5 x Druid?

[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

[tripleboxed]

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.

This is true PVE with 5 druids is pretty much easy sauce as i have a team of five druids myself and we have no trouble in the pve world

[tripleboxed]

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.

Of crouse if you have this combo why not try 5 Boomz and pvp i did it and i was amazed by the amount of dps i cloud pull of for aoe and single target i destroyed & won every battleground.

As far as 5 restos im not sure how this can be effective in battlegrounds till cata i guess you cloud spam wild growth if your team sticks together im not sure lol.

[Sbrowne55]

Ya boomkin is something I'm going to try also. I was worried about fears tho. Beserk is just amazing for pvp. I love when priest/locks storm in for a ae fear to get insta killed lol. With my setup, I have turned fearing to my advantage. For my resto's I got glyph of healing touch. Its lightning fast healing(.96 sec/per cast. With my ferals taking 20% more healing, they heal to full each cast.

I honestly haven't done much insta pve dungeons, I just run alts with a druid in the group to gear up.

[Boylston]

Here are my BG experiences with my all-Boomkin team. Keep in mind I'm a fresh 80 who just finished leveling 4xDruids to go with a 5th druid that had been sitting at 80 for a long time. I have found the BG experiences with 4xL70-79s to be roughly equivalent to 5x80s in the top bracket.

I have played 4xShamans and DX+4xRets extensively in BG/Arenas, so I have a good frame of reference for what multiboxing teams can do.

Boomkins in BGs (as of end-of-WotLK):

Overall playstyle:
This is a fun, flexible team that has significant ability to impact a BG outcome. The team utilizes stealth and cooldowns to provide gameplay advantages that other multiboxing teams cannot offer. The team play remarkably like a solo druid, and the multiboxer must rely on the druid class's shapeshifting, healing, and escape tools in order to operate at peak effectiveness. In order to get the most out of this team, a multiboxing setup that allows precise mouse broadcasting is highly recommended.

Ways to play:
Much like a solo druid, this team is strong at survival IF YOU PLAY IT CONSERVATIVELY. This means popping barkskin, shifting into travel form and running away (with Rejuv ticking) if you face strong opposition.

Alternatively, this team can utilize stealth to achieve BG objectives that are very hard to duplicate on other teams. Alterac Valley is a great example-- it's possible to stealth deep into the enemy base and take out towers or graveyards with relative ease. Stealth also allows defensive opportunities that are unparalleled. In BGs with nodes to defend, the team can linger in stealth mode and encourage 1-5 enemy to come up for an "easy cap". You do not have to reveal your position until much later in a BG session. Although you may get overwhelmed later on at a node, you will have several minutes longer to keep the enemy guessing. A real viable strategy is to stealth-defend a node a couple times, then abandon it if you see a large zerg force and go capture 1-2 other nodes while the enemy mobilizes to take out the "evil multiboxer".

Alternatively, this team has the "Blaze of Glory" tactic available to it where you will pretty much guarantee your team's death in exchange for the death of 7-15 enemies. Starting from stealth, you can infiltrate a pack of enemies and barkskin, treant, starfall, (maybe hurricane), and typhoon the group around to great effect. Cooldowns on all these abilities are relatively short, so they can be utilized very frequently throughout a match. Sometimes, this tactic works without killing off your team, which can be a huge bonus.

Common attack methods:
Honestly, 90% of the time, my team will select the nearest enemies and unload instants while staying mobile. This normally looks like insect swarm, moonfire, typhoon. These three spells are the major source of my damage. A 5x stacks of MF+IS is a good chunk of damage and is hard for most non-healer spec characters to deal with. It does not kill as fast as a good Lava Burst salvo, however you do not have to stick to one spot to cast. Insect swarm, like some other DoTs, can be case without facing your target. Moonfire spam can also be suprisingly effective while pursuing weakened targets.

Salvos of Wrath are effective if you're dealing with other casters who aren't moving, but melees will generally close on you very fast if you try to stand at range and just use cast-time spells. I've found it much more useful to rely on instant cast damage/DoTs and then change my position to avoid taking too much damage.

Starfire is pretty much only good for situations where you have a LOT of time to cast uninterrupted or you are using it as an opener from Stealth. Using it against a melee is fraught with problems, as they will most likely close on you and either interrupt or cause you to lose facing against them with multiple druids. I have not used this spell much in most BG situations, unfortunately.

Hurricane is similar to above, although I am using it more frequently in the last several weeks. It is a decent spell to use while flanking a group of people. You might get several ticks off before being discovered, then you can switch to Starfall+Typhoons for more AoE punishment.

Treants are great, although I tend to use them more defensively than offensively. What I mean by this is I like to have them out marauding around so that it is harder for people to target me. The amount of DPS I receive on my main is dramatically reduced when they're in play.

Vulnerabilities:
Fear is a big vulnerability, especially when compared to shamans. The main strategy I use is to make sure that fearbomb-capable classes remain at range and die ASAP. Typhoon is very useful for keeping priests and warlocks at bay. If I do get feared, I immediately barkskin+trinket if available to try to increase the odds that I'm able to regroup and survive.

Healing is tied to shifting. Obviously this is not anything shocking, but breaking out of boomkin form to heal costs you GCDs and makes you squishier. This is a weakness compared to shaman or pallies. However... round robin Tranquilities is very, very nice. You have it available pretty often with a 5x team, and it has been shocking to me just how useful this skill has been in BGs, even during fights.

Starfall:
Starfall is strong currently, without a doubt. Without having played beta of Cataclysm, I think it will still be a strong spell because it frees you up to do other things while it's ticking away and is auto-targeting people near you. It may not be an I-Win button long-term, but it is still a nice signature ability that stacks well in multibox situations.

New Stuff in Cata:
Too soon to tell, since I've not played beta. However, there's some good stuff to be theorycraft-excited about. Thorns looks very potent at dealing with melee-AoE. New silence ability also looks fantastic and can be weaved in with current IS+MF spam. Moonfire power increases while mobile will also mesh well with the playstyle. The knockdown ability lends itself to round-robin-ing with Wrath/Starfall for situations where you might want to stand in there and dominate someone. Stealth + mass mushrooms looks like it could be very promising for BG node defense.

Play in Cataclysm??
The main dilemma I have at the moment is that all classes are getting big changes. The question is: will a team like the Shamans pick up more advantages than the druids. With the expansion, all classes appear to be getting buffed and changed, so it's hard to predict where the multi-boomkins will end up in terms of effectiveness.

Comparisons:
In short, I think that the Shamans are the ultimate defensive team that is able to function as a big ranged cannon, albeit relatively fixed in place. DK+Rets is a very offensive team that is able to steamroll opponents and keep moving. Boomkins are a sneaky team that is able to bring to bear good firepower when needed, is highly mobile, and has the advantage of being able to pick their fights.

Footnote: 4-5 druids can be split up in a variety of configurations, obviously. While I didn't cover the "All Feral" approach or the blending of Resto druids into the team, they are options. Druids may not be the best team at any given time, but they have a significant amount of "future-proofness" to them. They also make a highly configurable PvE team, should a player desire the challenge of heroics or other PvE content.

[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.