The New and Improved Druid?

I've been in a pretty significant experimental stage of Season 3 as the holiday approaches, pretty much trying and testing anyone who's interested in playing in 2v2 on the server. So far I've gone through like 4 seperate Rogues and a handful of Warlocks, and the only thing I've learned so far, is that Druids are have a chance to futher themselves even more from other healers in 2v2/3v3 if more and more make the transition to the "Deep spec"

I've noticed when playing Warlock/Priest, that even after well into the match, successfully landing a decent amount of mana burns/drain mana's, I'm often behind in mana, or at least very close to it. If for some reason I can't catch the innervate, or it even persists through a couple of dispels, I'm usually too far behind to pull off a win. On top of that, I found my Warlocks pet getting ninja attacked by the opposing Druid, and he/she was able to kill it pretty quickly. At first I was pretty perplexed as usually I could get way ahead after landing a couple of mana burns, then I noticed the Druid's I was facing off against weren't your standard 11/11/39 specs, rather the "Deep spec".

Last night, while playing with a new Rogue partner, I ran into Serennia playing Druid/Rogue (him on the Druid) and between our two 10 minute matches, I spoke to him a little bit about the spec he was running, which you can find here: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tjrzbcsRuZZVMIxcq

Jasi: So what do you think the strengths are with this build over the standard setup most Druid's use, and do you feel it's stronger with a Rogue or Warrior partner?

Seren: Strengths: ridiculous boost to mp5 (depending on the gear/gems you have access to), at least 150-200 or more damage/healing bonus, both of which are big (damage is underrated) 1.5 sec wraths can easily determine a fight, +6 yards on cyclone, root, nukes, DoTs that actually do a good chunk of damage, moonfire with this spec hits for like 550-600 initial, instead of like 300-400, free capped spell hit from talents, moonkin form to let you cyclone people while getting beat on instead of exposing human form, but mostly the emphasis on the synergy of dreamstate (10% of intellect into mp5) and intensity (30% mana while casting) so if you have good pve items, you get a huge conversion into mp5. Also, with balance of power, it gives you 4% spell hit free (along with 4% spell avoidance) so that already hit caps you too so you dont have to worry about the glove enchant or any gems.

The only things you really lose from resto are imp regrowth (doesnt really matter because regrowth is the most inefficient heal to use anyway), swiftmend which can be worked around with different strategies to prevent needing burst healing, natural perfection which doesnt matter much in 3v3 when targetting the druid is the least appetizing target considering the other threats you leave open and in 2v2 when a rogue can peel for you fairly easily, and empowered rejuvenation which is the only part that id really miss BUT on the flip side its already made up for almost from lunar guidance which gives you 25% of intellect into damage/healing. Not only does it effect the hots, but it affects final lifebloom tick so with standard build, final tick is like 1450 with this build its like 1600.

If anything, I'd compare this spec to playing similar to a priest but retaining the efficiency of a druid. By that i mean you can play really aggressively if needed and be successful.

As for Rogue vs. Warrior, I'd say Rogue, because Rogues can tank another melee for a long time while requiring minimal healing, no swiftmend isn't usually an issue, and you usually dont need feral charge either.

When I was playing against him yesterday, he was able to sit and spam wrath on me when the opportunity came about, and still stay ahead in mana. He was also able to sneakily damage pets with suprisingly large amounts of damage when I was with a Warlock partner.

Jasi: So tell me how the playstyle change is, what kind of new tricks do you find yourself using?

Seren: It's a big pet killer build if nothing else. This build gives +14% crit with moonfire from talents alone-- thats like 22-25% crit for the average druid on pets. If your rogue can tank a warrior or whatever for a bit or another melee, I can double dot and wrath spam. Wrath is 1k damage every 1.5 seconds with this spec, shadow priests cant even sustain this damage; its like a machine gun.

With our 3v3 comp I can literally play like a 3rd dps to try to score an early kill, and if it doesnt happen, i still just dropped like 20k damage into someone and can start healing with relatively no loss because the mp5 is so ridiculous. i think if you went all out with the optimal gems of 11 healing, 5 int everything (since all druid sockets are yellow/red) you could get 2k healing, and 375+ mp5 if you had access to certain pve gear. As a druid you dont NEED 400+ resil like priests with good partners, you can get melee off you easily, and casters are jokes for druids.

Against 2 dps teams like Mage/Rogue that try to gib the druid, you dont have feral charge as an escape or interrupt, but you can work around that typically. Rogue will open on mage until other rogue opens on rogue. First thing i do is come out to faerie fire rogue then cyclone him. That basically forces him to cloak if he wants to get on me and if he does, I natures grasp him and he has to imp sprint which has a 40% chance to fail on breaking grasp. He can vanish, but our rogue will be on him so hes gonna eat a 5 pt kidney eventually from behind.

Jasi: What about Mirror matches? Being that you've played War/Druid for so long, how do you feel with one spec against the other?

Seren: Warrior teams are usually the ones I worry about gibbing someone, so to counter it, we pump out as much damage as possible. If you spam damage you make them fall behind usually because its harder to outheal it when wound is getting stacked up so fast with a Rogue. You basically lock their druid spamming lifebloom/abolish/rejuv/swiftmend, which costs more mana than you spamming wrath. Not only will you hardcore out mana them if you play aggressive, but their war has to go D and cant get to you if you position right. On Nagrand for example, if I stand by a pillar and throw up a couple hots and spam damage, if the war is dumb enough to intercept me, he'll die over on our side. If he doesnt, he gets raped and has to go D, and they play catch up the entire fight.

Wrath is 232 mana for 1200 damage on a zerker stance warrior. lifebloom is 220 mana and abolish is 308 and rejuv is 377 (450+ with typical 8/11/42 spec)

Jasi: What about Warlock/Healer?

Seren: Against warlock/healer you can use moonkin form and melee the pet after you stack hots up. Fighting paladin teams is lol, root, rank 1 ff, rank 1 swarm, rank 1 moonfire + 40% dispel resist on all 4.

Jasi: It seems like this build would be weaker to dispel spams, how do you counter it?

Seren: With this build i get more mana back per 5 secs than lb costs, so ill do like lbx3, abolish, and re-stack to 3 if any were dispelled. As long as you put lb up first before abolish, esp with subtlety. Dispelling just puts the other team even further behind on mana, and like on the rogue, or any melee for that matter, when you root and cover with 3 other debuffs (moonfire, faerie fire, insect swarm), even priests have a ***** of a time getting it off.

Jasi: How do you feel this will change the 2v2 bracket?

Seren: I think i actually found a way to make dru/rog a dru/war counter-comp. You have the rogue main hand cripple poison, off hand wound.  Then, you go into the fight and open on the druid with me on the other side away from their druid. The rogue literally does NOTHING but spam shivs with wound until 5 combo points and then does an appropriate finisher. Meanwhile i open with wrath, moonfire, insect swarm, rejuv and lifebloom my rogue and then get to wrath spamming. This is so effective because the enemy druid cant get the wound stacks off ever, so it basically turns into Mortal Strike. When wound doesnt fall off, and the warrior is taking AR'd rogue damage + 1200 wraths every 1.5 secs + 2 stacked dots on him, and then they fall behind on mana quickly if they try to keep the target alive.

We've been winning all night with a PVE 19/42 specced Rogue, which is more effective with this comp imo.

So far from my experience playing against them, it definitely seems like this can be an incredibly powerful spec, especially in 2v2. I'm going to approach Deep to get his comment on it, so possibly more to come.

Report Post