5 resto druids

[Naysayer]

Still not any evidence that any number of druids is even remotely viable in arena, or even pvp in general. On paper they look great, but in practice: no so much. I think that's why this topic keeps coming up.

I've done 4x resto shaman in full relentless, 5400GS, and it's a gimmick that gets old in about 2 days. You can't heal people to death. Ultimately you find the team susceptible to the same tactics that work against a dps comp, only it takes a little longer to die and you don't kill anyone in the meantime.

wasn't any evidence that paladins or melee was viable at all a couple months ago but Kromtor didn't give a shit about that. keep trying to discourage people from trying new things though.

[Stealthy]

I'm running a team 5 boomkins (amongst others) at the moment - lots of fun in BG's but not much chop in arenas. Lack of burst is already a problem for the space chickens, and if you went 5 resto I think it would become a major problem - your damage would easily be healed through.

Have you thought about going 5 x feral cats instead? With IWT opening the door on melee boxing, they might be worth a try.

Cheers,
S.

[Ualaa]

I'm messing around with 5x Feral at the moment.

They're 69th to 72nd, pretty much PvE at the moment.
But will PvP with them.
Probably a very decent team for rated battlegrounds, not sure of arena.

Berserk is 20 seconds of fear immunity, and also breaks fear.
Add in the trinket every 2 minutes, and diminishing returns.
And Feral Charge - Cat, and they have decent fear protection.

I'm using a macro, similar to Art of War procs.
Based on stances, where if they are cat form it casts a heal.
But then there's a stopcasting line in there, to cancel a non-instant cast.
And then another line for resuming cat form, if they're in caster form.
I should translate this into a mapped key, so after cat form it won't advance back to casting the heal for "x" seconds.
Feral has a talent, which gets you a 20% chance per combo point that your next 'Nature' spell under 10sec is insta-cast.
It's working as intended, but still means unlike Pallies they will need to drop from DPS form to heal.
With IS Boxer, I'm using a toggle mapped key, to alternate from target=player to assisting the active toon for the heal.

I have IWT built into my DPS moves.
And a toggle mapped key, to enable/disable the IWT that is built in.
So I can have IWT spam, along with my click macro, or disable the mapped key, and have click without IWT spam.
Of course also have another IWT key, on its own keybind which is not spammed as part of my dps.

Have two DPS macro's for the cats.
Mangle based from the front.
And Shred based from the rear.
Spamming Shred, with IWT, is more dps then Mangle without the circling etc.
Need to have another target nearby, or be quick on the follow (put it on a mouse thumb button) or they frequently run away, from the IWT spam.
Bear has similar function keys on the same binds... so could run PvE heroics for gearing too, with a tank.

Have hotkeys for everyone to Cat, everyone to Bear.
Also have action target groups, where toons are either in the Cat or Bear group.
And the option to toggle each toon independently between these two states.
Not sure yet, if going to bear form when focused by melee is even worthwhile, but want a bear option for PvE.
The Bear group never does heals, but the Cat group does.

Will possibly ditch repeater regions for Cats entirely, and have them only load for toons in the Tree group.
And then have a mapped key for talent switching which adds toons to the Tree group, for click repeater based heals.

Will have Battle Rez on round-robin, for battlegrounds.
With the glyphs, it is no reagent and the toon comes back at full health.
And 5 druids, that's going to be decent.
Of course, cannot use B.Rez in arena... the team will arena until Cataclysm, because that is where the gear is, but BG's > Arena once both are rated.

So far the team absolutely destroys mobs.
Much more so then any other team I've played or when they were Boomkin.

Each has dual-spec, with a Resto form.
And I'd already bought a set of iLV 187-226 gear for level 80 as boomkin.
So that's a decent starter set for their Tree Forms.
Might run the odd BG (AV in particular) as 5x Resto.

They're still a work in progress.
When I'm happy with what I have, I'll do a write up on my set up.

[Fuzzyboy]

I'm messing around with 5x Feral at the moment.

They're 69th to 72nd, pretty much PvE at the moment.
But will PvP with them.
Probably a very decent team for rated battlegrounds, not sure of arena.

Berserk is 20 seconds of fear immunity, and also breaks fear.
Add in the trinket every 2 minutes, and diminishing returns.
And Feral Charge - Cat, and they have decent fear protection.

I'm using a macro, similar to Art of War procs.
Based on stances, where if they are cat form it casts a heal.
But then there's a stopcasting line in there, to cancel a non-instant cast.
And then another line for resuming cat form, if they're in caster form.
I should translate this into a mapped key, so after cat form it won't advance back to casting the heal for "x" seconds.
Feral has a talent, which gets you a 20% chance per combo point that your next 'Nature' spell under 10sec is insta-cast.
It's working as intended, but still means unlike Pallies they will need to drop from DPS form to heal.
With IS Boxer, I'm using a toggle mapped key, to alternate from target=player to assisting the active toon for the heal.

I have IWT built into my DPS moves.
And a toggle mapped key, to enable/disable the IWT that is built in.
So I can have IWT spam, along with my click macro, or disable the mapped key, and have click without IWT spam.
Of course also have another IWT key, on its own keybind which is not spammed as part of my dps.

Have two DPS macro's for the cats.
Mangle based from the front.
And Shred based from the rear.
Spamming Shred, with IWT, is more dps then Mangle without the circling etc.
Need to have another target nearby, or be quick on the follow (put it on a mouse thumb button) or they frequently run away, from the IWT spam.
Bear has similar function keys on the same binds... so could run PvE heroics for gearing too, with a tank.

Have hotkeys for everyone to Cat, everyone to Bear.
Also have action target groups, where toons are either in the Cat or Bear group.
And the option to toggle each toon independently between these two states.
Not sure yet, if going to bear form when focused by melee is even worthwhile, but want a bear option for PvE.
The Bear group never does heals, but the Cat group does.

Will possibly ditch repeater regions for Cats entirely, and have them only load for toons in the Tree group.
And then have a mapped key for talent switching which adds toons to the Tree group, for click repeater based heals.

Will have Battle Rez on round-robin, for battlegrounds.
With the glyphs, it is no reagent and the toon comes back at full health.
And 5 druids, that's going to be decent.
Of course, cannot use B.Rez in arena... the team will arena until Cataclysm, because that is where the gear is, but BG's > Arena once both are rated.

So far the team absolutely destroys mobs.
Much more so then any other team I've played or when they were Boomkin.

Each has dual-spec, with a Resto form.
And I'd already bought a set of iLV 187-226 gear for level 80 as boomkin.
So that's a decent starter set for their Tree Forms.
Might run the odd BG (AV in particular) as 5x Resto.

They're still a work in progress.
When I'm happy with what I have, I'll do a write up on my set up.

Sounds like a nice setup - looking forward to hearing more :-)