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Druid Talents (WoW)  

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Druid Tank Talent Analysis

Hello, this is not a comprehensive guide to Druid talents. It only focuses on talents relevant to Druid tanking and Off Tanking roles. Cat form DPS will not be anything more than a minor factor in the logic and reasoning behind this analysis. We will start with Balance, then move on to Restoration then the goodness of the Feral Tree.

Balance Tree

First Tier

Nature's Grasp

This is a one point talent that seems pretty good. It grants a percent chance, starts at 35% improvable with more points, to cast Roots on attackers. While this seems to be a good thing and is most all instances are indoors so the talent wont proc, ever. So from a tanking point of view this talent is a waste of points.

Analysis

Well that sums up the Balance tree for tanks. You can pretty much avoid it if you are focusing on the tank aspects of the class. While Natures Grasp does have a lot of use for PvP and even solo play for the purposes of tanking it can and should be avoided.

Restoration Tree

First Tier

Furor

This 5 point talent gives you a 20% chance per point to have 10 rage when you shift into bear form or 40 energy for cat form. This is an awesome talent. Having that 10 rage can with other talents give you the rage to Maul or coupled with Enrage enough to Mangle to start a pull. This is a strong tanking talent, for both main and off tanks.

Improved Mark of the Wild

This talent will improve you Mark of the Wild buff by 7% per point. This ends up being an extra 159 Armor, 8.75 all Resistances and 4.9 to all stats at level 70 with a 5 point investment. For the points you spend it is not worth it as the points are needed elsewhere. The strength of this buff is weak compared to many others. Avoid taking this talent.

Second Tier

Naturalist

This talent increase physical damage by 2% per point up to 5 points. This will result in a 10% damage increase to all bear and cat attacks. This should excite you and you should spend the full 5 points here. More damage is always welcome.

Nature's Focus

This talent helps prevent interruption for some healing spells. You are tanking not healing so skip and save points.

Natural Shapeshifter

Reduces mana spent changing forms by 10% per point up to a 30% reduction at max points. As the shapeshift spells into bear and cat forms both cost 35% of your personal maximum mana I will assume a mana pool of 4310 in full tank gear. This gives a cost of 1055 compared to 1508 without the talent. That is a good amount of mana especially since bears have very small mana pools. This talent is useful but finding room for the points can be a challenge. I will definitely give this a stronger recommendation to off tanks who are more likely to be shifting forms more often. A good talent but not essential to a bear tanking spec.

Third Tier

Intensity

Gives you an extra 4/7/10 rage [1]instantly[2] when popping Enrage. This makes Enrage give more rage and faster rage. A very strong bear talent but again not considered essential to tanking. More a matter of preference and point availability. That being said once you have it you get used to it and switching back to not having it will seem painful.

Subtlety

Spells threat reduction and dispel resistance. Avoid this one as well. You are in feral form melee attacking not casting spells. Save it for the trees and chickens.

Omen of Clarity

This is the reason we go into the Restoration Tree. Has a proc chance on melee attacks that causes your next ability that costs mana, energy or rage to be free. Take this talent. It helps and adds greatly to our TPS. Helps in both bear and cat forms. The free attack is great especially if it crits as that will proc other feral talents giving you more rage. More rage is good, you want more rage. So take this talent.

Fourth Tier

From this point on there is nothing really valid to help a tanking role; whether it be main or off tanking.

Analysis

The Restoration Tree has far more tanky goodness than the Balance Tree. The Furor(5/5) will help you to start pulls with rage. Naturalist(5/5) will help your TPS by increasing physical damage, always a good thing. The increased rage given by Furor will only further complimented by Intensity(3/3) by pumping up the amount of rage you gain from Enrage. The Omen of Clarity(1/1) is great also as it allows for rage free attacks, typically Maul as it is a rage burner.

The essentials of the Restoration Tree are 5/5 Furor 5/5 Naturalist and 1/1 Omen of Clarity. Intensity and Natural Shifter are good but non-essential talents so we will keep them in mind as we continue. So we have now spent 11 points out of our 61. Now we get to the meat of tanking talents. They are of course found in the Feral Tree.

Feral Tree

First Tier

Second Tier

Third Tier

Fifth Tier

Sixth Tier

Seventh Tier

Eighth Tier

Ninth Tier

Analysis

This page last modified 2008-06-04 15:32:31.