Druid Builds
#1
So Taranna is 59. I have one point left to place and I think that is going in improved Regrowth. I thought I would share my build for a druid who mostly duo's in the world and mostly heals in instances. I've bear tanked Maraudon, and I've only had a priest or another primary healer along on 3 of the other 5 mans I've done, I was in cat form for most of those runs.

I figured from the start I would more likely be a healer or DPS addition in an instance or other group. The balance tree didn't look like it would add much with a shallow investment, it looked basically like I could get swiftshifting to help when solo or duo and omen of clarity to help when solo but that would only be marginal in an instance because if I get to swing that much I don't really need the free heal. I could have helped my moonfire (which is used all the time) and my starfire out with only 17 points that aren't restoratoin as well.

Besides being a druid I wanted to embrace my shapeshifting more. I figured bear form, unless I was the tank, was less likely to be my option in an instance as well and didn't need a lot of improvment in my duo. Most people would take a warrior or a paladin for tank alliance side and we had several in my level range as I grew up in the guild. So more damage from cat form, if I was just along as the 2nd healer, was more helpful. The feral talents I have give me about 30% increase in my cat DPS from the theory craft I have done. I've also gone cat on trash pulls for more damage adding since it doesn't burn my mana if I need to pop back to healbot if something goes wrong. :) There are deeper feral talents I would like to have and I may have to build a heave feral druid just to use them, but Taranna was intended to be mainly a healer and then optimize the duo she was in with her rogue.

I have tried out some of the other feral talents too and I did like them but dropped them for more restoration talents. I had feral charge and had points in primal fury both were nice but I decided to specialize the cat and the healing.

So, here is the build.

Balance: (0)

Feral Combat: (17)
* Ferocity - 5 / 5
Reduces the cost of your Maul, Swipe, Claw, and Rake abilities by 5 Rage or Energy.
- I use Maul a lot as a bear, claw a lot as a cat, and swipe is nice when tanking more than one thing. 5 rage/energy is a decent drop in the cost of these skills. Base costs are Maul - 15, Swipe - 20, Rake - 40, Claw 45. You get 5 off all of those. Ask how many rogues would like to drop the energy cost of sinster strike by 5 (that is what claw is) or a warrior if they would like heroic strike better if it was 5 rage cheaper. This talent is a no brainer if you put points in feral.

* Sharpened Claws - 5 / 5
Increases your critical strike chance while in Bear, Dire Bear or Cat Form by 5%.
- I like crits, I'm not a rogue, but I'm up around 18% in my feral gear now. This talent also unlocks a couple of talents that help cat or bear a fair bit, one of which I took.

* Blood Frenzy - 5 / 5
Your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.
- Combo points are your friend with Ferocius Bite. I have had 1100+ crits on bite with Taranna. So the faster I get combo points the better. This also helps with a huge weakness of cat form. If your finishing move misses in any way (a miss, a block, a parry, a dodge) you lose all your combo points on that target unlike a rogue. If you want more of a bear focus get the bear talent that gives you 5 rage back after a crit. You won't auto attack anymore you will hit the maul key all the time with it. :)

* Improved Shred - 2 / 2
Reduces the Energy cost of your Shred ability by 10.
- My backstab. Base cost is 60 energy, this drops it to 50. If you have anyone else around you that has aggro this is big damage deal for you. It is hitting for about 200-250 and crits over 400 for me. Claw (my sinister strike) hits for 100-150 with crits in the 200 range. If I can get more shreds off I will. With all the healing talents I wanted I figure this was more valueable than the attack power bonus talent I could have gotten. This doesn't help a solo druid that much but I don't solo that much.

Restoration: (34)
* Improved Mark of the Wild - 5 / 5
Increases the effects of your Mark of the Wild and Gift of the Wild spells by 35%.
- Best buff in the game, making it better is a good thing. I'm also a healer not a heavy feral so this is a much better choice than Furor. Though there are times when I wish I had the rage right after going bear form to throw my stun out.

* Nature's Focus - 5 / 5
Gives you a 60% chance to avoid interruption caused by damage while casting the Healing Touch or Regrowth spells.
- Very big deal for me both solo and group play. I don't have fade so when I get aggro I have to take the punishment until the mob is pulled from me or it's dead. I will still need to heal either myself or someone else so stopping spell stagger is nice. I also want to unlock one of the most powerful heal talents a druid has.

* Improved Healing Touch - 4 / 5
Reduces the Mana cost of your Healing Touch spell by 12%.
- I didn't max it. I used it to unlock deeper talents. It is a nice talent and there was debate on maxing it. However I didn't because I don't cast a lot of Healing touches if I can help it. It's a slow cast and a druid's HoTs are more powerful than the priests (partly to help with lack of a bubble I think) so I try to rely on those more. Mana efficiency while important isn't as important for me since if I am the only healer (and that has been the case a lot for me) I have innervate. Right now my base mana pool with only Mark of the Wild on me is just over 5000. Innervate makes this effectively 8000 with my current gear. Finally if I'm with a priest on a raid, meaning I probably don't get my innervate, I seem to still be the fill in the gaps healer, so it is once again my HoT's that I am casting more so being a bit less mana efficient here on a spell that is cast less isn't as big of a deal.

* Gift of Nature - 1 / 1
Increases the effect of your Healing Touch, Rejuvenation, Regrowth, and Tranquility spells by 5%.
- 1 point for better healing on every heal spell I have is an easy choice. It also unlocks my threat reducer talent as an added bonus.

* Reflection - 5 / 5
Allows 15% of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting.
- This helps some. I've still rarely had mana worries (though I've only just started raiding) and even with my focus being more on int/stam than int/spirit there is benefit from this that I see. It also unlocks innervate so I have it regardless.

* Improved Rejuvenation - 5 / 5
Increases the effect of your Rejuvenation spell by 15%.
- A spell that I cast all the time. Easy choice to make it heal more.

* Nature's Swiftness - 1 / 1
When activated, your next Nature spell becomes an instant cast spell.
- I don't have a bubble I can cast or a blessing I can cast to give me time to land another heal spell. I don't have fade to drop aggro when I get it. I often feel that I could not heal an instance without this. It get's used on me as much as other people and it has been the differnce between a dead toon and a live toon several times. When you have a cooldown on your rez that is a big deal. The cooldown isn't all that bad either. I've used it multiple times in some fights where things have gone wrong or just where the group was low on DPS so the boss fights took longer.

* Subtlety - 5 / 5
Reduces the threat generated by your Healing spells by 20%.
- Can't really shed aggro so anything that prevents me from getting it is good.

* Improved Regrowth - 2 / 5
Increases the critical effect chance of your Regrowth spell by 20%.
- Extra points went here. I cast regrowth a lot. It's a relatively fast cast and has a decent HoT component to it. My heal pattern is often Rejuv early. Regrowth when they are at 50% health and if they need a healing touch (often the HoT's take care of not needing one), whichever of the 3 ranks I have out that is most appropriate. So I figure a better chance to crit on the frontloaded part of the HoT is good for my healing style. It can only help me to cast less and regen more mana. If this spell is being cast as a buffer for a healing touch a crit helps a lot there too and that is something I have to decide as I watch heal bars fall, do I start the 3.5 sec healing touch now and bring them way back up, or do I use my 2 second regrowth for a good front heal and a HoT to give me time to start the healing touch spam that it appears they need.

* Innervate - 1 / 1
Increases the target's Mana regeneration by 400% and allows 100% of the target's Mana regeneration to continue while casting. Lasts 20 seconds.
- Yummy and it only gets better on high spirit builds. As I mentioned this gets my build about 3000 mana back in 20 seconds. That is a guess I need to drain my mana pool and test it where I'm not instantly casting heals after starting it up. It helps out priests a bunch and I've even used it on a mage twice and a lock once when their fire power was more important than anything else going on.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
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#2
That looks like a really nice build GG. I must admit that my druid is pretty much a cookie cutter. (Well, scrap the pretty much and replace it with exactly. :blush: ) What I really like about your build is that you've focused on one feral form. I honestly believe that one of the biggest weaknesses of the druid is that we have in reality 4 talent tress: blance, restoration, bear and cat. Unless you are speccing feral, trying to enhance both cat and bear with a limited number of talent points will stretch yourself too thin.

Some thoughts.

Given that you don't use healing touch that much (does any druid?) would intensity be a better option for you? It would certainly help in those cases where you are popping out of cat to cast a quick heal on someone and then shifting back.

Subtelty. I don't have this talent, so I cannot speak for its effectiveness. However, although I'm sure I draw more agro than you with my heals, it's rarely a huge problem. With a quick weapon swap (from healing staff to unyielding maul/warden staff) and a shift into bear forum, I can usually survive long enough for the tank/off-tank to get things back undercontrol. Given my use of qualifiers in this statement ("rarely" and "usually" both smack of "offen" and "sometimes" :) ) you're probably not convinced, but you can always think of shifting these points elsewhere.

Improved Rejuv vs. Improved Regrowth. Huzzah! for improved regrowth. A 50% increase in critical strike chance + spell crit gear + intelligence is fantastic. In my opinion, that massive boost in crit chance makes regrowth a remarkable good healing spell, despite the hideous mana cost. I would certainly think about experimenting with 3 pts in improved rejuv and 5 in improved regrowth.

But like all things, it really depends on how you play, the nature of the groups you're usually with and what you're comfortable with. I really like your feral build, and would enjoy giving my cat some loving, but due to the nature of the groups I'm with and the things I like to do outside of instances, that's not really practical right now. Ahh well. :D

And for those of you wanting to know what the cookie cutter druid build is, go to wowvault and look up the druid talent templates. About 80% are exactly the same. That's the cookie cutter build. B)
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"Then Honor System came out and I had b*$@& tattoo'd on my forehead and a "kick me" sign taped to my back." - Tiku

Stormscale: Treglies, UD Mage; Treggles, 49 Orc Shaman; Tregor, semi-un-retired Druid.

Terenas (all retired): 60 Druid; 60 Shaman. (Not very creative with my character selection, am I?!Wink
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#3
I'm basically a 'cookie cutter' 9/11/31 build... both PvP and instance healing alot, so my points aren't as focused as they could be. I went from 40-60 with a 7/11/33 build plan (pre-40 mainly feral up to feline swiftness), but the PvP'ing required a bit of rearrangement. The way you have it set up right now will be pretty solid for healing. Personally, I mix it up a fair bit with rejuv/regrowth/HT, depending on the situation...


That said... I have no points in improved HT or improved rejuv. In the restoration tree...

- 5 points in furor to allow feral charge or bash immediately after shifting.
- 5 points improved MotW.
- 5 in improved regrowth, as the crit heal can be a real lifesaver in PvP and PvE. Overhealing's an occasional issue, but not enough that I'd drop the talent.
- 3 points in Subtlety. More would be nice, especially when running varied groups where you may not have the best tanking/agro control/etc, but needed them elsewhere. In a solid group, this won't really matter, but I run non-optimal groups enough that I can see their effect.

The rest in the prerequitsites, Nature's Swiftness and Innervate of course.


Feral tree: main objective is Feral Charge...

- 5 points in ferocity. Lets you spam maul for less rage... more damage. Once had these points in Dem. Roar, but seems more useful to bring a target down faster than a minor bit of damage decrease.
- 2 points in Improved Bash. Extra stun time = more time to get your heals off.
- 3 points in Sharpened Claws. Just another place to dump points, and crit will help with our low DPS...
- 1 point in Feral Charge. Spell interrupter, on a 15s timer, which is a very helpful addition to the only other one we have--bash, which is on a 1 min timer (Starfire stun chance talent isn't reliable for spell interruption). Also lets you get close to the classes who don't want you close. Another thing which some have commented upon is possible extra threat generation if you add the feral charge effect to a mob when trying to grab agro (charge + taunt + swipe).


Balance tree:

- 1 + 4 points in Nature's Grasp/Improved Nature's Grasp. To get extra distance from those who you don't want up close, whether it be to run or heal...
- 2 points in Nature's Reach. Extra nuking/rooting range
- 2 points in Swiftshifting.

Was a bit of a tossup whether I wanted to shift a point from Reach into Swiftshifting, since I tend to shift a fair bit in solo and small scale PvP. But along came AV where with the mass PvP I was relegated to healing/rooting/nuking...


One of these days I may shift 10 points back into Feral for feline swiftness which I quite miss, but innervate is just too useful if things go awry in instances (and sought after for raids), and the crit regrowths are useful all over...
Onyxia:
Kichebo - 85 NE Druid

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
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#4
Watto44,Jul 14 2005, 09:24 PM Wrote:Given that you don't use healing touch that much (does any druid?) would intensity be a better option for you?  It would certainly help in those cases where you are popping out of cat to cast a quick heal on someone and then shifting back.
There was some thought on that. But generally what I'll do in that case is just pop off a heal then go back into feral as a bear and growl the mob off the person and hold it while other DPS finishes it off. And while I said I don't use healing touch that much, well that is only partially true. I guess the more accurate statement is that I avoid using healing touch if I can. :) I was glad to have the talent points in it last night though in Onyxia's Lair. Based on some good advice I sacrifed some mana and spirit to get my base HP over 3000 so that I could survive a fireball hit from her under the buffs. Since those do right around 3200 +/- 300 or so damage. And there were two occasions where I had only 300 HP or less left getting hit by one. My current caster/healer gear has me at 2600 HP or so. So the mana/spirit sacrifice kept me alive. I used my combat rez after it once to get another rezzer up to bring back people, and there was another time where a soulstone was used after that to get people back up. There were a couple of times where it was just me and one other healer in combat while the MT was holding her so the higher efficiency helped there too. That being said, they are still debated points for me. :) The other thing is that I would need 5 points in intensity to avoid the annoyance factor of the 20% of the time that I didn't get the energy which would of course happen on those occasions when I really needed it. :)

Quote:Subtelty.  I don't have this talent, so I cannot speak for its effectiveness.  However, although I'm sure I draw more agro than you with my heals, it's rarely a huge problem.  With a quick weapon swap (from healing staff to unyielding maul/warden staff) and a shift into bear forum, I can usually survive long enough for the tank/off-tank to get things back undercontrol.  Given my use of qualifiers in this statement ("rarely" and "usually" both smack of "offen" and "sometimes" :) ) you're probably not convinced, but you can always think of shifting these points elsewhere.
To be honest, I didn't have it maxed for most of her career, I did a recent respec to fix a few stupid placements in restoration and to slim up my feral investment. And usually I don't think I drew healing aggro either. However the shift into bear and wait it out usually doesn't work becuase it seems the only time I get aggro is when someone else really needs healing and they die if I stop doing it. This is from 5 man side. Raid side with another healer, shift into bear sounds like it would work fine. But 5 man as the only healer the shift into bear and wait tactic has usually been a bad idea in the groups I'm in. That being said you voiced a debate that I had with myself over those points as well. :)

Quote:Improved Rejuv vs. Improved Regrowth.  Huzzah! for improved regrowth.  A 50% increase in critical strike chance + spell crit gear + intelligence is fantastic.  In my opinion, that massive boost in crit chance makes regrowth a remarkable good healing spell, despite the hideous mana cost.  I would certainly think about experimenting with 3 pts in improved rejuv and 5 in improved regrowth.
This came down to, do an improvement that happens all the time, or do a streaky improvement. Both spells are cast a lot by a druid so I opted for the steady always there improvement. The other thing with regrowth is that with defense skill preventing crit heals as well as crit hits, improved regrowth is wasted on a tank in group play. I also feel a 20% better crit is good enough for self heal or on classes that won't have lots of +def since they will hopefully be losing aggro again soon and the HoT can finish off the healing they need. I still like the idea of extra crits on the front end though. I also have no spell crit gear right now either, but yeah, if the front end crits regrowth goes from least mana effiecient to most mana efficient spell for a druid. :) A front end crit can also mean I can cast a -2 rank healing touch instead of a top rank healing touch for the finish off. There are many good things about this talent I just choose to stick to the safer side of things. If I take points from somewhere to put here, they will most likely come out of subtlety. Now that I'm not like the only healer in the guild in my level range anymore I will have much more groups with other healers so heal aggro will be less and less of an issue.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
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#5
I'm all about Balance with my Druid. I started him up to be akin to the Elemental Druid of DII:LoD, and in the process found some interesting synergies that allow him to heal well to boot.

FERAL COMBAT: 0

BALANCE: 40

Improved Wrath 5/5: In situations where enemies are highly resistant or immune to arcane damage, this can come in very handy. It also gives a low-mana way to dish out some projectile damage. Before putting points into this talent, I didn't use Wrath much. It's seen much more use with the talent.

Nature's Grasp 1/1 and Improved Nature's Grasp 4/4: Many will argue that this is useless in endgame instances and... well, they're correct until Zul'Gurub is implemented. Right now the only instance that springs to mind as root-friendly is Zul'Farrak. Still, my opinion is that Azeroth is a large world with plenty of outdoors areas. I'd rather have this spell and it's improvement than not.

Improved Moonfire 5/5: Damage = good. Crit% = good.

Nature's Reach 2/2: More range = good.

Improved Starfire 5/5: 15% chance to stun is just below a 1/6 chance, and that sounds about right (unless the enemy is immune to stuns). Between roots and starfire stuns, I was soloing Devilsaurs at level 54 with subpar gear.

Omen of Clarity 1/1: One of my favorite spells in the Balance tree. Free castings = good. This spell alone has me charging up to engage whatever my tank is fighting in melee, hoping for a proc. Doesn't matter where I am to heal the party, and a free casting of Hurricane or Tarnquility saves a ton of mana.

Moonglow 5/5: Efficiency = good. This is by no means a necessary talent, but definitely helps in situations where I'm not manipulating the 5-second rule to get some mana regen in combat. Sometimes back-to-back Starfires just feel so good.

Moonfury 5/5: Damage = good.

Nature's Grace 1/1: I love this talent. I'll find myself often casting a quick Moonfire and banking on a crititcal hit, just so my next Regrowth will only take 1.5 seconds to cast. This and Omen of Clarity are the two Balance skills that I've found supplement my meager investment in the Restoration tree.

Vengeance 5/5: Turns a 900-point crit into a 1200-point crit with Starfire (before gear that adds +spell damage). Banking on around 300 int and Improved Moonfire, you should be doing some frequent crits.

Hurricane 1/1: I don't care what anyone says. I love Hurricane. Conceptually, it's one of the coolest spells at a Druid's disposal, and makes for some eye candy while in battle. Used properly, it can be very helpful to the party/raid, and multiple Hurricanes stack their debuffs to slow enemy attacks bigtime. Organized three Druids in the Molten Core to use this at once on Core Hounds and slowed the entire pack to 40% attack speed for ten minutes. Good stuff.

RESTORATION: 11

Improved Mark of the Wild 5/5: As I'm generally the only Druid in my party, I'd rather this buff meet its full potential. And as Furor wouldn't do anything for my build, it's a no brainer.

Nature's Focus 5/5: Less Interruption = good.

Gift of Nature 1/1: It's only a 5% boost, but on a critcal heal of 2k+ hitpoints, that's an additional 100hp. Plus, I can't think of another place to put that last talent point. :whistling:

See you in Town,
-Z
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