I recently started a druid and am leveling him balance (I'm leveling a different druid feral and wanted to know how the other side lived). Anyway he's at level 17 right now and I was wondering if there was any point to picking up cat form right away? I won't have any speed boost, no instant energy on shift, it costs money, and since there is no quest I don't get any bonus exp for doing so. Still, I worry that I am missing something and was hoping that some one with more experience leveling druids would be able to tell me one way or the other.
Edited, Feb 15th 2008 1:24am by firstclassforever
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Leveling balance and cat formFollow
Prowl. It helps in PvP, it helps you quest, it helps if you go AFK. If you're NE you can shadowmeld...but you can't sneak by mobs to do that.
Well first of all when you get down the level line a bit further it may be more beneficial (and definitely less time consuming) to re-spec your feral druid to Balance to check it out, and then possibly switch back. I find that Cat form is incredibly useful to me as a Balance Druid (47/0/14) especially when leveling at an earlier stage on my Char's "life." The best thing about druids is our flexibility and utilizing all of our forms allows us to never stop. I have some pretty good +spell damage/healing gear and after I burn about 2/3's of my mana I will always switch to Cat for DPS. You will find that it will take you a lot more time to burn through MOB's if you only plan on spell casting and drinking etc. Caster and Cat are the most important and I will only ever use bear form if I have pulled too many MOBS. I would seriously consider getting the cat form as it is imperative to a fast play style and will keep you trucking right on through many a Mob. It is worth the gold for sure so my vote would be "Absolute."
Also...the gold cost isn't really high. You spend gold on the abilities...but you need those abilities if you plan on using it (which you will).
The best thing about druids is our flexibility and utilizing all of our forms allows us to never stop.
To elaborate:
As a feral druid hitting the level 70 5-mans (I was actually 68-69 at the time) I've found all three forms (bear, cat, caster) very helpful. Obviously when I'm MT bear form helps, and when I'm DPS cat helps, but there are other situations, such as:
-Any time there's an AoE pull, I can pop out of form and use hurricane. Lots of damage, and hey it helps the tank mitigate damage. Usually there's another AoE in the group, and between us we burn em fast. If I'm tanking, barskin+hurricane is a great way to get aggro on an AoE pull.
-On murmer, when I had the luxury of a resto druid with an HoT style but NO TREE OF LIFE (I guess it was a PvP build, but still...) I had to pop out and use innervate on him then tranquility the rest of the group to keep from wiping.
-In cases where I take AoE damage or damage where I had pulled, I like to pop out and heal myself (if possible).
-In shattered halls, I DPSed in all 3 forms. On the boss that whirlwinds past 20% I had to use starfire at the end, on the large pulls I would grab one mob to lessen the load on the tank, and stay in bear form while we DPSed the first target down, and I used cat form when I had noone on me.
Granted, I'm feral, and use of forms is what I'm designed for, but that's use of bear and cat form. Yet I still use caster form probably 5% of the time.
Quote:
The best thing about druids is our flexibility and utilizing all of our forms allows us to never stop.
To elaborate:
As a feral druid hitting the level 70 5-mans (I was actually 68-69 at the time) I've found all three forms (bear, cat, caster) very helpful. Obviously when I'm MT bear form helps, and when I'm DPS cat helps, but there are other situations, such as:
-Any time there's an AoE pull, I can pop out of form and use hurricane. Lots of damage, and hey it helps the tank mitigate damage. Usually there's another AoE in the group, and between us we burn em fast. If I'm tanking, barskin+hurricane is a great way to get aggro on an AoE pull.
-On murmer, when I had the luxury of a resto druid with an HoT style but NO TREE OF LIFE (I guess it was a PvP build, but still...) I had to pop out and use innervate on him then tranquility the rest of the group to keep from wiping.
-In cases where I take AoE damage or damage where I had pulled, I like to pop out and heal myself (if possible).
-In shattered halls, I DPSed in all 3 forms. On the boss that whirlwinds past 20% I had to use starfire at the end, on the large pulls I would grab one mob to lessen the load on the tank, and stay in bear form while we DPSed the first target down, and I used cat form when I had noone on me.
Granted, I'm feral, and use of forms is what I'm designed for, but that's use of bear and cat form. Yet I still use caster form probably 5% of the time.
I'm in the same boat--my main is a 70 feral, but I have an alt on a RL bud's server that I'm leveling Balance for the different experience.
I've never considered not getting cat form, though...it's so little gold for such a kickass form. Aside from already-mentioned Prowl which is probably the single biggest advantage, I find myself popping into cat form to finish off mobs when I run low on mana, to occasionally avoid the downtime of drinking between fights when I'm feeling impatient, or just to mix things up a bit. Maybe that's just my feral roots showing though.
And if you show up at the next druid convention as a level 30 without cat form, I guarantee you'll take quite a bit of ribbing about that.
I've never considered not getting cat form, though...it's so little gold for such a kickass form. Aside from already-mentioned Prowl which is probably the single biggest advantage, I find myself popping into cat form to finish off mobs when I run low on mana, to occasionally avoid the downtime of drinking between fights when I'm feeling impatient, or just to mix things up a bit. Maybe that's just my feral roots showing though.
And if you show up at the next druid convention as a level 30 without cat form, I guarantee you'll take quite a bit of ribbing about that.
Leveling as balance is a nightmare until you get about level 40-ish with Dreamstate/Moonkin. On my druid, I caster down one mob, go kitty and kill another 3-4, pop out, heal, caster one mobs, kittyform for another 3-4, etc. Too mana inefficient pre-40, and I'm not going to drink after every other pull.
JeeBar wrote:
And if you show up at the next druid convention as a level 30 without cat form, I guarantee you'll take quite a bit of ribbing about that.
So it will be just like high school was. I can handle that. I am not saying that I won't get cat form at all, just that right now I'm not convinced that I wouldn't get more DPS from buying milk or melon juice for the same amount of money. Right now I have no +aglility or +strength gear, it's all +Int with a little +spirit and stamina. I'm almost to 1k mana which is nice so I can handle two and a half solo pulls before I need to stop and drink. Also I'm not sure that the mana I reg while not casting in bear (or if I get it, cat) form makes up for the amount of mana I spend switching forms (44% of base for bear, 35% for cat).
Right now my shot rotation for a single pull goes: wrath, wrath (which goes off right about the time the first wrath hits), wrath (which goes off right about the time the mob closes to melee), Moonfire, then switch to bear or keep spaming wrath depending on the mobs health bar and our relative levels. That said cat form attacks a whole lot faster than bear form (though it has less armour and doesn't boost my hit points) so it is somewhat tempting.
firstclassforever wrote:
Right now my shot rotation for a single pull goes: wrath, wrath (which goes off right about the time the first wrath hits), wrath (which goes off right about the time the mob closes to melee), Moonfire, then switch to bear or keep spaming wrath depending on the mobs health bar and our relative levels.
I'm noobish balance so I might be way off base, but your shot rotation seems strange to me. You're not taking advantage of the keep-em-away power of Roots and not getting maximum damage out of your DoTs. Oh wait a sec...your second Wrath--the one that 'goes off right about the time the first wrath hits'--you meant to say "Moonfire" there huh?
In any case, I don't see why you wouldn't root 'em first. My rotation is to Root, Wrath, Moonfire (which hits as Wrath lands, just cuz I like how that looks), Insect Swarm, spam Wrath until the DoTs expire, then refresh my DoTs and maybe pop a Rejuv on myself before I shift into bear form if it even feels necessary to do so.
Well, I've got a level 60 feral and a level 60 balance druid, and I'd say to definitely get cat form. It's quite useful to save you down time while leveling (at least for the first 50-60 levels) and I made full use of it to completely regen mana while in cat form.
I will warn you, however, that unless you carry an extra set of gear for it, it becomes less than ideal once you hit Outlands. Without the gear or talents, I can barely take down a single Outlands mob in cat form (though, granted, I've got a lot better grasp of how to play a kitty since leveling my feral druid, so it may have improved somewhat, but boy do I miss mangle).
So yes, kitty will serve you very well up until Outlands, but beyond that you're probably better off drinking when you need to (though at that point, it's not as necessary.)
Oh, and just fyi, my normal rotation is wrath, then roots(which will land at just about the same time as wrath gets there), then back up to max range if you're not already at it while casting moonfire and insect swarm, then spam wrath or starfire (whichever you prefer, I kind of like the way starfire looks, but I'm still not entirely sure which is more mana efficient. I believe starfire is, but wrath will but out higher DPS, simply because more casts leads to more chances to crit, which means more procs of nature's grace, which means more spells cast in the same amount of time.)
Edited, Feb 14th 2008 6:02pm by Vaeliorin
I will warn you, however, that unless you carry an extra set of gear for it, it becomes less than ideal once you hit Outlands. Without the gear or talents, I can barely take down a single Outlands mob in cat form (though, granted, I've got a lot better grasp of how to play a kitty since leveling my feral druid, so it may have improved somewhat, but boy do I miss mangle).
So yes, kitty will serve you very well up until Outlands, but beyond that you're probably better off drinking when you need to (though at that point, it's not as necessary.)
Oh, and just fyi, my normal rotation is wrath, then roots(which will land at just about the same time as wrath gets there), then back up to max range if you're not already at it while casting moonfire and insect swarm, then spam wrath or starfire (whichever you prefer, I kind of like the way starfire looks, but I'm still not entirely sure which is more mana efficient. I believe starfire is, but wrath will but out higher DPS, simply because more casts leads to more chances to crit, which means more procs of nature's grace, which means more spells cast in the same amount of time.)
Edited, Feb 14th 2008 6:02pm by Vaeliorin
JeeBar wrote:
I'm noobish balance so I might be way off base, but your shot rotation seems strange to me.
I'm a bigger newbie than just about anybody on these boards. I had a bad run of roots breaking right after hitting the mob with moonfire (stupid thresers) and got out of the habit of using them, as that 1.5 second cast time was doing all of five points of damage, where I could cast a wrath in that much time and do a whole lot more. And since I couldn't cast right away after moonfire, I just kept chaining wraths until the mob got up to me then I moonfired it. But Jeebar and Vaeliorin are right and I should be using roots more. Unfortunately I can't go test this, but as I recall I could get off about three chained wraths (and an instant moonfire) in about the time it took the mob to reach me, but if I led with Moonfire I could only get about half way through casting the second wrath. Then again I don't always remember things real well and I could be totally, completely wrong.
PS, Vaeliorin is right about Wrath being more DPS, but Starfire being more mana efficent.
Edited, Feb 15th 2008 1:24am by firstclassforever
Why start off pulling with Wrath? For the initial pull I use Starfire then wrath followed by Moonfire. Then i root (no interrupts talents), then while moving away from the mob, I Insect Swarm. Depending on the health left on the mob, the 3 DoT's may sometimes kill the mob, so I normally just wait and see if it does. If not, I wrath when Moonfire is done ticking.
My main is an affliction lock, so I guess I'm just used to killing a bit slower and I like seeing my DoT's complete :-)
My main is an affliction lock, so I guess I'm just used to killing a bit slower and I like seeing my DoT's complete :-)
Thmpax wrote:
Why start off pulling with Wrath? For the initial pull I use Starfire then wrath followed by Moonfire. Then i root (no interrupts talents), then while moving away from the mob, I Insect Swarm. Depending on the health left on the mob, the 3 DoT's may sometimes kill the mob, so I normally just wait and see if it does. If not, I wrath when Moonfire is done ticking.
My main is an affliction lock, so I guess I'm just used to killing a bit slower and I like seeing my DoT's complete :-)
My main is an affliction lock, so I guess I'm just used to killing a bit slower and I like seeing my DoT's complete :-)
I pull with wrath because it has travel time, which allows me to get the roots off about the time it lands. And it's one less damaging spell I have to worry about breaking roots.
I feel exactly the same. I always Wrath, Entangle, Moonfire, Starfire, and then repeat depending on if I feel like I should Faerie Fire or Insect Swarm. Because of the wrath spell travel time I am usually casting roots right after the bolt hits and, as mentioned above, is one less spell that possibly would dispel the roots. A lot of time I will do the opening sequence, add a Faerie Fire and then swap in to Cat to possibly get a rear attack bonus. I also have a leather working head piece (cant remember the Blue item)that gives me energy or rage when shifting which is super handy for those always swapping back and forth. Dreamstate all the way! To be 47/0/14
Duedain
Azuremyst
Duedain
Azuremyst
Vaeliorin wrote:
[quote=Thmpax]Why start off pulling with Wrath? For the initial pull I use Starfire then wrath followed by Moonfire. Then i root (no interrupts talents)
I usually go Starfire->Moonfire and then root. Unless I pulled from up close, there's enough time to root after those 2 (or natures grasp if I remember, it's mana free now.) Plus the Starfire with talents has a good chance to stun, which is perfect when pulling. :p
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