Post by Mesothorny on Nov 13, 2014 4:34:36 GMT
Going to get this guide rolling. Note: this guide may change due to future changes in druids.
I. Talents
Level 15:
Level 30:
Level 45:
Level 60:
Level 75:
I. Talents
Level 15:
- Feline Swiftness - A generous, and noticeable, speed increase. Great for “dance” mechanics. Stacks with other permanent bonuses.
- Displacer Beast - Burst of mobility when needed. Great for leveling and kiting. Situational uses in raids. Replaces Feline Swiftness if you need to escape danger immediately.
- Wild Charge – Limited use in raid and dungeon encounters. Will replace Displacer Beast if you need more frequent “burst movement.”
Level 30:
- Ysera’s Gift – Passive healing based on your maximum health. Solid choice for a caster spec.
- Renewal - Burst of healing based on your maximum health. With a 2-minute cooldown, it provides far less healing per second than Ysera’s Gift or Cenarion Ward. This talent is largely considered useless due to Cenarion Ward.
- Cenarion Ward – Limited use in raid and dungeon encounters. Will replace Ysera’s Gift if you need more frequent “burst healing.” This spell may be cast while Silenced because it is classified as a “Physical” spell.
Level 45:
- Faerie Swarm – Great for single-target kiting. Difficult to use when multiple targets are in play.
- Mass Entanglement – Honestly, this talent serves almost no applicable purpose. The effect breaks on damage, and the threshold is quite low. Extremely situational at best. Typhoon is not as strong as it used to be, so this talent may be useful when combined with Solar Beam and the afflicted targets are ignored while they sit in Solar Beam.
- Typhoon – Limited use in raid and dungeon encounters since range is quite small (15 yards). Great for leveling as you may have many mobs close enough to make this talent useful.
Level 60:
- Soul of the Forest – Passive. Very easy to use properly, you literally cannot use this talent incorrectly. Benefits include: Burst and Sustained. This talent excels on encounter where you need frequent burst damage due to a "short-lived add." An example of this is Ra-den's Orbs (Throne of Thunder).
- Incarnation: Chosen of Elune – Active. Benefits include: Burst, Sustained-Burn (Bloodlust/Heroism), Multi-Target (AOE and “Council”). This talent gets increasingly stronger when more adds are present, especially when these adds "need to die."
- Force of Nature – Active. Suffers from AI targeting issues (extremely slow response to switching targets, such as you original target dying.) Benefits include: Crowd Control (Instant), Burst, Sustained, Movement-friendly. Due to the nature of encounters, we can expect lots of forced movement. This is where this talent begins to shine.
Level 75:
- Disorienting Roar – Instantly disorients nearby enemies. This interrupts spellcasting. Instantly breaks on any damage and thus is extremely poor for a DOT-based spec, such as Balance druid.
- Ursol’s Vortex – Exceptionally useful for a ranged-oriented spec. Very powerful and has great synergy with Solar Beam and the Death Knight talent “Gorefiend’s Grasp.”
- Mighty Bash – Limited use in raid and dungeon encounters. Will replace Ursol’s Vortex if you need an interrupt or crowd control that completely locks down the enemy. Not ideal for raids because typically casters "stand 40 yards back." Due to the fact it is a melee ability, you would have to go through a long run to stun the enemy. In addition, Stuns are typically left to Rogues specifically for their talent "Nerve Strike" (which increases enemy damage taken while under the effects of certain Rogue abilities, such as Kidney Shot.)
None of these are too useful, they can be in certain situations so plan accordingly.
Level 90:
II. Glyphs
optimal glyphs, Glyph of Barkskin, Glyph of Rebirth. Then you can either choose shapemender or guided stars. Shapemender will heal you every time you change forms, and guided stars will cause your starfall to only hit targets with your dots on them. ALWAYS have guided stars on if you want to avoid pulling extra mobs and want to use starfall.
Level 90:
- Heart of the Wild – Activate to increase your ability to Heal or Tank. Strongly recommended to never attempt to tank a raid boss. Works far better as an impromptu healer. Using this ability to game “Cat Form damage” will not work if you leave Cat Form. (If you stay in Cat Form, they work normally.)
- Dream of Cenarius – Consuming the “Peak Eclipse” buff heals a nearby target for a fair amount. This talent has good synergy with Euphoria, but does not occur frequently otherwise.
- Nature’s Vigil – Activate to provide additional healing to the group. While it’s not “burst healing” like Tranquility or Healing Tide Totem, the healing provided helps the healers get through high-damage periods. The amount healed is largely dependent on your gear or the number of targets involved. While active, you really don’t need to keep Rejuvenation on yourself because you heal quite a lot over the duration of this ability.
Natures Vigil will be your optimal talent here. DoC requires you to reapply moonfire or sunfire during the eclipse peaks and that isn't necessary for optimal damage.
Level 100:
Balance of power is your default choice as it will provide best damage on single target and Multi-target fightsLevel 100:
- Euphoria – Passive. With this talent selected, our entire Eclipse Cycle is 20 sec long (down from 40 sec). While the bonus Casting Speed provided helps with burst, the actual speed of the rotation does not matter. It synergizes well with Dream of Cenarius, but we really won’t take DOC and therefore makes this talent lackluster. It may excel on encounters with frequently spawning enemies in small/large packs, but otherwise I would not advise taking this talent.
- Stellar Flare – Active. Adds an additional spell to our damage toolkit. The damage this spell generates really has no difference when you cast it at “0 energy” or “100 energy.” This is because all of our spells do not “snapshot” our Eclipse bonus. The initial damage from impact is noticeable, when you compare it between 0 and 100 energy, but the overall damage is practically the same.
- Balance of Power – Passive. The additional Moonfire and Sunfire damage is very strong for AOE and Multi-target. It doesn’t quite have the burst of Stellar Flare nor Euphoria, but it has incredible sustained output. This talent effectively removes Moonfire and Sunfire from the rotation after initial application (during Celestial Alignment or the opener). The MF/SnF damage and removal of refreshing these spell makes BoP a great single-target talent, though it may be quite boring spamming two (2) spells.
II. Glyphs
optimal glyphs, Glyph of Barkskin, Glyph of Rebirth. Then you can either choose shapemender or guided stars. Shapemender will heal you every time you change forms, and guided stars will cause your starfall to only hit targets with your dots on them. ALWAYS have guided stars on if you want to avoid pulling extra mobs and want to use starfall.