Boxing Feral Druids

[nodoze]

I will keep you all posted...i have just completed two dungeons that has put performed my shaman setup.
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but Druids have something I very dislike and that’s the lack of crowd control/aoe damage in classic, lots of mechanics going on with average damage and leather armour is high risk. Let’s say a second group of mobs get pulled and managing it is very hard.
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I’ll update how things are going, I think resto spec and dots is a better passive attack than boomkin. so currently I am 4x resto hybrid with feral tank. so far so good but I have aoe damage and healing concerns , both received and delivered.

FYI , no mana issues with resto hybrid focusing on dots for damage and feral for keeping the mobs busy while they die down, this maintains regeneration of mana, and if mana is good, Starfire finishes them off, my grinding or boss fights is MF, IS, spam starfire. this kills most things.

this is the a concern for most, is the damage output may not be good enough for the fun element.

BUT , they are insane all-moving , hots and dots is epic imo.l due to being healers makes it crazy fail-safe.

Thanks for the updates and glad you are having fun. What spec are you running on your 4 that are mainly Resto with some Balance?

I would try to work in at least one Boomkin (still getting at least Insect Swarm from Resto) and see how that adds to the party as it should boost 4 members ranged DPS some. Your Moonkin should push the highest DPS in the party and if it pulls a little aggro from the Bear that should be fine as it has similar mitigation (+360% armor) so can be an effective off tank for your party.

My memory is that in Classic WoW HoT's didn't stack so if that is the case you may want to go deep Resto on only 1 character to specialize in HoTs and the other characters just go enough Resto to get the the bonuses to Healing Touch and Nature's Swiftness (except the Boomkin). In the end you are likely more doing DPS than healing so maybe tilt your party more toward the DPS talents. With that in mind I would try something like:

• -Feral Tank;
• -MoonKin offTank with at least Insect Swarm from Resto;
• -Balance/Resto (30/0/21) to give max/most MoonFury yet still get Nature's Swiftness);
• -Balance/Resto (30/0/21) to give max/most MoonFury yet still get Nature's Swiftness);
• -Deep_Resto/some_Balance (Max HoTs including SwiftMend);

Note that I put max/most on MoonFury above as one thing I denoted when taking a quick look at the talents is that with only 30 (or 31 with Moonkin) points in Balance is that you will unfortunately have to miss EITHER the 5th point in MoonFury (+2% damage on MoonFire, Wrath, & StarFire) or the 5th Point in Improved StarFire (-.1 sec cast time reduction & +3% stun). To allow your 2 nonMoonkin Balance/Restos to still have 21 in Resto for Nature's Swiftness you have to sacrifice one or the other... I would pay attention to your rotations and scenarios and decide what is better. If you can get to where StarFire is your main spell after DoTs then likely 5/5 Improved StarFire would be best as that would increase your overall Crowd Control by upto~12% per cast (across the 4 non bear characters you can get 4 15% chances to stun per cast) and the cast time reduction may help rotations/speed of your primary damage and CC (CC being one of the things you lamented)...

Your Deep Resto will still be doing 2 DoTs but otherwise it's priority is on applying the HoTs and/or direct heals with the other 2 (or 3) non-bear characters being more of your emergency heals buttons (you can round robin their Nature's Swiftness instant heals if you want). When healing needed is not more than your HoTs, in addition to keeping up DoTs, your Deep Resto could also throw some Direct Damage spells though to do that effectively I would maybe want to normally drive from the main Resto until I understood how to mix/match those all in effectively.

The above should maximize your HoTs and significantly increase party DPS and CC.

Just some thoughts.