5 x Druid?

[OzPhoenix]

Talking with another multiboxer on my Realm (Cael) (Hey there Slats!) and we've been talking about making 5xDruid teams.

The pros I can see:

All 1 class.
Stealth.
Versaility.
PvE and PvP usefulness.
Could be either an all-melee or caster group.

The cons:

Single buff (admittedly a good one).
Lack of "res-on-demand".

So, anyone running 5xDruid, or have run them? What are they like for PvE (Heroics, Raids etc) and for PvP?

I was reading into their Cata changes today, and there seemed to be not too much information/reaction to go by, anyone got any better goss on their Cata changes?

[jinkobi]

You ever watch the Moo's Oz? He/they were the inspiration for my team. The Moo's made multiboxing look so easy with druids I was sold. Here's some of their vids:

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...ltiboxing&aq=f

Didn't want to lose my paladin tank because I'd invested in him heavily while solo'ing. Leveled 2 sets of druids to go with my paladin. My balance druids can tear ass like a mage and my resto druid can heal anything thrown at him.

One reason I picked druids was for their versatility. With respeccing you can mix and match all kinds of different styles and fill every roll tank/dps/heal.

PVE is easy sauce with druids... Wouldn't trade my pally tank- but if you're planning on PVP probably better to go with a bear tank so he can dual spec. There's nothing a druid can't tanks in PVE.

PVP you're going to be a force to be reckoned with... When you drop 15 treants people tend to run. 5 times starfall, and 5X starfire will instakill anyone. Heck even 5X moonfire/insect swarm they're dead meat. Shadowmeld at your disposal as well.

Druids rock! How they pan out in Cataclysm I have no idea... I'm leveling a priest on the side just in case. Resto druids are the ones who look like they're getting the worst of the incoming nerf. I'm sure it'll all work out in the end.

[Lyonheart]

I have 5 druids. My tank is geared, but the 4 i just got to 80 are not geared yet. I'm not sure i want to spend the time to gear them up right now, with Cata on the horizon. But with fresh 80 gear.. i find it painful to do instances with them. And my healers gear sucks as well so healing seems weak. The 5x starfall and treants seems wasted for me in WG, Horde always have 4+ tenacity.

I think in Cata boomkins will be better due to being able to macro the dps better. Right now, its next to impossible to time eclipse and get max dps out of them. After all the teams i have leveled up, i still enjoy the paly and 4 shams the best, in PvE and PvP.

One thing for sure though, I enjoyed leveling my druids more than any other team i leveled. When I hit 60 and got flightform, questing was so simple. And with starfall, even doing collection quests was easy, i could kill as many mobs as I could get caught in starfalls range. I had piles of 20+ mobs a lot of the time. It was a blast! Doing the collection quests where you "gather" the quest item, like mushrooms or some such, was very easy as well. With flightform you can hover over the item and loot it and fly on.. most the time never having to deal with mobs.

[daviddoran]

I just hit 80 recently on my 5 boomkins and they are a blast. Biggest problem in pvp is lack of fear control. One fear really screws me up.

But, ive been able to utilize some of their other strengths, like in an AV that looks like its gonna be a long turtle, I can easily stealth past the battle and go cap a tower or 2. Starfall x5 is just awesomesauce. I plan on dual speccing one to be a feral tank, another to be resto, and im undecided on if i want 3 boomkins, 3 ferals, or a mix, probably 2 ferals 1 boomkin, so i can have a shot at managing eclipse procs.

Rezzing is actually easier than with shamans, cause often the toon in front gets killed first, and with shamans and ankh, you can only do it once, but with 5 druids, I have 5 in combat rezzes, that I can use all on the same toon if need be.

I'm wondering if 4 boomkins and a resto shaman would work, add in the tremor totem and it helps a lot with fears...

[Stealthy]

This one seems to come up pretty regularly, mostly because Druids look very good on paper, however in actual play they have a few weaknesses when compare to other classes (namely Shaman).

PVE:
Pros:
- Can cover all 3 roles (Tank / DPS / Heals)
- Some complimentary buffs
Cons:
- Eclipse procs difficult to manage on multiple toons
- Buff stacking not a good as some other classes (Shaman, Pallies)

Managing Eclipse procs are the biggest problem for a PVE team, since they equate to a ton of damage in PvE. You can get by in Heroics ok, but you won't be competitive in raids if you can't take advantage of them.

PVP:
Pros:
- 5 x Starfall is OP
- 5 x Treants is great against melee targets
- Hurricane best targeted AoE in game (esp deadly when combined with Starfall)
Cons:
- Outside of Starfall, lack of burst in PvP
- have to drop form to heal
- vulnerable to fear
- no way to mitigate incoming spell damage / lack of interrupts

There are several drawbacks for druids in PvP - while Starfall and Treants are great, outside of this Druids really suffer from a lack of burst. This is especially noticeable against high resil targets, and Disc priests fully HoT'd resto druids can be annoyingly difficult to kill (compared to Shamans who can purge & FS/LvB).
Having to drop form to heal can be painful too, and this problem gets compounded when you're being attacked by melee classes at the same time.
But the biggest drawback IMHO, apart from vulnerability AoE fears, is the lack of mitigation from incoming spell damage. Typhoon can be used as an interrupt if your opponent is in front of you (and in range), but your out of luck if the damage is coming from the sides or back. Compare this to shamans who have both an interrupt with Wind Shear and an immunity in grounding totems

Don't get me wrong - I love playing my druid team, and for BG's and WG they are a blast! But when playing them I have to be very mindful of their weaknesses too. They are very much a 'run and gun' play style - there's a lot of runing to a spot, pew pew, run to another spot, pew pew, et, while waiting for Starfall and Treants to come off cooldown. Compared to the 'turret defense' style of shamans where there's more of picking a spot and nuking anything in range.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
S.

[ghonosyph]

im currently leveling a set up for professions. Just four tho as i already have one at 80 geared to the hilt for boomer/feral

I'm excited to use them as my pallys and dks are getting stale quick(i hardly even log my 3 dks and feral druid on anymore to do daily heroic as the pallys are just better lol)

i'll probably stick them all boomkin for pvp, just for fun, and run an all feral dps zerg team for instances(MAYBE holy trinity but i dont like healing so i'll find a way around it ! lol)

[daviddoran]

I agree completely with what Stealthy said. Fun group, different tactics than shamans, but a few drawbacks that makes shamans my top choice, but druids a close second.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I ran some heroics on my 5-druid team. Wasn't terrible but where shaman or paladin teams don't have to shift out of their DPS gear to heal, druids do. If moonkin could cast ONE damn healing spell without shifting to human form, they'd be very awesome. As is, you end up having to go 3 dps, 1 heal.

From my perspective, going from a 5 druid team to a 4 sham/1 pally team is like flipping the PVE switch to ezmode. Ditto for the 5-paladin team.

One thing the 5-druid team has that the others don't though: being able to shift into flight form after getting punted off the alliance zeppelin in Icecrown.

[OzPhoenix]

Thanks for the replies all. Currently the All-Paladin team I've got is still gearing up in Heroics, so I don't expect I'll have time to make an All-Druid team pre-Cata, but it's high on my to-do list post-Cata.

Having not leveled a Druid before (got one to 20 I think), I was unfamiliar with some of the advantages/drawbacks addressed here so that was good to learn to.

It seems like for PvE you fairly have to spec one as a dedicated healer from the sounds of it, so I'll keep that in mind when I make and level the team (and dual-spec the tank/healer druids to go pew pew for PvP).

[ghonosyph]

On reading some cata info it seems that we'll be able to adopt a more focused dps spec with healing ability in caster form, perhaps the extra boost will allow us to heroic in caster form which will much Better allow us to heal/dps! I'm not sure tho. Hmm onto the next question

What skin type do you plan to use for your ferals given the ability for them to be different colors?!