5 x Druid?

[Seldum]

I run 5x druids, and have mostly played pve.

I run with 1 tank, 1 tree, and 3 boomkins.

I don't manage the procs but have build in an approximation in my castsequence. My team is not very well geared, but they can manage the heroics even in crap gear. Again, my tank is "okey" geared, so this helps alot, but the rest of the team are in greens and blues.

for pvp I have run the same setup (lol) and my boomkins are glass cannons. But I guess this is the story for all newly dinged 80 chars decked out in quest greens and blues.

For pvp I will go 4xboomkins and 1xtree. Especially with the new changes in cata where the tree form goes away and the healer is also able to do damage.

I'm not fond of the melee cat form at all. Their dps depends on bleed damage and in general they have one of the most complicated dps rotations in the game. To me they feel weak compared to other melee chars which is why I rather go with boomkins for dps.

I love the mobility of the boomkin dps. Moonfire, insect swarm, typhoon, and a fast cast of wrath + starfall got potential in pvp.

I have glyphed my starfall on my boomkins and use it in pve as much as possible.

[gbremset]

I have a druid team and I love them.. I do the odd 25man raid with my raiding guild (the druids aren't in this guild, as I want all 5 in same guild), and I levelled and do heroics as Tank-Healer-3xBoom.

In wintergrasp they are known as the Doomkins, and I absolutely love playing them. At the moment I have 5x boom + 5x tree spec on them, to easier get random groups for frosties (some days I can actually be bothered doing randoms on all of them).

For now I've taken a break from soloing heroics, as I am working on my argent tournament dailies.

Here's a nice little video I made from Wintergrasp on Nagrand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stlme-vL1o4

[OzPhoenix]

Well, sounds like 5xDruid is definitely going to be the team I level in Cata to see all the new-old content.

[Sbrowne55]

I have been doing this for a few months now in pvp. I started off with 1 resto and 4 ferals. I'm using 2 restos and 3 ferals.

It's alot of fun, barely die unless some twinked out hordes are around. I'm reaching 70 so I expect gear and difficulty to play a bigger role.

I like feral- lots of good utility in there. The dmg is kinda lacking tho. But I manage.

Lots of fun

[blast3r]

I do like playing my druid team and have done some heroics with them. I wish my tree had better aoe healing capabilities. With my shaman i have one spec'd restro but in a bind I just hit chain heal and everyone gets topped off. But just LOVE being able to stealth around trash and go straight to the boss with my druids. In PVP for some reason they don't feel comfortable to me. I feel awkward and not sure why.

[ghonosyph]

I'm LOVING my 4 druids(been leveling them thru the 70's bracket in av all weekend and eots last weekend.) its very rare that i'm not top kills pushing near 200 + hks in a match for av and almost every game top dmg unless i decide to protect towers or what not... all depends on pug strats and where the ally defend.

My basic tactics are pretty much to run travel form, cast nature's grasp so that melee get punished/rooted, cast a rejuv and lifebloom, then barkskin while i run at the opposing team, continue to hot myself mid combat but my usual opener is to find a priest or lock in teh group dot them, then cast typhoon and starfall. run around hotting and dotting, if i get low on mana, or i get low on hps i blow more hots and run away while things tick. lol alliance just roll over and die >.< its so fun haha

The new spells we get in cata, combined with the still OP ness of starfall will make us even more potent, however i'm not to certain on our hots being effective anymore... lots of resto droods are bitching cause hots are nerfed all to hell... they suck atm. I cant lie there either, its pretty bad lol but we get silence and knockdowns too... fears still hurt but solar beaming on melee can help prevent that "run in and aoe fear" for us enough where we can blow a cooldown or 2 and really destroy. Its all about waiting for your starfall to come back sooner... in cata one of the new glyphs we get is "whenever starsurge deals dmg, the cooldown on your starfall is reduced by 5 seconds"

I think theres enough time in between starfalls(recalling from memory atm dont quote me) that you can cast starsurge 3 or 4 times, reducing starfall to around 40 seconds while deepzing. Stacking large amounts of haste and crit on my boomkin has made it pretty fun on beta, tho there will doubtless be lots of theorycrafting once they get the numbers right on beta.

All in all, i think this team is going to be a rated bg contender... especially with a backup shaman healer and a feral druid on your team(for the aoe sprint thingy). i can see a couple boxers possibly doing well in rated bgs with 5 shammy 5 druid. lol time will tell(as always, its beta*)

[Boylston]

After spending a little bit of time (mostly solo) on the 4.0 PTR, I worry that multi-boomkins for BGs will be inferior to Shamans. The stealth advantage will still be there, but I worry that the setup just doesn't have any punch needed for large health pools.

I think it will be possible to set up some cool rotations that keep people at range, but more than 1-2 enemies coming at you will be hard to deal with. There's no amazing ranged attack damage like the shamans have, and there certainly isn't the turtling defensive capability that the shamans have.

I have not tested out everything in a MB configuration, obviously. But I will say that the shaman changes appear to give that team comp a significant upper hand.

[ghonosyph]

shamans cant heal as effectively anymore, and pvp in boomkin is all about blowing typhoons on a 2 cast then 3 cast round robin(ie 2 druids cast it, then 3 druids cast it) so that you can keep multiple enemies at range and wait out starfall. there's some NEW changes coming for boomkins that are up on mmo champ right now, including making starsurge(our hardest hitting single target spell so far) instant cast and cooldown resetting. its like a green lava burst!. I have NO doubt that the new druid stuff is going to be super awesome. Entangling roots change looks promising, chance to root everything within 8 yards of the target, which will help since roots will be instant cast. you can round robin it and cast it on several diff targets to MASS root a ton of people if they zerg you... wait out the 30 sec typhoon to boost them back again till starfall comes back too

[Boylston]

Ok. So Starsurge instant cast would be interesting, along with the Entangling Roots change.

I can see a situation where one casts instants almost exclusively and continually weaves in...

Moonfire,
Entangling Roots,
Starsurge,
Typhoon,
Solar Beam,

That would allow a boomkin team to just stay completely mobile and still wear people down. Looking at the Starsurge change, it looks very much proc-based, which is doable but not as nice if that big damage ability was actually always instant cast.

On the whole, I am still very concerned. I just don't see huge bursty DPS numbers out of boomkin on the PTR like I do from the shaman. I also think the eclipse mechanic, while not impossible to manage, is a big part of druid DPS and will take some managing. The fact that it's crucial to mana recovery is also concerning.

I'm just cautious. Shaman changes look like they're all good, where as the druid changes are really going to require an analysis of how things might play out at L85 to understand.

[Boylston]

I also just saw these notes:

Wild Mushroom now becomes visible after 6 sec, up from 4 sec. Base damage increased by 400% (from 269-304 to 1300-1573 damage)

I think they meant [in]visible after 6 seconds. Still, with 5 boomkins dropping these, that's 5x3x1400ish = ~21,000 damage to trigger remotely. Not bad.

Argh!