Druids according to the strategy guide.Follow

Good evening druid community, I am a friendly prot paladin from Azuremyst and felt the need to post this. Recently at my job I stumbled across a magazine we were selling that was claimed to be the Ultimate Guide to World of Warcraft produced by Becket Online Gaming. I posted the entry about the paladins in the paladin forum and they found it rather amusing because of the grossly misinformed and inaccurate article.

Please note: I take no responsibility for the information presented below, I am transcribing the information.

Paladin guide: http://www.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=2;mid=1212737486299058293;page=1#m1212905845285053232

Druid guide:

Druid- Versatility at it's finest by Drew Walker

The Druid has the honor of being the only class that can do it all: Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Heal. The only downside to the ability of each of these specs is that you cannot do it as robustly as a primary lass of that type and you will quickly find yourself running out of bag space very quickly if you try and carry around the gear to support all four builds.

PVE Solo/Group:

The most effective solo and group spec for a Druid is the feral spec of 0/48/13. You should invest full points in everything with only one point of Primal Tenacity, and zero points in Feral Aggression and Nurturing Instinct. In the Resto tree you will take full points in Furor, Naturalist, Natural Shapeshifter, and omen of clarity. Resto and Balance are both viable specs in solo and small group PVE, but Feral is clearly head and shoulders above the other two for this venue. You will want to focus almost exclusively on agility as a feral druid as point of agility = two attack power (AP) as well as adding to your crit rating. as a bear you will want to focus on armor and stamina as well.

PVP:

The only truly viable spe in arenas is the resto spec. The typical resto PVP spec these days for 5v5 is 8/11/42. The eight points in balance are with nature's grasp, improved nature's grasp, and Control of nature. In the Feral tree you will want feral aggression, brutal impact, thick hide, and feral charge. In the resto tree you will focus on mostly healing talents, but avoid anything related to healing touch as you will pretty much never use that spell in pvp. a full fve points in subtlety will help prevent your HoT's from being dispelled and swiftmend and nature's swiftness are a must, but you must avoid tree of life. The key to the Resto druid in pvp is kiting and getting full use out of your HoT's. there are other possible builds that have success in 2c2, but those are also dependent on who your partner is, 2v2 is also the most unbalanced part of WoW.

PVE raids:

All three druid specs are viable in raids, but the feral spec and the resto spec are the ones of most use. Moonkin require a heavy amount of gear and a raid with a lot of mages, destro locks, and elemental shamans to proide them with the best group make-up; a moonkin is decent with a group full of paladins also, but a shadow priest is better. The feral druid spec will be pretty much identical to the group/solo spec, perhaps moving some points around to get three points in primal tenacity. the tanking druid wants to get 415 defense to become uncrittable and wants to focus on armor, hp, and agility. The resto druid will want to spec 0/0/61 to get every single resto talent except for Furor, omen of clarity and typically one point in Improved Tranquility. Druids are exceptional raid healers and they almost never run out of mana, but they do not stack well so the more resto druids you have, the less effective each one becomes.

Fin.

I'm not a druid so I can't really say if this info is accurate.

Thoughts? Comments?

Edited, Jun 8th 2008 2:39am by DrkMateo

hehe you just posted a guide from that mag in pally forms. i dont like eather i'll have to check other fourms and see what they have for a guide if you posted more.

The Druid has the honor of being the only class that can do it all: Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Heal. The only downside to the ability of each of these specs is that you cannot do it as robustly as a primary lass of that type and you will quickly find yourself running out of bag space very quickly if you try and carry around the gear to support all four builds.

Confirmed, and I should add that constantly switching between them is a costly matter :P

PVE Solo/Group:

The most effective solo and group spec for a Druid is the feral spec of 0/48/13. You should invest full points in everything with only one point of Primal Tenacity, and zero points in Feral Aggression and Nurturing Instinct. In the Resto tree you will take full points in Furor, Naturalist, Natural Shapeshifter, and omen of clarity. Resto and Balance are both viable specs in solo and small group PVE, but Feral is clearly head and shoulders above the other two for this venue. You will want to focus almost exclusively on agility as a feral druid as point of agility = two attack power (AP) as well as adding to your crit rating. as a bear you will want to focus on armor and stamina as well.

Full Furor + Naturalist + Natural Shapeshifter + OOC = 14 points in resto, so he means 0/47/14. Personally I would throw in Intensity as well. Resto is equally good as Feral for five-mans, but lacks a bit in the solo department (heal 'em to death !). It used to be (with the old Heart of the Wild) 1 point of str = 2 AP, but this is no longer the case. 1 point of agi = 1 AP, a bit of crit and a bit of dodge. This is why it is better than str to stack, and it is better than pure AP because agi scales better with raid buffs.

PVP:

The only truly viable spe in arenas is the resto spec. The typical resto PVP spec these days for 5v5 is 8/11/42. The eight points in balance are with nature's grasp, improved nature's grasp, and Control of nature. In the Feral tree you will want feral aggression, brutal impact, thick hide, and feral charge. In the resto tree you will focus on mostly healing talents, but avoid anything related to healing touch as you will pretty much never use that spell in pvp. a full fve points in subtlety will help prevent your HoT's from being dispelled and swiftmend and nature's swiftness are a must, but you must avoid tree of life. The key to the Resto druid in pvp is kiting and getting full use out of your HoT's. there are other possible builds that have success in 2c2, but those are also dependent on who your partner is, 2v2 is also the most unbalanced part of WoW.

Sounds about right. One could argue that subtlety is counter-productive for pure healing (you want them to dispell lifeblooms so they bloom right away) but it's definitly nice for CC (rank 1 roots + subtlety means low-cost CC that may still be very hard / mana-intense to remove)

PVE raids:
All three druid specs are viable in raids, but the feral spec and the resto spec are the ones of most use. Moonkin require a heavy amount of gear and a raid with a lot of mages, destro locks, and elemental shamans to proide them with the best group make-up; a moonkin is decent with a group full of paladins also, but a shadow priest is better. The feral druid spec will be pretty much identical to the group/solo spec, perhaps moving some points around to get three points in primal tenacity. the tanking druid wants to get 415 defense to become uncrittable and wants to focus on armor, hp, and agility. The resto druid will want to spec 0/0/61 to get every single resto talent except for Furor, omen of clarity and typically one point in Improved Tranquility. Druids are exceptional raid healers and they almost never run out of mana, but they do not stack well so the more resto druids you have, the less effective each one becomes.

Well, on fights where there's not that much raid healing required, more HoTs on the tanks means a more stable damage income, but okay.
Moonkins do need good gear (which is, sadly, often cloth) and yes, the aforementioned classes would make a very tasty caster group that unleashes each class' full potential, but they don't need those classes to do decent DPS. A shadow priest would help a lot to not go OOM too soon, though.

What's this fetish for Intensity as a Feral Druid I keep hearing about? Are people running that low on rage these days?

there was a discussion about this over here a couple weeks ago.