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Druid Balance not viable in vanilla?

J

jflakes

New Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2015
Hello all, I haven't played in vanilla before. ( obviously ) I've been trying to look up a little while I was waiting for this laptop to ship and everything that I've found on druids never mentions a build for balance. Is this because it is bad or something. Also will I get shunned in lategame for attempting a build in this type of spec, I really enjoy the idea of a druid and tend to excel in caster type classes
 
Hello jflakes,

when a Guild takes a druid as a dps class (feral/Balance) then only for the groupbuff (Leaders pack/Aura of the moonkin).

But a dps druid cannot compensate a "real" dps class (warrior) so it is unnecessary to take a dps druid within the raid.

Maybe in lategame Raids you can probably go with a dps druid, but i wouldnt.

Greetings
 
Ehh I'll prolly just end up healing then. How are resto druid lategame in compairison?
 
Druids are pretty nice healers, they can easily take place in top3 in healing without a lot overhealing.
 
the boomkin specialization as said is mainly used as utility buff but the specc is indeed viable although you would have to gear up boomkin as offspec at first with a high activity.

Boomkins are usually grouped with destruction warlocks if the raid has a lot of shadow damage as it gives a significant burst to the overall damage but you should not expect to be chosen as boomkin before AQ as it takes a lot of time before a boomkin can do some decent damage and is usually out damaged by pure dps classes so you should be specializting Restoration primarily and be ready to be off-healer during raids if a healer should die.
 
cringe ? i am just stating it as i remember it back in the original vanilla i used to play alongside a boomkin who started out as restoration and then when AQ20 opened was allowed to go boomkin when those times where more than enough healers where present which became more and more frequent, back then i played mage and enjoyed that bonus quite a bit although boomkin went oom fast when trying to keep up on dps with the rest but the hit chance reduction was quite nice on the fast hitting trash.

Boomkins can be useful if you ask me although as said a normal dps would do better in a longer boss fight.

I am just being honest giving a piece of my mind as i remember it nothing more nothing less
 
Cr0wL0ck said:
the boomkin specialization as said is mainly used as utility buff but the specc is indeed viable although you would have to gear up boomkin as offspec at first with a high activity.

Boomkins are usually grouped with destruction warlocks if the raid has a lot of shadow damage as it gives a significant burst to the overall damage but you should not expect to be chosen as boomkin before AQ as it takes a lot of time before a boomkin can do some decent damage and is usually out damaged by pure dps classes so you should be specializting Restoration primarily and be ready to be off-healer during raids if a healer should die.
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I think you are messing 2 classes up, an AQ-geared shadowpriest can be useful to buff the warlock group (but you also only want 1 one those in your raid because of the limited debuff slots and below-average dps).
A balance druid on the other hand is always a waste of a raid spot and i don't think there are a lot of guilds who want to take hipster-specs with them for progression raids.
 
I'd take the crit over spriest heals any day, the spriest doesnt need to be in your group to debuff your target with shadow weaving. Talking from a solo pov, not necessarily a raidwide pov.

Though it does make sense, more crit = more imp shadowbolt procs = more overall dmg.
not sure how it would stand up to a '5 warlock group' vs a '4 warlock 1 boomkin group.'

It's an old game, people are allowed to have fun and mess around if they tryhard enough in the right way.
 
I also got bored of mage and made an ele sham. Given I didnt finish him, and was aiming for pvp mostly, but some elitists wouldnt stop me if I wanted to do some raids, I would just find a guild with grown ups in it.
Now ofcourse for progress, might consider resto, but after succesful raid clear, I dont believe you need top raid setup from then on, and can easily afford some off shit
 
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burnx said:
Hello jflakes,

when a Guild takes a druid as a dps class (feral/Balance) then only for the groupbuff (Leaders pack/Aura of the moonkin).

But a dps druid cannot compensate a "real" dps class (warrior) so it is unnecessary to take a dps druid within the raid.

Maybe in lategame Raids you can probably go with a dps druid, but i wouldnt.

Greetings
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we're considering warriors 'real' dps classes now? No agro dump, squishy as most of their gear is leather and mail. They're more viable than an oomkin, but far from a 'real' dps class(mage, warlock, rogue, hunter)
 
First of all, the Moonkin has high dps potential (related to fact that it is considered to be a hybrid), cause of NG, wich reduces the casttime, without reducing the +spelldmg-quotient related to the casttime. Thats the point, why Spellcrit for a Moonkin ends up with higher value. The dmg of the current spell is doubled (if i`m not wrong its about 210%) and the dmg of the following spell is +33% (u´ll use NG-Procs always on Wrath, to reduce its casttime from 1,5s to 1,0s). So the "real" dmg increase for crit is about 233%. (The "real" math has to be calculated a little bit different, cause u have to consider +hit, +spelldmg and +crit in combination and interdependancies)

That said, one has to consider the big problems of a moonkin.

The biggest Problem for Moonkin is the Manamanagement (Oomkin). With a little bit of crit gear, u can go up to 200 mana/s. U can do the math, how long u can sustain this manaconsumption in a bossfight. With pre-raid-gear, there is no way to compensate this. U have to get ur hands on a lot of epics (mages/warlocks wont be happy), enchantments, u have to farm demonic runes, dark runes, major mana potions and use them heavily, just to get urself through half a bossfight.

The second big problem is Spellhit. Other Spellcasters have talents to get spellhit, the moonkin has not. With ZG not out yet, its currently nearly impossible to stack up enough Spellhit to make decent use out of +spelldmg and +crit as a moonkin. If i`m not mistaken, the absolute number of spellhit needed for a bossfight is 17%. U dont need all 17%, cause if u do the math, every % of spellhit is not worth the previous one, dps-wise, but it is worth getting a lot of spellhit. (Overall Spellhit maintains to be a problem even in late late game, cause as a moonkin u`ll always need a lot more of it than other spellcasters, but this will decrease the possible +spelldmg and +crit on ur gear.)

That said, the conclusion has to be, Moonkin is not the worst spec to get and if u really have the ambition to be a good moonkin, it can get challenging, cause u have to do most of the math, rotations, gear-checks for urself, to get the last % of dps out of ur Moonkin. There r, except maybe some guild forum guides, nearly no guides out there to help u with that.
But it efforts hell a lot of farming, raiding and thoughts to be even a mediocre dps in raids and therefor usefull for ur guild. And without a guild carrying u through instances, u have to start as a healer, cause the pre-raid-gear for a Moonkin only works for half an MC-Bossfight, manawise. (at least for one half of the MC-Bosses). And with ZG not out yet, u will have a big problem when it comes to Spellhit.

Greetings,
Me

(Sidenote: Remember, every other Spellcaster will love ur Aura, when it comes to dps, but u will have to fight with them over the gear.)
 
Merkrath said:
The dmg of the current spell is doubled (if i`m not wrong its about 210%) and the dmg of the following spell is +33% (u´ll use NG-Procs always on Wrath, to reduce its casttime from 1,5s to 1,0s).
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A crit as moonkin means 100% more damage, i.e. 1000 hit will be 2000 crit when it crits. Not sure where you are getting that +33% from. There is no effect that causes the damage of your next spell to get increased +33%. Using NG proc on wrath in a raid environment would be pretty inefficient as GCD is 1.5 sec anyways.

And warlocks need as much hit as druids.
 
A tip for boomkins is to downrank when you're low on mana. There's no spell damage penalty on lower spell ranks so you won't lose too much damage.
 
Moonkins are more viable on alliance because ideally you would put them into a group with 4 mages/warlocks. On horde side that would mean the moonkin would not have mana spring nor tranquil air, but on alliance that's not an issue.

Wrath does not benefit from any warlock curse, but Starfire benefit from Curse of Shadow, increasing its dmg by 10%, which makes it superior to Wrath.

People who bring up the "only the best for progression raids"-argument fail to take into account that 98% of guild raids are not progression raids. Once the server-first races are done, you're looking at speed-clears being the next challenge. The ideal raid-setup on a boss fight is never the ideal setup for quick trash-clearing. And the ability to go from 8 healers on one boss to 7 healers and 1 dps on another, without having to spend time getting another player into the instance, is pretty neat.
Full resto talents isn't neccesary for a support healer once the content is on farm. But the moonkin would obviously have to carry a resto-set of gear with him.

Guilds unwilling to accept a moonkin are either afraid to look unserious or don't have faith that the player is interested to do the excessive farming required to really be of use. But a great moonkin would not hurt a raid as far as im concerned.
 
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When people say that vanilla doesn't have a good balance they mean druids.
 
Could you guys link me a PVE moonkin talent tree? All the wowprovider links are dead. Thanks a bunch
 
Balance tree is probably the most simplistic out of any class in terms of clearly having superior choices over others. If you have problems with this already, youre gonna have a hard time, imo hybrids require the most knowledge since you play catch up to rest
 
This has been thoroughly debated before, and the conclusion is that yes, moonkin does work in vanilla PVE (and PVP, but that's a different matter).

However, you will need to use every single consumable in game to remain somewhat viable, and you shouldn't even think about entering raids with anything less than absolute BiS.

Every consumable in game includes things like scrolls and heaps, heaps of mana potions. Don't do it if you're not ready to spam mana potions on CD. That's the deal.

This is a link to a moonkin naxx raider AMA. It leads to Feenix forums, so apologies if that's an issue (I don't think the server is of any competition to Kronos any more): http://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/81946-moonkin-naxx-raider-1115-amalogsetc/
 
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Liebe said:
This has been thoroughly debated before, and the conclusion is that yes, moonkin does work in vanilla PVE (and PVP, but that's a different matter).

However, you will need to use every single consumable in game to remain somewhat viable, and you shouldn't even think about entering raids with anything less than absolute BiS.

Every consumable in game includes things like scrolls and heaps, heaps of mana potions. Don't do it if you're not ready to spam mana potions on CD. That's the deal.

This is a link to a moonkin naxx raider AMA. It leads to Feenix forums, so apologies if that's an issue (I don't think the server is of any competition to Kronos any more): http://www.wow-one.com/forum/topic/81946-moonkin-naxx-raider-1115-amalogsetc/
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If people are curious, there is a moonkin raiding with Friends who does fairly well in logs
 
Ok I'll go with an oldie but goodie "you should play what you like not what's best", unless you like to be "the best" then I'd roll a Warlock or a Mage in case you like being a caster dps, or a Tauren fury Warrior in case you like being a fat monster dps :laugh:
 
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