Section One: Gear Choices for an OT/DPS Feral Druid
Unfortunately when one is looking at filling both an off-tanking and a damage dealing role in many of the same pieces of gear, there are going to be some trade-offs that have to be made. First, to be completely clear, without having a complete DPS-designed set of gear one will not be a top damage dealer in any raid unless the other people are doing something wrong (or much lower geared). However, as an OT/DPS raid member, one should not be focused on the damage meters anyway.
As an off-tank there is a lot more leniency in trying to gear more toward the dps side of the fence than a main tank. It is still very, very highly recommended that two sets of gear be maintained either way, but a hybrid set can work when not the main tank.
Now that I’ve emphasized that thought multiple times, let’s look at some things to keep in mind when gearing.
Stamina and Agility are major from a tanking perspective, with Dodge being very, very close. Generally speaking, maintaining 30,000+ armor, consistently hitting 32,000 to 35,000 health, and keeping dodge rating over 30 percent will be more than sufficient for off-tanking current 10-man content easily (I do not have the experience in 25-mans to compare, but it should be sufficient there as well provided your healers are decently geared).
Keeping those stats in mind, using some gear choices geared more toward damage (items with higher crit rating, strength, and attack power all fit the bill nicely) when not sacrificing huge amounts of stamina or armor will really impact overall damage. For example, using the Staff of Trickery instead of the Staff of the Plague Beast (or, with gear levels high enough elsewhere, even getting that gorgeous Wraith Spear pictured above) will easily lead to a very noticeable increase in damage on those fights where you are spending most of your time in cat form.
As a general rule, I look at Strength > Agility > Stamina > Dodge > Attack Power > Hit Rating when choosing what pieces to use, but while still maintaining the baseline numbers I mentioned above. Agility is a very important stat, primarily due to its effect on armor, crit, attack power, and dodge.
I’m not going to get into the details on how these all operate together, or on specific gear recommendations. Too many other, excellent guides already exist on such topics. Karthis has many articles detailing these mechanics and his recommendations on gear from a pure DPS perspective (and some excellent tanking information as well) that are well worth the read.
Section Two: Talent Choices
This will pretty much be your base build: Wowhead Link
In all honesty, there is not much room for playing with different talents, because you will have to have all of the core tanking talents and the core damage-dealing talents in order to fulfill the OT/DPS role. There really are only a couple of reasons not to go with this exact build, or to manipulate a couple of talent points: Wowhead Link
Again, I’m going to skip detailed analysis on talents because the information is so freely available. Most of what I really wanted to get to is contained in the next two sections.
Section Three: Measuring Success
Remember that statement about not paying attention to the damage meters in an OT/DPS role? Well, now we’re going to look at them briefly. The easiest way to see if you are contributing nicely to the amount of damage done when not off-tanking is to look at the numbers for each individual fight. Open recount and change it to display the current fight. After each mob take a look at where everyone stands. If you are doing a respectable amount of damage compared to the rest of the raid, then you’re doing fine. If you’re below the healers…
When attempting to measure your success as a tank of any type it is a little trickier. The first thing to find out is how easy or difficult the healers are having keeping you alive. If they are struggling, and they are decently geared, it is time to reevaluate gear, talent choices, skills used, and whether or not something should be changed on how the mob is being tanked. This is not an easy process by any means, and can be significantly impacted by the ability of the healers just as much as the ability of the tank.
Success is going to be defined differently by different people as well, further complicating things. As a general rule the baseline measurement for being successful should be a combination of the number of people who survive the fight and its correlation to how stressed the healers are after said fight. For example, if the job of the OT was to pick up adds, but the healers had to really be almost perfect to keep everyone alive because the adds were not picked up efficiently, that is not success.
Section Four: Assorted Tips, Tricks, Observations, Musings, and Ramblings
- Piece together two sets, one for tanking and one for DPS. Seriously. One set will work if done properly, but it is so much better to have two specific sets.
- Being in the OT/DPS role means, aside from a couple of fights, you can almost look exclusively at DPS maximization as long as you have a couple of tanking pieces to help make up the disparity.
- Cat form is very, very fun.
- In a hybrid tanking/dps set you can still pull off very respectable damage done.
- Wraith Spear is a gorgeous weapon.
Phaelia over at Resto4Life has a post up (link) that summarily explains why utilizing the Tree of Life form is a no-brainer. Honestly, I would never recommend being a restoration druid without taking the Improved Tree of Life talents either, but I’m setting my opinion aside for a moment to address healing without the “wilted broccoli” look:
It is possible, albeit much more difficult, to be an effective healer without using the Tree of Life form.
Section One: Talent Build – HoT Based Healing Wowhead Link (28/0/43) – HT Based Healing Wowhead Link (28/0/43)
These talents are not optional for healing without Tree of LIfe form (the other talents in the build above may be applied differently if one is so inclined):
- (5/5) Genesis
- (3/3) Moonglow
- (2/2) Nature’s Majesty
- (1/1) Nature’s Splendor
- (3/3) Lunar Guidance
- (3/3) Dreamstate
- (5/5) Naturalist
- (3/3) Intensity
- (1/1) Omen of Clarity
- (5/5) Tranquil Spirit
- (3/3) Improved Rejuvenation
- (1/1) Nature’s Swiftness
- (5/5) Gift of Nature
- (5/5) Improved Regrowth
- (3/3) Living Spirit
- (1/1) Swiftmend
- (5/5) Empowered Rejuvenation
In looking over these talents two primary themes should be quite evident: mana conservation and increased healing power. Without the reduction in healing cost provided by the Tree of Life form mana conservation will be much more important, just as the lack of the increase in healing power from spirit means increasing spell power through gear, gem, and enchant choices will be a very close second.
The only difference in the two builds above is the migration of two points from Empowered Rejuvenation to Empowered Touch in order to boost the healing of Healing Touch by an additional forty percent.
Section Two: Overall Healing Approach
Aside from the lack of any AoE healing (Tranquility is a great spell, but it is not going to be able to fill the hole Wild Growth fills. With this build / style go ahead and accept that there is no AoE Healing potential), the approach is basically the same as any other resto druid. The main differences lie in the need to really, really be mindful of mana consumption and regeneration and the need to really stack as much intellect and spirit as possible to boost mana regeneration and spell power.
Emphasis: I do not, in any way, recommend this build for raiding. Repeat, I do not recommend this build for raiding. Ever. Under any circumstances.
Keep the above statement in mind now, as the following is pretty much contradictory: this could be a viable build for all of the current content in the hands of a capable player.
Leveraging a combination of increased mana regeneration from Living Spirit + Dreamstate, reducing mana cost of as many heals as possible through talents, and increasing spell power with Lunar Guidance actually makes a solid combination for healing. This becomes even more pronounced as gear levels change, and allows quite a bit of flexibility in gem and enchant choices as one becomes more comfortable healing in this manner.
Section Three: Miscellaneous Notes
- I highly recommend Tree of Life + (3/3) Improved Tree of Life if you want to play a restoration druid.
- With enough spell power and mana regeneration any talent spec can work, technically. Just because it can work does not mean it should be done. Remember that there is a reason one typically sees restoration druids in tree form.
- Using the above talent specs, you could heal any heroic currently in the game in caster form as long as the tank is adequately geared and can keep you from being one- or two-shot.
- One of the main concerns with attempting this scenario is survivability. There is a very good reason why Improved Tree of LIfe grants an armor bonus also.
- Did I happen to mention I highly recommend Tree of Life + (3/3) Improved Tree of Life if you want to play a restoration druid.
Conclusion
Yes, healing without tree form is possible. Yes, a person can be effective without tree form. It is not, however, the most efficient or most effective method of healing as a druid, and certainly not something I would recommend.
I wrote a guest post for Bellwether not too terribly long ago (and that post can be found here) about the use of Nourish versus Regrowth. With the recently announced changes to Wild Growth and Nourish that are planned for the 3.0.8 patch (listed below) this is a good time to add a little more to that post.
- Nourish: Wild Growth applied to a target now increases the healing done by this spell by 20% like other heal over time effects.
- Wild Growth now has a 6 second cooldown.
My conclusion in the original post can be summarized as follows: using Nourish is going to end up coming down to preferences in healing style, comfort level with HoTs, gear, glyph selection, and time needed to land a heal. (Alright, so I expanded that slightly too!)
With the changes referenced above, Nourish is looking more and more appealing, and honestly the spell is starting to feel useful now that my gear has grown substantially (i.e., I have no mana issues and can pretty much play with whatever spell I want instead of having to go with the most efficient healing route I can).
There are times, even without any HoTs on a target, that Nourish is a solid choice to land a quick heal. We can talk about efficiency, HPS, HPM… pick a topic and insert it here basically… all day long, and in the end it still comes down to what gets the job done that you can consistently repeat.
I should interject here that I am not a fan of “rotations.” If all you are doing is memorizing an order for button presses then I’m pretty sure you won’t understand what I mean. If you, instead, are the type of healer that “feels” their way around then you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I use a fairly typical process for determining what spells to use:
- Lifebloom will always be rolling on someone taking consistent damage (the tank).
- Someone who is not taking consistent or heavy damage I generally toss Rejuvenation on.
- Regrowth is normally my direct heal of choice. If I needed to get a direct heal on someone that is not taking consistent damage I like having the trailing HoT. On someone who is taking consistent damage, but that I have plenty of time to cast, I also use Regrowth because it is (typically, especially counting crits) a stronger heal.
- Enter Nourish. I use it in two very different scenarios: when I need a fast heal or someone will die, which means I don’t have the time to wait the extra half-second for Regrowth (or, more accurately, that I’m afraid to wait that extra time) or in the event that I already have a full compliment of HoTs on the tank and just want to top them off again.
I play by feel. My theory-crafting generally is done by gaining a feel for what I need to compliment my style of play, with a little bit of math to make sure I’m not completely off-kilter, and then putting together a set that ensures:
- My heals are strong enough to heal through anything I have to heal through.
- I do not have mana regen issues.
With that said, Nourish is an effective heal when it is needed. It will be even more appealing with Wild Growth adding to the bonus healing, especially in spots where you can’t really take the time to drop Regrowth on each of the party or raid members taking damage. It is very situational, but that is part of the beauty of our arsenal of spells.
If nothing else, just remember to try out the spell under various circumstances and see how it works for you. You may never use the spell, and that is perfectly fine. If you are like me, however, and you find a niche where it works (and works well) in your style of play, then you’ll find Nourish to actually be a very nice addition to your repertoire.
Originally I posted an article that was driven around solo leveling in Wrath. Since then I’ve changed my strategy completely, and am actually leveling almost full Resto. Wait, what’s that? You want to know if I suddenly developed a bad case of tree rot in the head? No, I assure you it is working out quite well. Here is the scoop:
Preface: I hit level 75 on Sunday, the 16th. I could have leveled faster than I have thus far, but I’m not trying to just power level. My goal is just to hit 77 this week so I can fly again, and obviously I’m going to meet my goal without a problem at this rate.
Step One: Find a questing partner.
Ideally you will want to find a tank. I know this sounds sort of counter-productive, but trust me it will pay off. I especially recommend a Paladin, but any tank will do fine.
Step Two: Specs.
The tank should be specced for tanking, with perhaps a couple of points spared for increased DPS as possible. You should be specced in a way that allows you to heal very well. This can vary slightly, but I recommend this build: Level 80 Final
Step Three: Try to convince your friends you haven’t lost your mind.
My guildmate, also level 75 and a Prot-Spec Paladin, and I have been able to successfuly and easily handle every quest we have encountered. Some things may not die as quickly as they would otherwise, but downing elites that are 2-3 levels higher than us without too much difficulty makes it much, much easier to finish quests. Not to mention we have been able to run every instance we pass without difficulty, since we can always find willing DPS to go and we have the tank/healer combo already.
My damage output really isn’t very good with this spec, I’ll admit. It works, and most mobs die within a 45-75 second window, but I know I could easily squeeze more damage output with a few tweaks to my spec. However, I have found it challenging to heal in the new instances, and without being fully resto-spec’d I’m not certain I could sustain the healing throughput necessary to complete them (or down a couple of the elites we’ve encountered).
The trade-off between damage and healing has always been tough to decide how to handle, and in the end it all really comes down to how you decide to play the game. This method, while not necessarily fastest, allows us to work together and enjoy leveling, and do so in a relatively efficient and expedient manner. One added benefit: the tank/healer relationship definitely grows stronger spending so much time playing together also!
Like many druids, I carry multiple sets of gear. If one were to force me to choose a “main spec” I would have to go with Restoration, but part of the beauty of playing such a versatile class lies in the ability to play more than one spec in my opinion. I’ve been pondering exactly how I’m going to level when WotLK hits, and this post outlines what I’ve finally come up with as a plan.
Reference:
- Current Spec – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VZZf0IubuxVuAhst
- Release Day Respec – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGbufcsIzZZbxsubux
- Final Spec at 80 (Resto) – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGouZZf0IubuxVuAhst
- Final Spec at 80 (Hybrid) – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGburcsId0VzRZZbxsubux
- Interesting Spec I may try – http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGbufcohZZbxsubuxVuV0R
Honestly, I know I’m going to tweak those builds as I go. I know how I am about playing with talents and abilities, and then moving a point here and there as I get a better feel for things. That in mind, what follows is just and idea of what talents I know I’m going to pick up and why:
Genesis.
Perhaps it is simply because I’m more of a natural resto druid than any other spec, but the addition of extra damage over time and a boost to HoTs for solo’ing just makes more sense to me than reducing the cast time of Wrath and Starfire. I don’t mind taking the extra 20-30 seconds to kill a mob, especially if it means less downtime between fights because I still have somewhat strong HoTs.
Nature’s Grace.
A half-second cast time off of any spell after a crit makes a lot of sense to me, especially as often as I can crit (granted, that is with Regrowth at the moment, but I’ve got a decent spell crit set waiting in the bank for leveling too!). No matter where else I shuffle talents at lower levels, this is a definite keeper.
Nature’s Splendor.
Just like my reasoning for Genesis, anything that makes both HoTs and DoTs stronger makes me lean heavily in that direction.
Lunar Guidance and Dreamstate.
Mana Regen + Spellpower based on Intellect. I really do not think anyone spec’ing far enough into Balance to get to Moonkin form should forego these two talents, they just make too much sense.
Omen of Clarity.
I am not certain why any druid would not want this ability, especially with its proc rate being so good in my experience, but I’m certain someone can provide the math to show where it would be better to have something else. Personally, I love this talent.
Intensity.
Perhaps it is simply that I do not like running out of mana if I can potentially avoid it that I will take every available mana conservation talent, but I see this one as a staple of my build due to the high spirit numbers from my predominantly restoration-centric gear.
Nature’s Swiftness.
I like having my “oh holy f*** get me out of here!” emergency macro (Nature’s Swiftness + HT), and I just don’t see myself giving that up.
This leads me to the two specs I’m considering, the one listed above (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGbufcsIzZZbxsubux) and http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0VGburckGzZZbxsubuxm as an alternative.
There are many viable options for leveling in Wrath, obviously. Technically even going completely untalented is viable, though not advised. This spec not only takes advantage of my undeniably strong restoration gear, but also the ability to heal in dungeons (I hope) throughout the leveling process.
Direbrewfest
Argent Confessor
Kiss and Make Up (10 player)
Heroic: Trial of the Champion
