5x Druid Team

[propagandalf]

I recently started up a 5man RAF Druid team and I'm loving it. Being able to sneak (prowl) through dungeon trash and do quick LFD runs is beyond awesome.

Anyways, I am currently 1 Guardian, 3 Balance and 1 Resto.

My question is about the 3 DPS slots. Balance or Feral, which is better for boxing? I'm having hard time setting up my DPS spam buttons for the Balance Druids. Maybe Feral is a better choice?

Thanks for the feedback!

[HPAVC]

What are you having a hard time with for the boomkin? At your core you need two nuke macros for each proc, on your main you need to monitor the procs of the DPS. You are only going to be one or two spells out of rotation most of the time. Some sleeps, fears are going to mess with you though. I found it to be pretty fun.

[remanz]

leveling, both feral and balance are fine. But feral will have to manage combo points. So my vote goes for balance. Also if you do 4 melees (including tank) 1 heal and drive with the tank. THe healer is a little out of place. You don't want to spam IWT on the healer.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

My question is about the 3 DPS slots. Balance or Feral, which is better for boxing?

Answer is, "It Depends."

Does the fight have a lot of movement? Probably feral, unless there are a lot of slows/roots, then Balance.
Puddles of Bad Stuff on the floor that one character can survive but not the whole team? Balance.
Boss moves around a lot but you can stand in one spot and DPS him? Balance.
Boss has magic-invulnerable phase(s)? Feral.
Boss has high arcane/nature resists? Feral.
Boss has huge melee aoe but none or little ranged? Balance.
etc.

Lots of us play(ed) druids and I think everyone had a different take on the various bosses.

[Ualaa]

The biggest thing will be:
a) Feral has to mess around with IWT/CTM... deal with run-away-kittens, etc..
b) Balance has to have mana to do DPS... more downtime.

Feral gets two combo points, from a critical strike; you want to have five combo points before a finisher.
You want to keep your dots (Rake and Rip) up.
You want to keep Savage Roar up as well.

You can glyph Savage Roar, for a 12 second duration without any combo points.
Not sure if that's an optimal glyph or not, but its an option.

I found, if I went with four combo generating moves, and then a finisher, I'd have either 4 (some of the time) or 5 (almost all of the time) combo points.
My rotation was: Mangle, Rake, Mangle, Mangle, Rip.
If you don't have Rip yet, you can use Ferocious Bite in its place.



With a dedicated healer, you won't need to mess around with heals from the Ferals.
Your basic tools though...

You'll passively heal yourself, via Leader of the Pack, which is plenty of healing when questing outside.
Crits also restore your mana, so you should always have plenty for out of combat healing.

I would round-robin Nature's Swiftness, with either Rebirth or Healing Touch.
That's one big heal (or a rez) per Druid, every 60 seconds.

You have close to a 97% chance for a nature spell, of under 10 seconds cast time, to be an instant cast after a finishing move.
Basically a 20% chance per combo point spent on the finisher.
But this, approximately once every ten seconds of combat, and aside from bosses/the odd elite world mob nothing lives that long.

You can use instant casts like Rejuvenation or Lifebloom (not sure if Feral still have access to this).

[propagandalf]

Great info guys, thanks for the feedback! I think I'll stick with 3 Balance and try and figure out my dps spam macros.

Anyone have some to share? :) :)