Druids, Druids, Druids

Although I do not want to be discussing Cataclysm abilities directly in this thread, a few of us saw some of the posted-then-pulled information about new Druid abilities/talents and have started thinking about a 5xDruid teams for the expansion. Multi-druids are not by any means new, but they have never seemed to reach flavor-of-the-month status.

I'd like to have a more open dialog about the potential for this team in rated BGs, PvE, and possibly Arena. Priority for me personally is:

1.) Strong performer in Rated BGs
2.) Capable at gearing/farming 5man PvE heroic content
3.) Arena performance a bonus, but not required

Using these goals as a guideline, Druids have some advantages/disadvantages for Rated BGs:

Pros:
* Flexibility in terms of composition-- can have Melee DPS or Ranged DPS plus healing as an option, spec-wise.
* Hybrid/Healing capability (ranging from post-fight top-offs as Feral to active healing as Balance if you switch out of or ignore moonkin form)
* Stealth-- this cannot be underestimated for BG encounters
* Rez/B-Rez capability
* Certain key abilities border on Overpowered at the current time (5xStarfall, anyone?)
* Whole team instant travel form is very handy

Cons:
* VERY susceptible to fearbombs, unless using a cooldown-based immunity available only to Feral specs.
* DPS harder to manage compared to other classes (current Eclipse mechanics, kitty DoT management, etc)
* Forms can be somewhat harder to manage
* Lack of buff synergy compared to other classes (Multi-paladins/shamans can cross-buff to a much greater degree, relatively speaking)

(I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, I'll edit to make this a working list if you provide a suggestion)

For PvE, there's a similar set of Pros/Cons:

Pros:
* Druids have all roles available to them, allowing multiple PvE options. Can go Tank+Healer+3 Ranged DPS, or Tank+Healer+3xMelee DPS, or Tank+4xBalance and allow 4xHoTs to provide heals. Can potentially do Tank+Healer+Mixed DPS as well, although the merits of that arrangement are iffy...

Cons:
* 4xDPS setups are probably harder to pull off than say DK+4xRets of Tank+4xShaman. The DPS roles that Druids can fill don't have the same degree of passive healing available to Rets or Shaman. Balance might come close with 4xHoTs rolling on the tank, but it's not as efficient as the Shaman setup.
* Potential mana-management issues that make stopping to drink more of a concern than other comps.
* Again, not as much buff synergy as other compositions.


Although arena is not as much of a focus, there are some noteworthy tricks to playing a multi-druid team.
* Berserk - Fear immunity on a cooldown. This mitigates one major pitfall of the group
* Cyclone - Strong CC that can be used effectively for arenas
* Starfall - 5xStarfalls does pump out a lot of damage and can be launched from...
* Stealth - Generally speaking, you'll have more control about the start of the fight and early targetting. This is not as big of an advantage for Arena as I think it is for BGs, where people aren't going to know there's 5 stealthed players in close proximity.




Anyhow, without going into NDA Cataclysm land, what are YOUR thoughts on 5xDruids now and in the future. I have my own Druid team in the works right now, and I know mosg2 and some others are also working on them. If you have one right now at L80, what have been your experiences with it and what are your thoughts going forward?

Knockdown/silence from far away on a 15 second cooldown

Mushrooms of doom

I don't see 5x feral being an option really. I honestly see boomkin as the only way to go about it.

I just have a "hunch" that 5x druid teams will be quite fun in Cataclysm, and they really aren't too bad now. I wouldn't arena with them, but everything else is very good.

My druid team is level 74 at the moment and I have been rocketing them up in level for a few weeks now. Not too much longer and they will be 80. I have been able to do instances pretty much at level, and with just quest gear, but did in the end require the typical tank, 3xdps, healer setup. I tried with four cats doing double duty dps/heal and it worked, but was very fraught with risk and lots of deaths. Same for 4xBoomklins, but with crap gear, they went oom fast doing double duty dps/heal.

At 80 in heroics it will still require the tank, 3xdps, healer split , until they outgear them, then like my pally+4xshaman team they can double duty dps/heal (in 4x moonkin form, shapeshifting to caster for HoTs and the rare full heal).

For BGs I have taken them in as five cats and with dps spam plus IWT spam, it's instadeath for whoever I am on, just like taking the 4x and 5x Rets to BGs. The difference is you have to really be on your toes with shapeshifting for heals.

I also have taken them as five boomkins, and they fared well, though I really liked the five cats performance better. I will say that 5x hurricanes can wipe out an entire flag-clustered WSG enemy team in about 4 seconds or less, and 15 trees is greate fun to sic on the enemy. Starfall is the same, outright carnage.

I have not tried taking them in with one of them a dedicated healer. If you are good on your reflexes, taking four cats and one healer might be the optimal BG configuration. If things get hairy, shapeshift them from cat to bear and heal them up, then drop back to cat for dps unload. This is probably also true of four boomkins and a healer. It depends on your playstyle. I like the in-your-face style of the DK+Rets which is also why I like cats over moonkins in BGs.

The thing is, you can change your playstyle at a whim with the all druid team. In your face with feral, distance with balance. You can mix and match at will. You need two tanks for a hard encounter, you have it. You need two healers for an encounter, you have it. You need all DPS, you have that too. This is all without having to change toons.

Bottom line is I am loving the versatility. For pure outright carnage and no-reflex easymode survivability my DK+Ret team rules the roost, but once the druids are geared up, we'll see.

Fear bombs are meh. In arenas they count. Again, I do not recommend the 5x druid team for arenas, but I'm not an experienced arena player so take that as you will.

In BGs, IWT-based recovery is your friend. Don't forget you can barkskin while feared also. Fears are annoying, but I rarely get messed up by them anymore. Trinket the first, barkskin/IWT the next.

DPS management is certainly an issue, you simply cannot elite optimize your dps with spam macros like you can with shaman and rets, and with everyone having different timing from haste, misses, etc, you cannot keep them in synch, especially like as you said, with the eclipse procs, combo points, etc. That said, my faily simple spam macros for cats (focus on bleeds/DOTs and mangles, no FBs or real worries about combo points) and for boomkins (tries its best to grab eclipse procs, and does very well at keeping the DOTs refreshed exactly when they expire) keep up VERY significant dps even in crap gear, so optimizing dps at least so far has not been a real issue.

Forms management was an issue while I was lazy about it. Then I realized I still could be lazy and write simple forms management macros with things like /cast [nostance:5] Tree and /cancelform, so that forms do not toggle unless I specifically tell them to. Now if I want everyone in cat form and some are in cat and some not, everyone goes to cat, and those already in cat don't switch, saving precious mana.

Buff synergy is a good point, but you sort of get this with 5x shaman too,and it isn't a detriment to them at all. I'm not 80 yet with this team and playing in the big leauges, so it may be that buffs will make a difference then, but I'm skeptical.

Your first PVE con is spot on. Even with popping the HoTs on everyone, with shapeshifting, you cannot keep up with dps and healing double duty. This is especially true with feral, since your +SP will suck and you heal like crap. With boomkins it is much better, since your heals work very well because you are already in +SP gear. You will however find out that you are OOM and still have 50% of the fight left to do. You'll need one of them a Tree if you want to do anything challenging.

Your second con also has merit. I have to drink a lot right now, about every two to three sets of trash. I cannot remember with the shaman it has been so long ago that I leveled them to 80, but I am guessing back the they probably also had to drink every 2-3 trash sets, so maybe it just seems a lot to me because I haven't had to drink after any encounter in a very very long time. My Tree has to drink the most. My boomkins can go three trash sets, but the Tree can never get past more that two without having to drink.

I'll let you know how they fare at 80 once they get there. I have high hopes for this team.

PVE:

The simplest for PvE will likely be: Feral Bear, Boomkin x3, and Resto.
- Wild Growth on the ranged, and roll HOTs on the tank.
- Possibly Regrowth/Healing Touch vs spike damage.

If you run with: Feral Bear, Feral Cats x3, and a Resto...
- In this case, its a few HOTs on the healer, and then Wild Growth + HOTs on the tank.
- Ditto on the bigger heals on the tank, at times.

The Boomkin route, is less toons in melee.
It has your caster toons already in caster type gear, should your healer fall.
It's pretty easy to hit a mapped key (IS Boxer), to add a toon to your Healer Action Target Group, so when you click the Grid Healing Frame, that click is now also passed to the new toon.

The Cat DPS route gets a lot of innervates for the healer, who is the only mana user.
Everyone but the healer also has Berserk, to deal with fear type mechanics.
But Cat armor isn't much different from caster armor, and its more toons to deal with cleave effects.
I'd imagine, 3x Shred/Ravage from the rear arc, would be decent damage.
Cats can talent less damage from AoE.

I like the feral DPS route more, but the Boomkins is what interested me in 5x Druids to begin with.
Instant Flight Form, makes collections much less of a pain; you can fly 5 feet above the ground, looting crates or whatever without having to drop flight form or kill the guarding mobs.
Druids have a lot of toys, which are fun.

I'd probably try the Cat x3 dps first, and switch to the Owls if the Cat option wasn't working well.
But either way, I don't see much 5-man (PvE) content that 5x Druids cannot do, but other comps can.




PvP:

In WotLK, 5x Boomkin (or 4x and a Healer), didn't have enough controlled burst.
I really liked the idea of Boomkins...

Having played Feral, I like Cats just as much.
Berserk + Trinket, is pretty good fear protection.

I'm happy with their DPS, going mostly with Mangles, but keeping Rip and Savage Roar up... Almost everything is dead before I have 5 combo points.
Five combo points, gets you a 100% chance of an instant cast Nature Spell... Depending on hit point pools, 5 combo points might be more common, which will help with instant-Healing Touch, instant-BattleRez or possibly instant-Cyclones.
With 5 extra talent points, we can take Nature's Swiftness and still have Berserk + the desired Feral Talents; this gets us 5x instants every few minutes, independent of our 5x CP instants.

I'm leaning towards Berserk (20 seconds instead of 15), Battle Rez (100% health on a rez), and Mangle (ignore Shred/Ravage - rear positional attacks) for my major glyphs. Then go with three of B.Rez (no component), Aquatic Form (fast swim), Dash (shorter cooldown) and Thorns (one hour duration, instead of 10 mins).

Still upper 70's, not 80th yet on my Ferals. Messing around with leveling 5 teams, a little here and a little there. Ideally, have them all high enough for 525 trade skills, prior to Cataclysm.
I'm never on much over the summer - seasonal work (June-Sept) and all... so would like to have all seven teams to at least 75th by mid June... and the Druids to 80th, so they're set for Cataclysm on day 1.

I think that The-Ability-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named is going to turn this team into a *powerhouse*. Every team except Shaman is weak to fear. It's part of MB'ing.

I have mixed experiences with my 5 druids that are lvl 74 at the moment. So far I see them as a fun team but not as an optimal team.

PvE

1 ) You need a feral tank and a resto healer
2 ) Feral tank cannot hold aggro that good as a paladin. I had no problems holding aggro with my paladin when my shamans were 10 levels higher than him. My feral druid is unable to hold aggro if I push my DPS too much. Consecration and the last talent in the prot pala tree is way superior than swipe and maul. Feral druid tank feels pretty much like a gimped and seriously disabled warrior tank. I am even thinking to dust out my prot warrior to tank for my druids.
3 ) Extremely weak against poisoning mobs. With my shamans it was just dropping a cleansing totem and forget about poisons at all. With my warlocks I just drain life and it outheals completely the poison effect. With the druids its completely different story. I have to stop dps and cast the druid poison cleansing spell or they all die.
4 ) Out of instances you can oneshot everything with starfire or whatever is the name of the 3 sec casting spell.
5 ) DPS rotation cannot be optimal and this gives you lower DPS. The eclipse procs are impossible to manage when you have 3 boomkins spamming stuff, so you have to alternate starfire and warth and still lose a considerable chunk of DPS.


PvP

1 ) 5 boomkins die too fast when you get a couple of people on your group. They die considerably faster that warlocks and shamans.
2 ) 4 boomkins and a dedicated resto spamming heals is very viable even at low bracket levels. The survivability is similar to 5 elemental shamans, yet the DPS is lower.
3 ) 5 resto druids spamming heals all the time is the perfect team to have the enemy busy at you while the rest of your team runs the flag in WSG... its really fun. I guess I will make a 5 resto druids arena team when they reach lvl 80 just to annoy people in the arenas.
4 ) Fearbombs are an annoyance, but not that much really.
5 ) Starfall is not that great compared to magma totems + fire nova or my warlocks demon form + immolation aura and seed of corruption spam. In fact starfall is completely underpowered and gimped compared to seed of corruption spam from my warlocks.
6 ) Your team is relatively easy to control and once controlled you are dead. There are no totems nor felguards to save you. In these cases I see my druid group as a complete gimp compared to shamans and warlocks.
7 ) Stealth is always nice, but it's a bit overrated in BGs.
8 ) Forget about rotations or using any other spells in PvP, just spam wrath or moonfire + insect swarm. This tends to make pvp a bit boring. There is no spell like "I may go down, but you all will come with me even if I die".
9 ) Moonfire requires the target to be in front of you. That leaves you only with insect swarm if you are running the flag and a bunch of enemies are chasing you.
10 ) Battle rezz is very nice. Yet it's not that good as shaman self rezz.

I can tell you guys how it is to run 5 druids in pve at lvl 80.

Fun :)

Innervate and starfall are your friends. Use em and use em frequently. I sometimes sit down and drink, but it depends on the pulls I make. I have glyphed starfall even though some people say other glyphs are better for boomkin dps... I use this spell on almost all occasions.

For healing, I have 4 types of healing.

1 tree - macroed to the dps spam button to cast lifebloom, rejuv, and on the second dps spam button, I have rejuv and regrowth. This eases the pain of hotting up the tank while doing all other stuff as well.
Then on the mouse I have a castsequence similar to the main spam dps button to hot up a toon, and on the right I have nourish for fast healing of a single toon.
Then theres Wildgrowth. I have actually this to a third mousebutton to be casted on the toon I want (usually just the healer), and I also have this button bound on one of my ability keys for the tank.. I generally spam this on every cooldown, since my tree never runs out of mana - atleast not on 90% of all fights.
Then I have tranquility bound for each char (dps + healer). I rarely use this, but in case my healer dies I can cast tranquility forcing a dps out of moonkinform and start healing instead, or if I have time, revive the healer.

One of the biggest issues for me is managing all the forms and scenarios the druids presents. But its fun.

And 3 x starfall or Forces of Nature in pvp is epic :D

Regarding the druids being the new super race, I doubt it.

They lack the stamina of the plate and mail classes unless in bear form. But I might be wrong. I also depends on the changes to the eclipse system etc.
Many classes gets boosts in one way or the other, and I actually think Blizzard is doing a good job at balancing the classes. But until the changes are in-game and people get geared up it probably difficult to see whats going to happen.

I don't think druids are going to be the new super race. I think they might be a fantastic comp for people who are looking for a great BG comp, though. It's also a very "future-proof" type composition that is worthy of long-term time investment. Since the druid is the most flexible solo class, able to fill ALL game roles, it gives multi-druid setups even more flexibility.

can boomkins heal in that form?

If not, what about wierd hybrid builds where you get a good amount of dps (not in boomkin form), but still able to heal?

I recall a solid spec in S3 arena for glads was some off the wall hybrid druid spec. They stayed in caster form and were hard as @#(@_#) to kill.