One Druid, Many Worlds

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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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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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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Another Tuesday, another week with no Patch 3.0.8. Not only are we being denied some great changes to Druids (mechanics and item changes listed on ThinkTank), but it makes Patch 3.1 with the new Ulduar instances seem that much further away. To tide you over, here are some great links from around the blogosphere to help you be a better Druid:

• Laser Chicken looks at Trinkets for Feral Druid Bear Tanks in Wrath in an attempt to hit the defense cap at 80.
• TalentChic polled the Armory for the most popular Druid Talent Specs:
  • The 0/60/11 Tanking build topped the entire list. The next four top feral specs were all Tanking specs with various Cat abilities thrown in, most likely for players who are mostly-off tanks and want to be able to DPS when needed.
  • The 11/0/60 Restoration build was the second most popular Druid spec. Followed closely by alternatives that dig a little deeper into the Balance Tree.
  • The 0/55/16 Cat build makes use of the new Master Shapeshifter talent for max dps. Tanking talents are left out in the cold, so no off-tanking for this spec.
  • The 69/0/2 Balance Moonkin build is the favorite, though it ignores the in-combat mana regen ability of Intensity deeper in the Resto tree. The alternatives drop the controversial Genesis and other low-performing talents to grab Intensity and Master Shapeshifter as well as Omen of Clarity and Furor.
• Resto4Life had a guest post from Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws. He talks about what to look for in Cat Gear.
• Flyv has a guide on resto healing for former bear tanks. There seems to be less of a tanking shortage and more of a healing shortage than ever, so his timing couldn’t be better. An excellent Druid Tree Restoration Gear Guide can be found on WoW Insider (disclaimer: I do work for WI.)
• Blessings of Kings has started a new Raider 101 wiki with the idea of housing guides for players who are just starting raid. The Druid ones are already in progress and provide excellent overview of what is expected of you if you haven’t raided before:
  • Guide to Wrath Raiding for Balance Druids (Moonkin)
  • Guide to Wrath Raiding for Feral Cat Druids
  • Guide to Wrath Raiding for Feral Bear Tanks
  • Guide to Wrath Raiding for Restoration Tree Druids
• Karthis from Of Teeth and Claws has revised his Druid Tanking in Wrath post to reflect all the changes to the class.

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NOTE: I’ve started an updated Moonkin Gear guide for Wrath.

One of the reasons I love my World of Warcraft druid is the versatility of the class. WoW druids can customize their abilites many different ways: healing centric, melee dps/tank centric and spell damage centric. For awhile, I was spell damage centric aka Moonkin aka Balance specced. I started looking for gear to enhance my spell damage and found it hard to come by for my class.

At the same time, David Bowers, my fellow Shifting Perspectives druid class columnist at WoW Insider posted a feature highlighting gear available to non-raiding tank specced druids. Brilliant! I decided to focus my next feature on my current problem of gearing a non-raiding Balance specced druid. What I didn’t count on was my compulsion to be thorough.

Three feature length articles, five weeks and one sore pair of hands later, I completed my survey of gear for Moonkin druids leveling from 60 to 70 through The Burning Crusade expansion. You can check it out here:

• Part I – Chest, legs, head, shoulders, wrist and hand slots.
• Part II – Waist, feet and back slots.
• Part III – Neck, fingers, trinkets, two-handed weapons, one-handed weapons, off-hand and relics.

I couldn’t get to gems and enchants, so I linked the excellent coverage written on those two subjects by Fiordhraoi on his Balance of Power blog.

If you play a Shadow Priest, Warlock or Mage, you may also be interested in this third piece as many items are perfect for your damage specs as well.

Due to popular demand, I will continue the series, this time covering Restoration (healing) specced druids. I’ll link those up when they are done, probably some time in November.