All the OOM none of the "kin"Follow

OK first off - yes I know I brought it on myself. I know that feral is the preferred leveling spec. I also know that I have a level 50 rogue who was my first toon that I haven't played in over a year because I loathe the playstyle.

Right now my druid is 31. I tried feral. 3 times, in fact and never played them past 25 or so because I found it a tad annoying and frankly difficult**. This toon the penny dropped, sort of, and I swapped out to Balance at 24 or so. A little slow but not that much different from the shaman I just leveled, honestly.

But the shaman had some decent spell hit stuff AND some fair melee - granted it was the preferred spec (painful as it was). Right now I'm sort of in a crappy spot. I'm not asking for help for right now though. I'm asking (similar to what I did on the shaman boards) does it get better?

And when does it get better? I'm not asking about PvP so much. This is a fun toon. I have many utility toons - tanks, DPS, CC, etc. I may PvP, I may do whatever but I've run with so many really neat Boomkin who had so much fun with their class - and I playing with them. I'm wondering when the fun starts. ***

Is it 40 when I get the form or is there more work to be done after that? Dreamstate? Should I respec for 9 levels?

Oh and maybe I'm just doin' it wrong. Usually (no instances - I assume when people ask me they want me to tank or heal and I'm tired of tanking and scared of druid MHing) I quest alone and it goes:

SF, SF, IS

Then melee or NG backup or Rejuv or MF or ... well depends on what I'm fighting.


** The reason why was that I was almost always low on health and mana. Fight a thing or 2, be really low on health, swap out, heal, switch back. Do that a few times and you just can't anymore. I realize the reasons why and agree with them but I still found it... irritating. And it's not the subject of my post. I do use all my forms when the need arises but for general play I like the balance style.


*** A little background: I rolled a commune of horde toons. Most of them the classes that I hated or never really played. After leveling a couple of alliance toons to 70 and a few to 50 or 60 I totally see the benefits of these classes and am rather enjoying them now. I'm just struggling a bit with the druid. I did with the shaman too but at 40, holy cow that's a new game. I'm hoping it may be the same at some point here.

Betrayer, it's mana more than spell damage. Getting enough mana to keep from going OOM will help a lot more than the extra spell damage, since when you're OOM your DPS drops significantly.

On to the original question:
Balance scales so much with talents that you need several of them for it to meet it's potential. Just look at the first tier. Starlight wrath gives wrath basically a 33% increase in DPS across the 5 points, whereas a mage only gets a 16.67% increase in DPS on fireball from imp fireball. All along the balance tree, you should be getting at least a 2% increase in DPS per talent, sometimes over 6% (on DPS talents, anyway, and some require synergy), whereas a hunter for example would consider 1% per talent point to be quite a good talent.
Also, feral up through the mid-20's is slow. It's once you get ferocious bite that it really starts to pick up, as claw, rake, and rip just dont cut it.

As to balance, there are a few things that REALLY help when soloing. Pick up celestial focus, and instead of meleeing or trying to kite, spam wrath. Also, dont forget entangling roots! Root+nuke is an incredible way to drop foes, it's a lot easier to use than NG too. Points in control of nature can help with this, but they aren't as necessary. Moonkin form does help a lot, because you will be in much more armor. If you have 800 armor in caster form, you're likely to have around 4k armor in moonkin form. That's a whole lot of damage reduction.

**The reason feral is the preferred levelling spec is because you use your mana to heal, and other resources to fight. Thus, you should have no down time. If you're going OOM and low on health that fast, either you need to fight easier mobs, you need better gear (although I replaced gear from BFD when I was in my 50's), or you need to L2P. When I was levelling my druid I had very few problems with mana, and like I said earlier my gear wasn't impressive.

***I don't know what the horde vs. alliance comment is, since they all can have the same classes. In vanilla there was only one difference, alliance had pallies and horde had shammies, but in BC it's equal. Thus, your background really didn't tell us much.

To sum up:
Balance is very dependent upon talents, survivability gets a lot better with moonkin, and celestial focus and/or rooting targets will really help with soloing. Balance does get better with time, as does feral, balance at about 40-50 and feral in the mid-30's.

Edited, Mar 24th 2008 11:58pm by skribs

I leveled 1-70 as balance and did okay. While I was leveling I was getting gear with +intel and +spirit. Grab OoC when you can because it helps a lot. Also get Moonkin as soon as you can. It's just awesome. You suddenly find yourself surviving a lot longer, and with melee swings getting mana + OoC for free spells, mana problems get reduced severly.

I stand corrected. I knew the experts would offer their invaluable advice on Balance; as I stated, I am by no means an expert, or even knowledgeable when it comes to this particular spec.

Sorry if anything I wrote was misleading.

Thank you, Skribs, for correcting me about spell damage vs. mana.

I have a leve 70 balanced druid and love playing it. I balanced through 60, went to feral, which made me live longer, but since i respected back to the balance tree, it's been more fun. I mix armor between dps and mana regen and have no trouble in those long fights. In fact, often I use my innervate on the healer or caster who needs it more than i do. I also usually have enough for the emergency off heal or battle rez. Outside entangle and swam and let them do some damage for you. then moonfire and spam wrath. You will generate a lot of aggro if you are soloing, hence the entangle as long as possible. Inside, you can always change form and run or grin and bear it, (ok bad pun). I do keep a melee weapon to swap on for close contact but rarely need it, The downside... moonkin are still trying to earn respect in endgame and so be ready to respec to one or the other druid forms.

Thanks to all for the good feedback.

Quor - yeah I knew it was the pits though it wasn't *that* awful bad until the 30's. Course the shaman was the same way, the 30's were quite the slog.

Skribs - thanks for the numbers! And it is entirely possible that I need to lrn2playferal. But i just don't like the style, which was probably reflecting itself in my ability to actually play it. As for Celestial Focus, I was under the impression that wrath spam was the least mana efficient tactic and that would contribute even more to my mana woes.

firstclass - Your last statement was sort of my thought. This close to 40 (numericaly anyway) respeccing to feral seemed like maybe not the best way because the styles *are* so different.

TooRet - I can't wait for my little treants of doooooom. But I'm always sad when they die :(

kawainui - why would you pick up OoC before Dreamstate. Seems like dreamstate gives you a more reliable (and immediate, given where OoC is in the resto tree) benefit. Having both is obviously the ideal but I was just wondering why you went for OoC first.

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Edited, Aug 26th 2008 9:39pm by kawainui

I've only been playing for less than 4 months now and Am now a lvl 63 moonkin. I pretty much played solo in the beginning and struggled alot with crappy gear weak spells for the first 20 lvls. I went against the grain and used my talents in all of the talent trees. I wanted to learn first hand what I like and didn't like.
I leaned heavily towards feral from level 30 -43 or so. Bearform? Great armor boost but very slow attack. Catform? Quick attack but armor sucked. I realised that had I stuck in feral longer things would have improved.
Read about moonkin and respecced. I personally enjoy it much more than feral and wasn't interested in resto. Since respeccing the gameplay is more fun for me. I die alot less and can solo against tougher foes with the use of my treants.
I can play a more versatile role in groups imho as well. I can supprt tanks and the healer with the push of a button and bring the trees into the mix during the transition. There is room for all types depending on your playing style...and group dynamics.
Druid life is tough for the first 40 lvls or so and I really don't think one spec is really better than another. It's just a matter of preference. The moonkin is more versatile than feral is that a good thing? You have to decide for yourself.

Yeah, stick with Feral until you can afford both Dreamstate and Intensity with Moonkin. What is that, about 56?

I think they were also including intensity which would take a bit more than 43. And while I'm sure it's great and will get there, I'm having a much better time of it now with both Dreamstate maxed and the form.

Nah, not THAT bad. I mean, Warlock's Destro at low levels is one hell of a short fuse. Huge downtime, and not even that good at PvP despite the nice burst. At least Balance Druids can be a bit consistent. I always wanted to play Destro at 70 with my Lock, but every time I tried it too early it turned out horrible. It practically is like leveling Prot as a Warrior. It's a joke and a half.

destro is very support reliant. a good friend of mine runs as destro lock in our 5v5, and for the first 20-30s of each match hes usually running around on his mount while the rest of us engage a target and try to distract the other team. if we succeed, he dismounts and starts his favorite combo of multi-seed + shadowfury pop. if we dont succeed, he usually ends up kiting some poor schmuck around with crusader aura on.

he once spent the greater part of a 5's match effectively CCing the enemy warrior and ret pally. hamstring + sader aura meant he was going *just a hair* faster than the warrior, and dispel/cleanse kept JoJ off of him. this meant the ret pally got one good hit off every few seconds, which was just enough to keep prom bouncing back and forth, making it nice and efficient.

he also spams soul fire (as much as a 1 minute CD can be spammed). he uses it more than shadowburn. in a bg he once got a rogues cheat death to proc at 68%. bgs are always fun with him around, but he doesnt pvp solo, and for good reason, altho he does make shadow priests, fire mages, and other non-destro locks cry.

Edited, Apr 11th 2008 2:33am by Quor

i lvled pretty much all way so far as balance curently 54. after 40 it's nice even before dreamstate at 53 i respeced droped trees to work down resto for the other mana regen. i'm thinking of going down further to just do a dreamstate build. true soloing will be little slower but figured if i keep two sets or just keep a good SD/healing set i could dps/heal my way up in instances also. atm i only have 53 mp5 while casting so about every 5-6 mobs i need mana depending on how fight goes. some i can sf sf sf dead depending on crits/stuns others sf is mf wrath wrath wrath dead depending on crits may be less spells.

but i suck at feral also. my cat always low on health when soloing or just about dead at end of fight. my bear tanking sucks cant hold threat i might have had mechanics wrong i dont know but just dont intrust me really. so boomkin it is.