, we are going to want to get our 4 piece bonuses.  In addition, since our resilience will be higher, we may actually want 1 or 2 PvE pieces to allow for more damage.  For healing classes, they will likely want to stick with full PvP gear however since they tend to get focused a little more than DPS.

4) Cyclone Duration Decreased - In 4.0.6, it increased up to 8 seconds.  Then, they hotfixed it back down to 6 seconds.  Now, they are going to decrease it again down to 5.  I'm not really surprised since cyclone is an incredibly powerful spell, but a lot of other traps last 8 seconds.  There should be some way whether a glyph or something to make it longer for PvP use.

5) Starsurge Nerf - As much as I hate to say it and as much as I love 40k hits on players in full PvP gear, this was needed.  Starsurge was incredibly powerful in PvP, maybe overpowered to be exact.  I mean, it is still 32k hits, but at least it is not half of their health bars.

6) Lifebloom Nerf - Having been playing some resto in PvP as my secondary spec, this was unfortunately  needed as well.  If the bloom critted, it was returning anywhere from 35k to 50k health to a player in PvP.  I have been protecting the flag carrier with 2 of the healers down, had a bloom hit, and the flag carrier stayed alive even while they were focused on him.  Now, if I can just remember not to refresh Lifebloom by stupidly hitting buttons until it blooms.

7) Swipe Cooldown Reduced - I don't tank anymore, but I'm sure I speak for all feral druid tanks when I say, Thank the frickin' Lord.  Having to rotate Swipe and Thrash on almost perfect 3 second intervals is tougher than it looks.

8) Solar Beam More Responsive - My favorite CC tool in BGs just got a little better.  I'm hoping that when the notes say "more responsive", it is if any part of the player is in the Solar Beam, it will silence them.

9) Flag Carrying Debuff Changes - I may have been the only person to do this, but as someone who routinely is on offense trying to get our flag back, I smiled a little when I saw the changes to the flag carrier debuff.  It starts off at increased damage of 10%, then stacks 10% per minute.  Plus, they can't run anymore as they are limited to 100% run speed after 7 minutes.  Yes, even druids and their travel form.

10) Battleground Changes - This BG was typically determined in the first few minutes, but not anymore.  They are setting it up now where you get transported to another graveyard instead of the same graveyard where you die.  This means capturing nodes will be a whole lot easier.  However, this also means that defending nodes will be a lot harder and will take a lot more coordination.  In addition, in Twin Peaks, if you die in the enemy base, you will spawn back at your base.  This will give the defending team some time to breathe and get caught up before another assault comes in against their flag carrier.  This is also likely going to change some strategy since you will want to wipe groups coming in at your flag carrier.  

I know these are preliminary notes and I'm 100% sure there are going to be changes along the way.  However, this should give you some idea of what they are planning for 4.1. 

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Strand of the Ancients

For the third part of my moonkin PvP tricks, I round out the 15 v. 15 battlegrounds with Strand of the Ancients.

1) Strand of the Ancients Isn't About PvP - This is a general rule, but it relates to specifically what we can do as moonkins.  Your focus should very rarely be on players in Strand of the Ancients.  If on defense, your focus should be on killing the demolishers.  If on offense, you should focus on keeping players off of your demolishers.  This means more than nukes, moonkins should be using slowing and controlling players and demolishers.

2) The Moonkin Typhoon Demolisher Weapon - On offense, one of my favorite tricks is to get on a demolisher and turn backwards.  Given the speed of the demolishers, the defense will always be chasing you.  This means the more you can keep them off of you, the better it is.  Typhoon is perfect for this.  The demolisher is shooting forward, I'm typhooning backwards.

3) Entangling Roots + Solar Beam = Control - Melee is fairly easy to keep off of demolishers when you are offense.  You Typhoon plus Entangling Roots and you can keep them controlled.  Casters are a little more difficult.  If you see a caster just destroying your demolishers, you can still Typhoon them for a snare and may push them out of cast range.  However, you can Roots plus Solar Beam to keep them silenced.  And since Roots won't break until damaged, you don't have to damage them and keep them there.

4) Fungal Growth Helps - When you are trying to slow demolishers on defense, you will need all your tools that can slow.  You can roots the demolisher.  Typhoon can add a snare effect.  However, having the talent Fungal Growth helps a lot.  One, you can send your treants on the demolisher and when they go away, they create an area that snares.  Two, you can use your Wild Mushrooms to cause damage and create and area of snares.

5) Remove Corruption - There is a spell that is in your spellbook that you may not use to often, especially as moonkin.  However, if can be used to help your demolishers.  Of course the defense is going to throw up DoTs on the demolishers to kill them.  Remove Corruption can remove a poison and a curse from the demolisher.  It is not as powerful as what resto druids can do since it will also remove magic effects, but  it may be the difference maker.

And with that, we are done with the 15 vs. 15 battlegrounds.  Next week, hopefully I will get to the 10 vs. 10 battlegrounds and the 40 vs. 40 battlegrounds.

Today is the final day for voting for the Header contest.   The winners will be announced over this weekend or Monday.

My First (Real) Arena Experience

This past week, I finally started an arena team as part of the requirements to be on the rated battleground team in Conquest. (Yes, we are recruiting for Legion, our PvE section, and Vanguard, our PvP section.  See site on sidebar for details.)  My 3 vs. 3 team, Poker in the Front, consist of a Holy Pally, Rogue, and myself as moonkin.  We did pretty good the first week going 7 - 6 and when I actually get some noticable resilience gear instead of going off a pseudo-glass cannon principle, I'm sure that will improve even more.  If you are a moonkin looking to get into some arenas, here is some of the things I have learned that will hopefully help you out.

1) Don't Forget You Can Stealth - Some classes don't have this luxury in arenas, but druids can start off a match stealthed.  In fact, two members of my 3 vs. 3 team can stealth, and most teams aren't insane enough to rush a holy pally with two members not showing.  This gives you time to map out your strategy, especially if you know who you are up against.

2) Check Their Buffs - One of the things that I had to pick up pretty quickly is to tell if we had a druid or a rogue we were against since both can stealth.  The easy way to do it besides waiting for them to show is to check their buffs.  If they have Mark of the Wild and no druid showing, it is a druid.  If they don't have Mark of the Wild, it is a rogue.  If everybody starts off a match stealthed, assume it is a 2 rogue, 1 druid comp.

3) Healer First - Our team's first goal in any match was to find out who the healer was.  Not all comps have a healer. (Three feral cat druid team, I hate you with a passion.)  From there, we would either start off sapping the healer or entangling roots and Solar Beam the healer.  If the healer can't heal himself, he is as good as dead.  Once the healer is dead, you have probably about 80% chance of winning the match from there.

4) Protect Your Healer - If I saw people grouping up on my healer, I would do what I could to help out.  That typically means the first thing I would do is Typhoon the other team to get them away.  From there, I can Entangling Roots, Cyclone, etc. to give my healer some time to recover.  Sometimes he can, sometimes he can't, especially if he has DoTs on him.

5) License to Starfall - Starfall is incredible in arenas.  It can damage their entire team at once.  Plus, since it is automatically multiple mobs, you get the 20 star upper limit.  I wouldn't use it to start until you have controlled the healer, but then, bust it out.

6) Heal - Remember as a caster druid, you don't have all the heals that resto druids do, but your heals you do have still hit pretty hard due to your intellect.  Don't be afraid to throw some HoTs on you or your teammates.  Tranquility is also awesome to keep up the team if you are not the focus.

7) Try to Proc an Eclipse - Eclipsed nukes can take anything down relatively quickly.  You are talking upwards of 30k Starfires and 20k Wraths in people with resilience and much more if they don't have any.

8) More Resilience, The Better (To a Point) - Many blog post ago, I mentioned that when choosing between PvE and PvP gear, you will always want to go with PvE gear for PvE content and PvP gear for PvP content.  This holds true 95% of the time.  However, there is a point where you have high resilience, but you have sacrificed damage.  You have to find a balance.  This means that it may be okay to have your resilience set with maybe a weapon that is PvE that is more powerful.  In Wrath, I was using Neiblung as my PvP staff due to the valkyr proc.  I haven't found anything like that in Cataclysm yet, but I'm sure I will find something like it.

9) Have Fun - When first starting arenas,  you are going to lose.  Just count on it.  You will get better over time.  Just like PvE, it takes practice to get your rotation and dynamics down.  The difference is PvP tends to be more jerk reaction.  The quicker you can react, the better.  But it takes time to learn this.

10) Communication Is Key - If you can't be in a Vent or Mumble server with your teammates, down join their team.  The key to arena is constant communication.  The more you communicate, the faster you can react, the more successful you will be.

As I said, these are things that I'm still learning.  I'm not great in arenas by any stretch of the imagination.  But I had fun and I look forward to doing this weekly with my team members.

Just a reminder, please vote for the winner of the Header contest.  We have had 31 voters so far and all of them have gotten votes as the favorite.  If you want to choose what the Header for the blog will be for the rest of Cataclysm, please go and vote.

Getting Started in PvP as a Balance Druid - A Guest Blog by Lufitoom

So, you are a fluffy, feathery Moonkin and you want to start pvp-ing and you aren’t sure where to start.  I completely understand this.  When I went from an unkillable tree in battlegrounds to a Moonkin that seemed to day way too often, I had to rethink my play style and strategies.  With improvements to our survivability and our offensive skills, we are now viable and even dominating in battlegrounds.  I hope that these tips can get you started in the right direction and you find as much fun and satisfaction in melting faces as I do.

I am going to focus more on battlegrounds and world pvp rather than arenas.  Battlegrounds are the best way to get your feet wet and become comfortable with pvp.  They will also allow you to accrue honor and pick up some nifty off pieces that will increase your resilience, spellpower and stamina.  I am a firm believer that different people can excel with different builds and gear but there are some things that work best.

Getting the Right Spec and Glyphs

The first thing I suggest if you are interested in being the best you can in a battleground is to create a pvp spec.  If you are interested in seeing my spec, you can view it at here. There are many variations, however I suggest the following as “must haves” that are not used in pve much or at all:

Brambles:   Put 3 points into this skill.  It increases the damage of your Thorns and Entangling Roots by 75% (you will be amazed at how many Warriors and Rogues kill THEMSELVES on them) and increases the damage caused by your Treants by 15%.  In addition, while you have Barkskin up, the attacks done to you and done by your Treants have a 15% chance to daze the target/attacker.

Owlkin Frenzy:  Attacks done to you have a 15% chance of sending you into a frenzy that not only makes your wings/hands glow a sexy fiery red while you let out a loud Moonkin bellow, but increased your damage by 10%, stops any pushback of balance spells, and returns 2% base mana every two seconds.

Gale Winds:  Some people use this, others say it’s a waste.  I personally love having the extra 4 yards added to my Cyclone range and the 30% extra damage to Typhoon and Hurricane can be extremely handy.

Typhoon:  Some people use this in PvE, others don’t but it is so important in pvp.  The knockback and daze can get you away from a bad situation and also knock enemies away from teammates.  Oh, and let’s not forget the satisfaction of knocking enemies off of high cliffs.

Now on to glyphs.  I have tried almost every combination that you can imagine and when I finally stuck with these three glyphs I saw my damage and survivability increase substantially.  I highly recommend that you give them a whirl even if you “love” the glyphs you have.

Glyph of Focus:  Yes, it reduces the radius of your Starfall by 50% but it does increase the damage by 10%.  Back when Starfall stunned/dazed and broke people out of stealth the large radius in battlegrounds was great.  Now, the increased damage is what you are looking for and this will be one of your biggest and best killers.

Glyph of Starfall:  This reduces the cooldown of your Starfall ability by 30 seconds.  This is HUGE.  Starfall does a ton of damage and being able to use it so much more often will be so important for you in battlegrounds.

Glyph of Monsoon:  You will use your Typhoon spell more than you think and this glyph will reduce the cooldown by three seconds.  Doesn’t sound like much but it really is.

Gearing Up

I highly suggest grinding out at least a full Furious set.  You will need the resilience and the set bonus (Wrath of Elune) gives your Wrath casts the chance to reduce the cast time of your next Starfire by 1.5 seconds.  As for your idol, I suggest using your favorite pve one since the pvp ones are earned in arena and in my opinion, sorely lacking.  I won’t go into any more on gear since most of it is earned and this is just to get you in there and started.  Just remember, have ~6% hit and at the least, 74 spell penetration.

Tips For PvP Play

Now for the fun part.  Getting into the battleground and making the other team cry.  Some of these might make you groan and say “Duh!  I knew that!” but you would be surprised at how many people miss a few of these.

Cyclone, Cyclone, Cyclone!  This ability is so important.  Sure, it will let you get away or stop the damage on you but it does so much more than that.  Save a teammate from a pesky Rogue, stop a healer from healing, stop the hots from ticking on a target, stop another Moonkin’s Starfall, etc etc.  Don’t forget to Cyclone Shadowfeinds.  It stops the Priest from getting any of its benefits.  There are probably a million scenarios where a Cyclone is called for so DON’T BE AFRAID TO USE IT!

Don’t over-extend yourself!  I don’t know if it is our size or what, but we tend to run in like tanks.  You are ranged.  Get close enough for Starfall and to use your spells but STAY RANGED!

Hots and Nourish!  You can heal yourself but your first choice should be to cc the target first.  Cyclone, Entangling Roots, run like Hell.  But don’t forget to heal yourself.

Heal Others!  Battlegrounds are a team sport.  Don’t be stingy with your hots.  They might not be big heals but they might just be a life saver.

Buff the Raid!  It’s pvp.  Don’t just toss a Gift of the Wild before it starts.  Throw Thorns on everyone and their pets.

Be Prepared with Extra Buffs!  If you are world pvping or in battlegrounds, you can’t always depends on a Priest or Pally to be there to buff you.  Buy (or make) Runescrolls of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings.

Flask it Up!  Flasks are relatively cheap and it’s always nice to have the buff from Flask of the Frost Wyrm.

Stop the Mana Burn!  Priests will be one of the most (if not the most) annoying adversaries.  Shapeshift to Bear or Cat when you are getting mana burnt.

Warstomp and Shadowmeld.  Don’t forget you have one of these abilities.  If you are Tauren, warstomp to stun and get away/ranged.  Night Elves, this is so handy in situation like when you are versus a Mage.  Arcane Barrage?  Shadowmeld!

Abolish Poison/Decurse!  Do it.  To yourself, to your teammates.

Starfall!  Do it well and do it often.  Single target, multiple targets. 

Innervate!  I usually innervate at about 30%  Any lower and it causes mana problems for long fights.

Pvping as a Moonkin is a blast.  You will learn your own tricks as time goes on but this should get you in there and causing your enemies to drop dead around you.

Oh, and don’t forget to /dance every now and then.  It’s what we do!

You can find Lufitoom at www.lufitoom.com.