V. Tree druid is for heal
Life as the forest Damage dealing and tanking are fun and all but you want to heal. Be the one keeping everyone else alive when they step in the fire or get hit by the big scary mobs.
Restoration is the druid's healing tree. The tree part is very apt as you do eventually gain the ability to shift into
Tree form which greatly increases your healing powers and does make you look like a giant tree. You can still cast nukes but they are not really nukes more like small bombs. The spell power on your gear helps boost them enough to survive in the field. Plus if mobs attack you can simply heal through it with ease.
The tree requires similar stats to a Moonkin but different priorities. What are they you ask. Let's find out.
Tree Stats Trees love spirit, it is the traditional tree stat. It increase mana regeneration and healing power. Several talents in the tree help with boosting spirit to be as potent for restos. However recent changes to mana regeneration and
Innervate have made it less desirable than it has been in the past. Spirit is still good but it no longer the holy grail of stats for a tree druid.
Intelligence is also rather important as it help increase the size of your mana pool and gives some crit as well. Heals can crit by the way. Spell power is the sap that makes your spells heal for so much.
For many levels these will be the stats you get on gear. Then when you go Outland things start to open up. Now you can acquire haste, crit and more significant amount of mp5. All of them are good for you. Mp5 is a better than spirit for mana regen but spirit also increase SP so is generally preferred unless you are having mana issues. The crit rating will help increase the chance of your direct heals criting, always a good thing but never a prority. Haste lets you cast more spells faster it also can lower the GCD from 1.5s to 1s. Haste is an excellent throughput stat until the soft cap is reached.
Hit is not a tree stat. But I would recommend saving some hit pieces on hand for questing. Read up on the Moonkin leveling section for some ideas and pointers on how to nuke mobs down with a limited ********
How to keep people alive Healing is a cross between prophesying the future and playing whack-a-mole. You have a good amount of direct heals and HoTs to heal your allies plus some cooldowns to blow when things get rocky.
We can start with the basic HoTs, these are
Rejuvenation (level 4),
Regrowth (level 12),
Wild Growth (talented level 60) and
Lifebloom (level 64). The druid class has more HoTs than any other healing class. Two of them are instant cast and one is HoT after a direct heal.
Rolling HoTs is great way to keep people topped off and help prevent slow but steady damage. Lifebloom used to be the king but recent changes have made it too mana intensive to roll on everyone. Plus the bloom gives a nice direct heal and returns mana. Rejuv is cheaper and still decent healing. Regrowth is a great spell as it can and will often crit and also puts a HoT on the target. If only it was an instant... Wild Growth is a fantastic group HoT, great for when everyone is taking damage but the tank still needs to be the focus.
Rolling HoTs doesn't always work both because sometimes people need more healing and it can be mana intensive as well. Going Out of Mana (OoM) is never a good thing. This bring us to the rest of the direct heals. We all ready know about Regrowth but that is not the end of the story. We also have
Healing Touch (level 1) and
Nourish (level 80). Healing Touch (HT) is not really used that much. Well it is but in conjunction with another ability we haven't discussed. Nourish is a wonderful spell that is fast and cheap. Nourish gets more effective with HoTs rolling on a target and can be made even better with glyphs.
Other nifty tricks hidden in your leaves are
Cure Poison (quested level 14),
Remove Curse (level 24),
Abolish Poison (level 26),
Tranquility (level 30),
Nature's Swiftness (talented level 30) and
Swiftmend (talented level 40). Plus we all ready know about Revive, B-rez, Barkskin and MotW from prior sections.
Now you are confused, overwhelmed by this mass ******* of healing ability.
Don't be it is quite simple. You have a vast amount of heals but don't need to use many of them. You can usually just HoT up people that take splash damage and roll HoTs on a tank with some direct heals to keep them alive.
The style of healing is influenced by the choice of glyphs. Otherwise it is basically hots with some direct heals. Usually Nourish or Regrowth with the emphasis between the two based on glyph selection. The tree and glyphs can support a wonky HT based healing style that basically turns you into a treeadin (Tree Paladin). It gives you an extremely fast heal but takes a lot of talents points away from other useful abilities, leaving your other spells weaker. In most circumstances it isn't worth it use this spec.
The nifty trick with HT is to use it injunction with Nature's Swiftness. Pop NS then HT equals a really big heal instantly. You should honestly macro this as it is a very good panic button. The other panic button is Swiftmend, when
glyphed this spell becomes even more efficient.
I don't get HoTs please explain HoTs are very simple and efficient spells yet the mechanics are not as direct as well direct heals. A direct heal can be instantly measure to see how much effective versus over-healing was done. HoT are very easily healed over. You could have a few HoTs on some DPS that took damage and another healer can easily cast a heal on that person turning all of the HoT's healing into overheal. The bloom aspect of Lifebloom can easily have this issue as well.
This doesn't mean don't throw HoTs. They provide a very steady level of healing. They are great for steady consistent damage. On both the tanks and everyone else.
Also 2 of the main direct heals benefit in some way from HoTs. Nourish gains power when HoTs are on the target, even more so when
glyphed . Same thing with
glyphed Regrowth . As you can see Nourish, a fantastic raid heal spell do to its low cast time, greatly benefits from HoTs. Regrowth and HoTs can make for strong tank healing.
HoTs are a very strong source of healing and are what trees are know for. They are the basis of your healing ******** Knowing how many HoTs to throw around, how many if any LBs to stack and the glory of Wild Growth are all parts of what make tree druids highly valued healers.
Gear, but Trees are naked right? Yes, but we still wear leather. The gear used by trees tends to be heavy on Spirit and Spell Power. Other good stats to watch for are haste and crit. Intelligence is also quite nice as a large mana pool means longer sustained healing and a better benefit from replenishment effects, more on that in a bit. Mp5 will also be on some gear. The comparative value of Mp5 to Spirit is a fine line. While technically Mp5 gives more mana regen, Spirit provides the additional Spell Power thanks to our Tree form. Which stat is better for you will depend on whether or not you are having mana problems and the size of your mana pool.
When trying to boost longevity go for Mp5 then Intellect then Spirit. If trying to increase throughput go Spellpower, haste until the soft cap followed by Spirit, crit rating and Intellect. There is no wrong way to gear as long as you keep everyone alive and not running out of mana.
Which stats are better for boosting HpS will depend both on your build and the spells you use the most. Raw Spellpower favors HoT and haste for direct heals. However the difference isn't very large. In fact many druids prioritize haste until the softcap. As far as crit and Spirit go if the spells used most often can crit then crit wins oherwise Spirit takes the cake.
SP increase efficiency and throughput of heals. Efficiency and throughput? WTF is that? Well I'm glad you asked. Efficiency is the measure of how much bang you get for your mana. Generally is calculated by taking the average heal done and dividing by mana cost to get HpM. That is your efficiency metric. Throughput is about pumping out heals as fast as possible without any care for sustained healing, ie going OoM is not an issue. Throughput is determined by taking average heal and dividing by cast time or in the case of HoTs the duration of the heal + cast time, this give HpS. That is the general overview we can talk a bit more about this and how the other stats effect it after we cover some other basics.
Balancing healing for different situations As a tree you can heal both the tank or the raid. Either way throwing HoTs on the tank(s) to help smooth out periodic damage is always helpful.
Tank healing involves just rolling HoTs, timing the blooms of LB and casting direct heals, typically Nourish and Regrowth. A typical strategy is to keep up Rejuvination, Regrowth, and Lifebloom on the MT, while casting Nourish anytime you aren’t refreshing a HoT. The NS+HS macro will still be use to combat spike damage as will Swiftmend. Timing the LB bloom heal can be used to great effect as well, plus letting it bloom will make you not oom,
lawl I made a funny. Seriously though, LB can be allowed to bloom for a big heal and the sexy mana return or rolled constantly for increased HpS.
Pro tip: Try and cast Lb with OoC procs for FREE MANA. Raid healing is where trees really shine. Raid healing is all about keeping people topped off and HoTs do that job wonderfully. Rolling HoTS on numerous people, numerous instant cast spells, hitting WG to AoE heal and the quickness of Nourish make for efficient and fast raid healing. The bulk of your tree spells being instant cast doesn't hurt either. LB can be used strategically with great effectiveness if you know where is going to land in a few seconds in advance. Pretty sweet, I know. Don't hesitate to cast it if you have extra time and see bad things coming on the horizon. It is very costly to stack but the bloom refunds a good chunk of mana as long as you let it bloom the mana issue doesn't get that nasty. Rejuvenation starts to get real sexy when some of the tier bonuses get involved. I'm talkin instant heals, crits and other insanity.
In In 25 man raids the highest HpS rotation is Rejuvenation x 5 then Wild Growth, and repeat; with Swiftmend used for the emergency top off. Most 25s will run with 2 druids, who can effectively cover the entire raid with HoTs. In general deviating from a RJ x 5 + WG rotation will cause your HPS to drop, but may be necessary to save a raid member. This is an important consideration in 25-mans; if you react too often to damage spikes your HoTs will fall off, and other raid members may enter the danger zone, compounding your problems. Think of a druid’s job as giving the other healers extra time to react to changing circumstances, by cushioning the damage with your HoTs. This can go for the tanks as well, druids may be asked to stack HoTs on the tank in addition to handling the general raid healing.
If you are lacking a set bonus for Rejuvenation, you may very well find Regrowth more beneficial to maximizing your HPS then RJ. However mana problems may come from using Regrowth as your main heal, so caution is advised when using a RG heavy rotation. Wild Growth, Rejuvination, and Swiftmend are usually the glyphs of choice in 25s; though Rapid Rejuvenation may be substituted occasionally depending on the encounter. As you may have guessed, you’d substitute the Regrowth glyph for the Rejuvenation one if you choose to use RG over RJ.
In 10-mans you will often find yourself using more of your healing spells. In general other healers have spells more suited to handling damage spikes; however in a 10-man, unlike in most 25s, you may have to address these damage spikes yourself. Especially if you are only running with 2 healers, and/or find yourself OT healing. You can still get a lot of output from a RJ x 5 + WG rotation, however you may rarely find yourself using it.
When addressing damage spikes Swiftmend is still the preferred option. However Regrowth and Nourish will likely be used more in 10 mans. Which one is better is circumstantial. Regrowth won’t cause your raid-wide output to drop as much as Nourish, if the HoT portion of the spell is reasonably well utilized. Also the RG HoT is Swiftmendable and has a lengthy duration, which is great if the target’s health drops again in the future. However Nourish will have the better single-target HpS, meaning more healing on the target right now. It also has a shorter cast time. A reasonable strategy would be to use Nourish in more critical circumstances and Regrowth when the individual isn’t in danger of dying. You may also find yourself using Tranquility more often in 10s, as healing half the raid for a large amount is just pure win.
Quite a large number of different glyphs are used in 10 man raid healing. Swiftmend, Wild Growth, and Rejuvenation are still strong choices. Nourish is recommended if you find yourself OT healing or running with 2 healers a lot. Rapid Rejuvination shines much brighter in 10 mans then in 25s, and is fast becoming one of the most popular choices. The Regrowth glyph is also good for the reasons listed in the 25 man section.
In 5 man encounters, your healing strategy can change a little bit. Rejuvenation isn’t really the great healing spell it is when raiding, because the number of targets is limited (it’s called 5 man for a reason ya?) and keeping the tank alive can make you feel like more of a MT-only healer at times. Regrowth and Nourish will often make up a lot more of the effective healing. Also Tranquility is golden here. In general, HoTs to cushion, direct heals for damage spikes.
As stated in the bear section glyphs are cheap, don't hesitate to carry around a handful to adjust to the situation. Especially when changing from a 25 man to a 10 to a 5 man role. Glyphs make the spells you cast the most better and the spells you cast can differ based on what you are doing.
Regardless of your healing assignment there is one more very important detail. You should be decursing and abolishing poison. Don't question it just do it as quite often it is more important than actually healing.
Trees are Talented people Raiding healing is a druid's strong suit. Trees can tank heal but they shine at raid healing. A
strong base spec skips all the HT talents and focuses on HoTs. Being mobile while healing is one of the reasons why druids excel at raid healing.
The remaining talents are more of a personal choice. Let's discuss them now and learn a bit about how druids heal at the same time.
Naturalist is probably the worst choice unless you glyph HT and do a lot of tank healing, even then it's still kind of meh.
Improved Tranquility is awesome in 5-mans, useful in 10-mans, and almost worthless in 25-mans. If you find yourself healing a lot of 5s and 10s it can be worth the 2 points, if not then it’s best to skip it. Mainly due to people being more spread out and the likely hood of 4 group members being near is lower.
Empowered Touch can be a good use of talent points if you find yourself using Nourish often mainly as tank healing in 10 mans, etc. Not a ‘must have’ but certainly high on the list.
Living Seed has great synergy with Empowered Touch,when tank healing. The stronger hits from Nourish will leave bigger seeds. Good return on investment, the bloom will often account for 3-6% of your heals in 10-mans. If you get all nutty with Regrowth spam the talent can also be fairly sexy.
Improved Barkskin is in general more for folks that PvP. Not a traditional healing talent, but it is still found in many end-game builds due to its damage mitigation. However, if you aren’t doing hard modes you probably won’t be taking this.
Gift of the Earthmother is a great talent, you’ll likely want 5 talent points here to start. However, as you build haste up on your gear it becomes less effective. Once you go over the soft cap on your HoTs and Nourish you can consider taking points out of it, and putting them elsewhere. At that point it can be scaled back to 4/5 or 3/5 depending on the amount of haste on your gear and spell rotation.
Nature’s Grace in the Balance tree can be useful depending on how often you use Nourish it can be either a nice HPS boost, or nearly worthless. It is a common talent, especially if you are interested in getting Celestial Focus.
Celestial Focus is usually worth it if you are short of the haste soft-cap. But it is quite deep into the Balance Tree, and will likely be dropped once you get some better gear with haste on it.
Revitalize is a nifty talent. The above mentioned raid healing build puts 3 points here. This is mainly because as a pure raid healer 95% or more of your healing will likely be due to Rejuv and WG. The mana restoration numbers due to Revitalize can’t compare to Replenishment, but Revitalize also restores energy, runic power, and rage. This makes it a very attractive talent if you are keeping Rejuv rolling on every raid member.
Tranquil Spirit again another talent which is very useful if you find yourself using Nourish a lot. More useful for 10 mans and heroics. If Nourish is a large percentage of your heals, and you are running out of mana, maxing out the talent points here can help a bit.
Glyph wise,
Wild Growth is the closest thing to a ‘must have’ glyph, and even then it’s not useful in all situations, especially any case where the raid needs to spread out to avoid chain-damage.
Rejuvenation and
Swiftmend two more good choices if you are a pure raid healer.
Innervate is nice if you need mana, and
Nourish can be helpful if you get called on to tank heal from time to time. Of course most glyphs are cheap so you can just carry them around and change them up on the fly, if you want to of course.
Tank heaing is a different animal all together. You still use HoTs but are also blasting away with your spells with cast times. This changes the
base talent spec around.
Typically Tranquil Spirit will be filled up or you will stab down Balance for Celestial Focus for the haste. It is really not a druid's strongest spec but is easily doable.
A far as glyphs are concerned
Nourish is the ‘must have’ for MT healing.
Regrowth and
Rejuvenationcan increase your healing output, and
Swiftmend is a solid choice. If you are having mana problems consider swapping in
Innervate and
Lifebloom as well.
Mana Management 102 Mana regeneration is very important. No mana equals dead people. That is not the desired outcome for a healer. So trees need some measure of incoming mana while they heal. This comes from a few sources,
Replenishment effects,
Intensity and Mp5. You will have Intensity in your spec so that is some regen right there. The gear you wear will also either have Spirit to boost Intensity or Mp5 on it. Replenishment is just about guaranteed in a 25 man raid but 10 mans and 5 mans it is not a sure thing.
As far as which stat will give you the most mana, Mp5 is generally considered better then Intellect, which is slightly better than Spirit, inside of the 5-second rule. Outside of 5 seconds the mana regen from Spirit is much more attractive. However in most PvE healing situations you’ll be casting nearly every GCD and will spend little time outside of 5-seconds; unless you out-gear the content.
But Druidsock, isn't Spirit an awesome druid stat?
The short answer: yes and no.
The long answer: before the changes to Innervate, spirit was a great mana-regen stat. But once the spell was changed to work off your mana pool instead of your mana regeneration rate outside of 5-seconds, intellect suddenly became a more attractive option.
These days (patch 3.2ish) the amount of mana-regen you get from spirit isn’t equal to what you’d see if you stacked Mp5 and/or Intellect. The big benefit of Spirit comes once you get these 2 talents in the Restoration Tree: Living Spirit and Improved Tree of Life. These talents give Spirit a throughput component. It isn’t that large, but it adds up. For every 100 spirit you have you’ll get about 17-18 spellpower in addition to the mana-regen. Because Spirit increases both your mana regen and the power of your heals; it is a better stat for resto druids then for most other classes. Many resto druids at end-game will weigh intellect and spirit about equally; gearing slightly more spirit if they want to increase their healing power, or slightly more intellect if they want more mana-regen.
Innervate is the Druid’s click-on-demand mana regeneration talent. The spell is on a 3 minute cooldown, and a typical tree can expect to get about half of their total mana restored if they cast it on themselves. The thing that makes this spell different from other classes mana-regen spells is that the druid can also choose to cast Innervate on other party or raid members. If Innervate is Glyphed the spell will a small amount of mana to you if you cast it on another person, and will increase the amount it restores to you if you cast it on yourself.
So who should get my Innervate, me or my friend?
In most circumstances you should use your own innervate. Other classes have their own tools available to help with their mana. They should use those tools and not rely on yours. Think of it this way, that mana-hungry mage might want to use your innervate to increase his DPS, but that DPS will drop way down if he dies after you go OOM. Other druid classes can sometimes be more generous with their Innervate. Kitties can give it away much more freely, boomkins technically can give it away, but may rely on the mana-regen. Bears don’t really need innervate themselves, but will be lucky if they can cast it on another person without a raid boss turning them into something with the consistency of applesauce.
As a healer you have a critical role in keeping the group alive. If you are comfortable with your mana-pool, or find your group desperately racing an enrage timer, feel free to toss someone else your Innervate; but in most circumstances it’s safer for everyone if you keep it for yourself.
• Gearing at end game
Gearing at end-game is complicated. How to gear yourself best is going to come down to what mix of spells you find yourself casting and your role in the group. Norfair of Elitist Jerks summed it up quite nicely:
“People often come here and ask what is best in slot for resto druids. For druids this isn't always very clear since every player has different preferences.â€
With that disclaimer, here are two BiS lists from the same thread:
Pre-Ulduar - link no work
Pre-ToC, ie Ulduar gear As mentioned these lists may or may not be what is actually best for you. In general the lists tend to weigh mana-regeneration slightly above throughput, and assume you are getting a large percentage of your overall healing from your HoTs (usually somewhere from 70-90%). They do, however, list several items based on which stat you may be looking to find. What will be best for your tree depends on your mix of talents, and which spells you cast. Using a Sim or spreadsheet program is highly recommended to get the most out of your healing.
But I don’t have time to figure out a complicated spreadsheet Druidsock! Can you at least point me in the right direction?
Yes most certainly!
As mentioned earlier druid healing is about balancing efficiency and throughput. In other words: you need enough mana to last the fight, and do enough healing to keep everyone alive during that time. Most of the caster leather out there, and much of the cloth as well, will be reasonably well itemized for resto druids; though it’s usually best to pass on items with hit rating. Once you’ve healed some you should be able to get a feel for where you are lacking:
If you find yourself needing more mana: Mp5 > Intellect > Spirit, for solely increasing your mana pool.
If you are finding your healing isn’t strong enough to keep people alive you should ask yourself: which spells am I using most?
If you are mainly using direct healing (more common for tank healing and 5-man content) then haste (up to the soft cap). Then focus on Spellpower while favoring crit over Spirit.
If most of your healing is coming from HoT spells (more typical for 25 man raid healing) then focus on Spellpower and haste up to the soft cap. Then Spirit is prefered to crit unless you are using 4t9 in which case crit over Spirit.
Gemming is pretty straight forward. In most cases you’ll gem for spell power, unless you need the socket bonus or to want to meet the requirements for a meta gem. In that case Spell power/Intellect is preferred for yellow sockets and Spell power/Spirit for blue sockets. The exception is prior to the haste soft cap using Spellpower/haste gems in red and yellow sockets can be preferred. The Insightful Earthsiege diamond also offers a large amount of mana regen (+21 intellect + chance to restore mana on spell cast). It is the preferred meta unless you are very comfortable with your mana situation. If that is the case the Ember Skyflare Diamond (+25 spellpower, +2% intellect) can be a good choice.
Here is
a link explaining the haste soft cap and other useful stat conversions. Enjoy.
Now a quick summary of glyphs: (I lied about the quick part)
Glyph of Lifebloom - Used mostly in a tank-healing build to help with the mana burden, not very useful otherwise.
Glyph of Swiftmend - A great glyph for raid healing or tank healing. If you are casting every GCD you’ll see a solid boost in your HPS with this glyph, if you aren’t you’ll be saving yourself valuable mana.
Glyph of Rebirth - Not a glyph that finds its way into most end-game builds. However a macro’d Glyphed-Rebirth with Nature’s Swiftness is a very powerful tool for saving your group if the tank dies, but one that will likely not be used much.
Glyph of Regrowth - This glyph is still a solid boost to a good healing spell. Regrowth is competitive with Rejuvenation for raid healing if you lack one of the RJ set bonuses. If you find yourself using Regrowth frequently, it will be worth the slot. Also prior to getting Nourish at level 80, this will give you a better ‘big heal,’ especially if you’ve also chosen the Glyph of Healing Touch.
Glyph of Healing Touch - This glyph sees the most use while leveling, as it turns Healing Touch into something akin to the Paladin’s Flash of Light. However once you get Nourish at level 80 most people will drop this glyph. There are builds around that utilize it, mostly because a Glyphed and Talented Healing Touch is the fastest heal available to you. However most will argue you have to give up too much from your build to make it worthwhile, except in special circumstances.
Glyph of Rejuvenation - One of the more common glyphs for both tank and raid healing; it automatically gives a good boost to a frequently used druid healing spell right when you need it most.
Glyph of Innervate - Short on mana? This glyph is one of the best ways to increase your mana pool if you are going OOM before the end of fights.
Glyph of Nourish - If you ever have to do any direct healing, such as MT or OT, this glyph is great, and needed to reach your maximum single target HPS. It’s not as useful if you are strictly raid-heals.
Glyph of Wild Growth - This is a good choice for any raid healer. WG will likely be used every time it comes off of cool down, and healing more people = good! However it is useless in fights where the raid has to spread out, so take it with caution.
Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation - This glyph is new as of patch 3.3. It’s proving very useful in increasing healing in 5-mans and 10-mans. Here the more rapid healing doesn’t adversely affect the number of people you can keep the HoT on. However it is often passed over for 25-mans, and it’s use is more situational. It should be noted the glyph doesn't cause Rejuvenation to heal for more, just heal the same amount faster.
Trees need money? Are you serious? Generic info, Alchemy trinkets, Tailoring, Engineering. JC still overpowered
VI. Moonkin for moon stuff
What the heck is a Moonkin and does it really fire lasers? So, you decided that you're not all about claws and sticks. You'd rather be feathers and lasers, well that was a good choice.
Moonkins are the caster DPS side of the druid talent trees. You can fire lasers, its very true. A few of your spells actually resemble lasers shooting from the sky in all their anger. Moonkin's form is taken from the avatar of owlkins you'll find very early on in Azeroth in quite a few places.
Some of the biggest stats you'll strive for are things like spell power, critical strike rating, haste rating, intellect and spirit. They will become more of an issue as you begin to reach the higher echelon of the levels but at a lower level they're also still important. I'll discuss this further later in the guide.
Now the name Moonkin is derived from a 40 point talent you receive out of the balance tree and once you receive that, much like cat and bear form you will spend a vast majority of your time in that form. You'll eventually catch on with names like... Boomkin, Laser Turkey or Battle Chicken. There are quite a few different names out there for Moonkins but those are at very least the most common.
Since you've decided that you would like to be a Moonkin, or balance druid. I'll get to work on the very first thing you'll want to do. Level.
Can I level this way? The answer at large is yes. Many have done it 1-80 actually. Is it a little bit more time consuming, yes. Will you still enjoy it, probably.
Before we begin about leveling I need to inform you of the stats you'll be looking for on your gear as you level and a quick rotation for killing mobs. At this point in time you'll realize that if you level balance you're going to be drinking a lot because of your limited mana pool.
Until you hit 40, start with
Entangling Roots (level 8), this holds a mob in place and therefor cannot hit you. This is good. You can choose to
Moonfire (level 4) the mob as well. This will place another DoT (damage over time) on the target. From here you can either cast
Wrath (level 1) or
Starfire (level 20). If you are rooting, moonfiring and then wrathing you'll go oom faster than you would casting roots, moonfiring and starfiring. I suggest using the second choice for the sake of your mana pool.
Also I suggest having
Mark of the Wild (level 1) and
Thorns (level 6) up at all times. As Mark progresses in levels it will add more armor, stats and resistances to spells. Thorns will help when mobs attack you as they will receive damage back on every melee hit.
Spell power ultimately is what you will want, because more spell power will increase the damage of your spells, but at this low of a level and until about 58 when you reach Outland you'll find that spell power gear is pretty null and void in old world. So other things will become of value to you. Such as intellect and stamina while leveling. This is why many people will tell you to wait to level as Balance until then but again if you enjoy it then leveling Balance the whole way is fine.
Intellect will add more mana to your overall mana pool. This means more casting without going out of mana. Also intellect will increase your critical strike rating, which when a spell crits it will do more damage.
Stamina, you may ask why. But since you're a little squishy before you get moonkin form you'll find the extra stamina to be nice if a loose mob gets a hold of you.
Crit Rating is nice to get if you can afford to pick it up, but while leveling don't worry about it. Once you reach moonkin form you'll get 5% crit strike bonus from the talent so as you level its not the most important thing.
Haste Rating, much like crit strike you can pick up items with this stat if you can afford it. Most of the haste gear you won't begin to see until level 68 when you take your first steps into Northrend with your druid.
From this point on I'll be discussing the talents you'll want as you level to 40.
The first step when you reach level 10 and begin to talent is to pick up
Starlight Wrath . This is a tier one balance talent that allocates you to put in 5 points to it. This will reduce the cast time of your Wrath spell by .1 seconds for every talent point put into it. It will cap at 5 points and will cut down your wrath cast time by .5 seconds total. These spells are your bread and butter damaging spells so bufing them is a good idea.
Your next step is to start moving towards
Moonkin Form . The bulk of the talents help boost your primary nukes, Starfire and Wrath. The build at Moonkin tends to look like
this build . This will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to spells and it gives you a few new goodies.
The talents also help increase mana efficiency, over damage and some new toys. The main new spell being
Insect Swarm (talented level 20), while you can learn it at level 20 it is considered wise to grab
Lunar Guidance first. You've gained another spell in your ******* and it is a pure DoT that does damage every two seconds for 8 seconds, while also applying a very nice debuff to the affected mob that tanks will love you for having. With the Nature's Splendor talent it will last for two more seconds.
Once you get the coveted Moonkin Form. You're ability to solo increased by about 370%... CwatIdidThar!?!?! Ok, so it increases your armor by 370% so you'll notice survivability in Moonkin form go up by huge amounts. Also you now have a passive 5% crit for all spells cast while in Moonkin form, this also affects anyone that is your part or raid within 45 yards. But quite possibly the best change Blizzard ever bestowed upon Moonkins. Every spell critical you have will now return 2% of your max mana back.
Now before I pick up on leveling again you're play style might change a little bit here. You can still go with the old root and kill method or you can now take on a few more mobs at a time and put up Moonfire and Insect swarm on everything and then focus one target down. This is purely up to you. Try out the new method and then decide is typically the best advice.
From here on out until 60 you'll want to fill in these talents as you see fit. Use
this build .
Some may ask why 3/3
Brambles ? Its an increase of damage when mobs attack you. So if you look at it this way you'll understand. It acts as a DoT effect that tics as fast as a melee will swing at you. Its damage back at a mob. In PvP thorns has been known to kill rogues because of the speed of their attacks. This is why you take up thorns. Also it makes your
pet trees do more damage.
You also now get a nifty new spell called
Typhoon . It is on a 20 second cooldown and when cast it throws a wave in a frontal cone in front of you doing damage to everything it hits, knocking back and dazing every target for 3 seconds. If you get into a situation where you may have gotten one too many mobs this is a good "Oh sh*t!" Button allowing you time to shift into cheetah form and run like hell. When running dungeons though be careful in using it as it has been know to really **** off tanks when you move there mobs.
Now that you've reached about as far into the balance tree that is necessary for damage and leveling these next talents until 80 you can do in any order. This is the
suggested build. Now it is time to go into the resto tree to pickup the goodies there all druids get. First you should pick up Imp Mark of the Wild along with some more mana regen from talents like Dreamstate and Omen of Clarity. Also with 5/5 Furor you're going to get a 10% increase in your intellect based mana pool.
I didn't mention much on glyphs but for leveling
Moonfire and
Insect Swarm both increase the output damage of both and it's good for it you need to kite a mob when things get a little crazy.
How should I gear as a Moonkin? Congratulations. You're 80 now, so what should we do? I think, we should kill things, but you need the gear! By this time as you've gone through Northrend you've hopefully done a few instances, a large amount of quests and you're rocking some quest blues and greens. I think we should replace those ASAP.
Now I won't lie here putting together a huge list of stuff is very time consuming so what I'll do here is provide you with a list from wowhead that already has a filter place upon it so you can look through to find the best items for you. Don't call me lazy, it's just more work than I'm willing to put forth :(
A little addendum, for the idols I don't know how to separate the feral/resto ones from the balance ones so you're going to have to sift through some things a little. You'll notice I didn't link trinkets either because its actually pretty hard to filter for only caster trinkets, spell power filters don't apply since there are crit strike with X proc trinkets available.
Weapons Daggers Fist Weapons ~ There is only one, so... Yeah :D
Maces Staves Offhands Idols Cloaks Amulets Rings Leathor Armor Cloth Armor Now, as for the Leather VS Cloth arguement. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO WEAR CLOTH. The stigma is finally beginning to wane that all boomkins should be wearing all leather. This is completely wrong, you go with what is going to work best for you. Above all, if you plan on raiding you need to understand that there is a balance you need to figure out with whomever deals your loot out that sometimes cloth items are better than the leather equivalent. Talk it over with your gm/officers/whomever when it comes to cloth and leather. You don't want any loot fights starting.
Can you help me make sense of the stats for this chicken? Who needs stats when you've got lasers amirite? Ok so we need stats too, but what do you need you ask? Well DruidSock knows and will tell you.
In general it's a wide known fact that boomkins are addicted to haste. Our main damage spell Starfire has a 2.5 second cast and w/o any haste that spell is ridiculously long. So how do we go about making it smaller. Well lets sit down and chat. I'm going to go a little more in depth now when I talk about the stats. Basic stats are still pretty straight forward and I'll go over them again to refresh your mind. The others however are going to be run over much more in depth.
Intellect - Adds to your mana pool, gives you crit, and with talents gives you spell power.
Spirit - Gives you mana regen and is also gives you spell power. This stat became more important as of late with a change to the talent Improved Moonkin Form.
Stamina - You'll take this as it comes, obviously for raiding you'll need some form of health for the different damages you will take.
When it comes to base stats like these it really isn't too much of an issue on is X item better because it has Y amount of intellect or spirit over item Z. These stats come as they are on gear and shouldn't be the determining factor when choosing between two pieces. Ultimately more is better but when you begin raiding you'll notice the varying differences between two pieces of gear and other stats such as Crit/Haste/Hit will become more important.
Hit Rating - This is above all your ultimate goal. You will forego every thing until you reach what is known as the hit cap. Now the hit cap for any spell cast is 17% hit. Now that may seem like a pretty large number but you need to remember. With the talent Balance of Power you recieve 4% hit. That 4% is enough to make you hit capped for every single 5 man and 5 man heroic bosses. Basically any mob level 82 or less you'll be hit capped with Balance of Power. The actual 17% hit cap becomes a lot more important when you begin fighting level 83 raid bosses.
Lets keep breaking this down. 17% is your cap. 17% - 4% from balance of power = 13% hit rating you'll need to get so far. Now if you take points into Improved Faerie Fire, which I suggest since FF is a 5 minute debuff on any mob thats another 3% hit for you, and everyone else in your party/raid. So 13% - 3% is 10% hit rating needed. The magic number for 10% if you are horde is going to be 264 hit rating, if you are alliance and get the Draenai buff Heroic Presence you'll need 9% hit which is 236 hit rating. So to make this easier to look at. (I'm assuming 2/2 Balance of Power and 3/3 Imp FF)
264 Hit Rating - If you are Horde, or you are Alliance w/o Heroic Presence.
236 Hit Rating - If you are Alliance with Heroic Presence.
The biggest reason for meeting the hit cap is because by now you should realize that your spells can crit upwords of about 10k right now. Imagine missing one of those spells on a boss fight. Major DPS loss there, you don't want this. As you begin to raid you may not be fully hit capped and you'll see that as you miss on some casts your DPS will decrease.
Crit Strike - This used to be the best thing for a boomkin pre 3.0. It wasn't unheard of to see moonkins with something around 40-50% crit in BC. This has actually changed and critical strike has turned into something like a hit cap. You really only need a certain amount to make it worth your while before you start stacking on different stats. The basic rule you can abide by is this. 20-25% crit strike is a good number to shoot for while in moonkin form. This gives you roughly something around 32-37% crit strike when fully raid buffed in a 25 man (Mind you, it may vary). This is enough to make you not worry about your procing Eclipse. One thing to mention though, with the advent of 3.0 came the reworking of the talent Moonkin Form. Instead of having to hit things with melee damage to return mana, all spell critical strikes done while in moonkin form now return back 2% of your mana pool.
So crit strike is a so/so stat for you, its nothing to scoff at because its pretty important to your dps but it isn't something you should go crazy over. Also, do not gem for critical strike. The itemization for it is pretty good, the ratio of crit strike to crit percent is absolutely terrible and isn't worth your time.
Haste - Haste, and to quote Mazra
"Mangle Haste is an everlasting ******." Haste is going to become your new best friend. Haste itemization is amazing, the conversion is absolutely awesome and it can really change up how much you DPS. You will gem for haste, you will enchant for haste, you will pawn off your parents for haste, you will begin to develop such an addiction to haste you'll probably die of haste. It's that good really. Most raiding moonkins are sitting between 500-600 haste rating and can do some pretty crazy dps because of it.
What am I doing when I group with people? DPS cycles, rotations and other stuff Moonkin can do. Buffing, decursing, abolish poison, rez and
Innervate .
Talents and spec options A few trees for Moonkin at 80 and what they are used for.
No, you can't be an astronaut get a job. Various profession related stuff and how they can benefit Moonkin.
Edited, Jan 6th 2010 7:06pm by DruidSock