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Feb 03
Since I started the Daily Druid post a few weeks ago, it has become quite popular. This blog doesn’t support the format well, so I’ve fired up a new blog that does the same thing but with a theme that makes for easier browsing. I’ve moved all the Daily Druid posts over as well as Bear and Cat resource pages.
You can subscribe to that site’s RSS feed, visit the front of the site for daily druid news, or just follow the posts for your spec. Here’s the link to bookmark:
Feb 02
Debating Eclipse Strategies
The Grey Matter blog delves into the unending debate of which Moonkin Eclipse buff is better: Wrath or Starfire? You can either dive in for the math or head write to the end for the always welcome TLDR version.
Healing Malgos
Raine at Orbital Bombardment gives a detailed overview of healing the 10-man Malygos encounter.
Raid Healing Those Who Can’t Stay Out Of The Line Of Fire
Passport to Shandris explores the best raid heal for those who aren’t the main tank. He goes through each combination and lists the pros and cons. Plus, graphs!
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Jan 29
Target Stats for Raiding Druids
Raine of Orbital Bombardment warns against running into Naxx the day you ding 80. But when are you ready to dip your toe into Wrath raiding? Raine provides target stats for all druid specs: Restoration, Feral Cat, Bear Tank and Balance/Moonkin.
More Pawn Love
Dave and Passport to Shandris provides tools to evaluate gear for Restoration and Moonkin Druids. He mentions WoWHead, spreadsheets and, my personal favorite, scales to use for the Pawn AddOn that allows for comparing gear while in-game.
Moonkin Resource site
News is lacking today, so I’m going to highlight the excellent Moonkin Repository forums. Not only is it a great place to ask Balance questions, but you post your Armory profile to get advice on improving your DPS. Plus, of course, guides:
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Jan 28
Resto Druid Glyphs
Phaelia from Resto4Life has been bombarded with the question "what glyphs should Tree Druids use?" Instead of composing yet another lengthy answer, she went the XKCD route and made a flow chart that answers all your Resto Glyph questions. Even if you aren’t specced for healing this is not to be missed.
Swiftmend Recommendation
J at Casual WoW explains why Swiftmend is one of the best Druid direct heals in the game (especially in combination with Glyph of Swiftmend.)
Dreamstate Resto Build Report
Althura of OneHotNelf continues her Dreamstate Resto build experiment and reports back on her latest Naxx run. So far she feels it outperforms the more popular 11/0/60 standard raid Druid Resto build.
Moonkin 2v2 Strategy
Macbook of Moonkin.info dipped his toe into 2v2 Arenas with his Resto Shammy friend and came back with tips on how to win.
Feral Druid’s Guide To Soloing Onyxia
The Vendor Trash blog has a guide to soloing Onyxia for feral Druids. It’s straightforward and can help you get the Onyxia’s Lair Achievement on your way to the Classic Raider Achievement. What’s even better is that there is no lengthy attunement quest anymore.
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Jan 27
Moonkin PvP advice
Macbook at Moonkin.info has some tips for Moonkin starting PvP (3v3 Arena to be precise.) He admits to be no expert, but his beginner tips are sound.
Moonkin Head meta-gemming debate
Graylo at Gray Matter takes slight umbrage with Allison Robert’s pre-Naxx Moonkin Gear Guide. Specifically with her head slot gem choices. He goes into detail why including lots of math and, fortunately, a TLDR version of his argument at the end of his entry as well.
Dreamstate Resto spec viability
Althura of OneHotNelf is trying the 28/0/43 Dreamstate Resto build. Is the loss of key healing talents (including Wild Growth) worth the extra 100mp5? She debates the tradeoff.
Cat/Bear Raiding viability
Kalon at ThinkTank theorized the cat/bear hybrid spec and its viability in raid scenarios for the Druid to be an effective offtank *and* a face-ripping dpser. Today he put it to the test and ran Naxx-25 with it. Check out his blog for the eye-popping results.
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Jan 26
Druid Wrath consumables
Raff at Druid Heal! covers food and potions for Resto (and Balance) Druids in Wrath.
Polearms and 2-Handed Maces for Feral Druids
The Gaming Diva covers the basics of polearms now that Druids can use them. She also lists a few to look out for.
Unbearably HoT also gets in on the action, listing polearms and 2-handed maces. But this article goes much deeper with a list of the top weapons from each category and an analysis of which one is best for you (and it may not be the one you think.)
Healing AddOn tutorial
Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket follows up her HoT tutorial for Grid post from awhile back with a new one that explains how to set up other aspects of the popular healing AddOn.
Feral off-tanking gear guide
Kalon at ThinkTank delves into the possibilities of being a servicable tank in cat gear and doing great dps in bear gear. He surmises that cat and bear gear are now pretty much identical with the exception of you how gem/enchant it and he comes up with a dream list of gear that can make you the ideal off tank candidate for almost any raid.
OneDruid notes
I’ve got my Feral Cat Resource page started and will get another one up later this week for Feral Bear Tanks.
I trained Cat Swipe this weekend and went to town on packs of mobs in a few instances. Wow, what a difference that made on the DPS meters. If you haven’t tried it out yet on your Feral Cat Druid yet, I highly recommend it.
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Jan 21
I’ve mentioned the excellent item comparison AddOn Pawn last week. Today I found a tutorial on how to set Pawn up on the Druid blog, Matter Hair and Sharpened Claws. If you know of any good scales (especially for Moonkin), post them here.
Feral Bear Tank News
Feral Bonus Armor explained
Big Bear Butt Blogger explains what Bonus Armor is and how it is calculated. This helps immensely with understading the 3.0.8 that doesn’t allow Bonus Armor to be multiplied by Bear form. Flyv on his blog also notes that his Bear armor change since the patch is negligible, but his armor in Bear form while wearing his cat gear (for those emergency off-tank situations) went up over 60%.
Feral Cat DPS News
Cat to do list
Flyv also lists the top 6 activities Feral Cat Druids should do upon logging in after patching 3.0.8. (Hint: you have to train cat Swipe.)
Moonkin Balance News
Moonkin for dummies
Today I’ve also discovered the Elitist Jerk guide to Moonkin stats, spell rotation, enchants, consumables, talents, mods and professions. And not an algebraic formula to be seen!
Wrath Raiding Gear Guide for Level 80 Balance Druids
Allison Robert, the weekly Druid writer at WoW Insider, has another Shifting Perspectives column up. This guide covers gearing your Moonkin for Wrath Raiding. It’s in-depth and well done. (Disclaimer: I run the site.)
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Jan 19
Feral Bear Tank News
Feral Tanking Enchants
The Titanguard tanking weapon enchant is not coming with Patch 3.0.8. So what’s left for the Druid Bear Tank? Flyv recommends the Mongoose enchant and explains why on his site (as well as highlights one of the best trinkets in the game Darkmoon Card: Greatness.)
Moonkin Balance News
Is Improved Faerie Fire worth it?
Macbook at Moonkin.info explains why he is dropping Improved Faerie Fire despite the buff it’s getting in Patch 3.0.8. He also goes into his spell rotations for his Moonkin as well as analyzes the upcoming Starfall nerf.
Mana Regen primer for Moonkin
Graylo from Gray Matter has a guest post on Resto4Life explaining which talents are best for Moonkin mana regen and which can be sacrificed for more DPS-oriented talents.
Restoration Tree News
AddOns for Druid Healers
Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket not only explores AddOns for Druid healers, but whether or not they’re even needed. She also goes into detail on HoT tracking using the Grid AddOn. It’s accompanied by an excellent tutorial about how to set it up and use it to maximum advantage.
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Jan 16
More Patch 3.0.8 Druid Analysis
Allison Robert posted up an overview of the major changes coming to Druids in Patch 3.0.8 in this week’s installment of WoW Insider’s Druid column, Shifting Perspectives. Good analysis here.
Devs speak about Resto issues
Phaelia of Resto4Life had a friend analyze the dev responses to player questions about the future of Resto Healing.
In-game item comparison tools
Flyv is recommending a new scale to import into Pawn for Druid Feral Cat DPS item assessment. If that sentence confuses you, I’ll break it down. Pawn is an AddOn that assigns a value to any piece of gear you look at in-game. You can then compare values of different pieces of equipment to judge which one is an upgrade. But Pawn needs you to create a weighted scale so it knows what you value (agility! strength!,etc.) Flyv is pointing out that a popular Druid theorycrafter has created a scale you can import into Pawn to help you judge gear accurately. I can’t attest to the new scale, but since I respec between cat, tree and bird three to four times a week I’m a big fan on this AddOn that helps me understand what loot is an upgrade for all my different gear sets.
Druid tactics to solo same level elites
This is one of my favorite things to do while leveling, particularly because it takes advantages of many of our forms. Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws gives detailed strats on Druid soloing same level elites.
More Resto Tree Builds
Niniel of Swiftmend has posted her two Resto talent builds, one for raiding and one for five manning.
Feral Bear Tank pre-Naxx Guide and Lacerate discussion
Kalon of WoWThinkTank has posted the benchmarks for Feral Bear Tanks who want to enter Naxx. He includes gear recommendations, stat targets and minimum threat generation. He also revises his low opinion of Lacerate.
Best Druid Resto Tree Glyphs?
Keeva of Tree Bark Jacket explores her Druid Resto Tree Glyph choices and explains how it changed her healing rotation.
Best Druid Feral Cat DPS Potions
Unbearably HoT explores which potions are the best for cats in Wrath. It used to be Agility > all, but now it’s more a matter of seeing where you other stats are at. Excellent analysis of cat benchmarks.
That’s it for today. Will be back Monday with more of The Daily Druid.
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Jan 15
More Druid Patch Notes
Patch 3.0.8 has been updated on the Public Test Realm with Build 9464 which has a small change for Balance Druids:
Celestial Focus doesn’t affect Starfall anymore.
Sigh, no more mass stunning haste stacking.
Clarification on Improved Faerie Fire effects
Ghostcrawler confirmed that the Balance Druid’s Improved Faerie Fire talent will add its 3% crit increase to your spells on a target with Faerie Fire (normal or Feral FF) regardless of who cast FF. In other words, you don’t have to be the one to cast the FF on the target for your ImpFF to give you the crit bonus. He states the tooltip for ImpFF should soon read:
Your Faerie Fire and Feral Faerie Fire spells also increase the chance the target will be hit by spell attacks by 3%, and increase the critical strike chance of your damage spells by 3% on targets afflicted by [anyone's] Faerie Fire or Feral Faerie Fire.
Guide to +hit off-hand items for Balance Moonkin Druids raiding in Wrath
The FlashofMoonfire blog took a look at off-hand Moonkin Balance items with +hit the other week after scoring the Surplus Limb in Naxx-10. It’s comparable to the Ward of the Viloet Citadel, which can be had for a mere 25 Emblems of Heroism, but FoM makes an interesting case for the superior haste value of the Limb over the superior crit value of the Ward. Check out the post to see if you agree.
New guide to playing Restoration Tree Druids
WoW-Pro.com, home to the beloved Jame’s free leveling guides, have posted a very extensive guide to understanding the Druid Tree role. Highlights include explanations of spells, talents, glyphs, builds, gear, consumables, gems, enchants, macros, addons, leveling and more.
Is Improved Mangle worth the talent points?
Kalon at WoWThinkTank makes a case against Improved Mangle for both bears (in the article) and cats (in the comments). There’s a lot of math involved, but the bottom line is the recent improvements to Swipe’s threat generation make the points invested into iMangle less important.
Naxx-10 Tanking guides & DPS Cooking food
Bloodarrow, a Belf Hunter, compiled two interesting posts:
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