Road to 80 - Balance or Feral?Follow

So with the release of the patch and the free respec, I have begun to ponder the balance route. Spellpower will transfer over from my healing gear from when I was resto and I have been pooling some honor to upgrade my gear a little more. I have never worked with a Moonkin and only seen them in BGs or arena in terms of performance. They do damage, but I've never paid attention to how much.

I leveled to 70 as feral and enjoyed it and knew what I could take and do. I'd have to relearn that with balance and I can always respec to feral if I don't like balance. I read about people going boomkin and loving it and I figure I already better caster gear than feral gear, so why not give it a shot.

My questions are these - Damage wise, does balance put out similar damage compared to feral? I guess what I want to know is balance as quick in leveling as feral? I pretty much only quest to level, not much hard grinding. How do you boomkins do in BGs? Is the basic stratgey for balance root and nuke? Do you you use a full array of spells or only a few? (Like in resto you pretty much only spam rejuvenation and lifebloom, though there are other healing spells and feral dps you spam mangle...) I am sure I can and will find some of that info while looking around for balance info, but I am curious about current moonkins and how you play it.

If there are any good balance how to's a link is much appreciated. (I've read through some of the stickies and am looking at more from the druid resources thread.)

An equally geared boomkin will usually do more damage output than a feral. I have a feral set with 4 pieces of badge gear and the rest of the gear being in the top 10 you can get in the game for that particular piece. In kitty I can do around 800-850 dps with all raid buffs. My balance set only has 3 pieces of badge gear, and the rest from Kara. I have no problem pushing over 900 dps now, and have done over 1k in boss fights.

I'm not sure exactly how much will change with this patch. I know feral dps is getting all kinds of goodies to help their dps, but so is boomkin. Balance spec will most likely always be better in terms of raw dps output.


Even with the new boomkin talents, I highly doubt it. While boomkins have higher dps output in raids/5-mans, they have to worry about mana while soloing. Ferals generally have more survivability and can pump out just as much damage in solo while the mob is beating on them. Boomkins, on the other hand, have casting speed reductions etc. while getting hit, and if they do need to heal, precious mana is being used.


Depending on spec, they can be very good in arenas and BGs. They are also super-fun. Try it out if you haven't already.


I like to sneak up and use Starfire>Moonfire>Roots>Insect Swarm>Wrath>Cyclone>Starfire>Moonfire>Wrath

The first SF/MF hit simultaneously. By the time they realize what's going on, they're rooted. Insect swarm takes 12 seconds to pump out all of it's damage, so it won't break roots right away. The damage from Wrath will most likely break roots, so cyclone is next. Once there is 2.9 seconds left on cyclone(or 2.4 if I crit-proc), I start casting SF. The SF and the next MF hit simultaneously as they get released from cyclone.

All together, its 2 Starfires, 2 Moonfires, 2 Wraths, ~10 secs of MF ticks, and ~6 secs of IS ticks. This will most likely kill most opponents or at least bring them to fairly low health. They have 1.5 seconds after initial strike before the first SF/MF hit, and then another 4.5 secs while you cast the next wrath(GCD+W+GCD). This will usually leave them enough time to catch up to you, so have an escape plan ready :) Also remember that they may resist/trinket out of the roots and cyclone, so be prepared. This doesn't work as well on ranged. There are plenty of other stategies, and this probably isn't even close to the best one, so have fun and experiment.

Just to add on... I got a few items from KZ and ZA, mostly BG stuff (my druid was my hobby toon). Running the full set of dailies in Sunwell area, I hardly ever run below 60% mana. The rare times I do (multi links), I just pop Innervate, and continue plowing thru mobs.

Sure I take my time when soloing. Here's a example of a normal fight.
Roots, Insect swarm. Wait for the 5 second mp gain, Starfire, followed by a Wrath, then wait until Wrath ball hits, and do a IC moonfire.

If Roots break I step back and do the whole thing all over until mob is dead.

After each fight I honestly have about 90% mp left, looting mob, running in position for next mob, I'm generally at 98%-100%. Granted I take my time'ish... I knock out all the dailies in less than 1 hour. My warrior is much better geared, and runs the same time. True it varies with drop rates, other people farming rates, etc... but about the same.

Cool, thanks all for the input. I was reading up on it and have a friend I group with often enough that is a Fire Mage. I think the spell damage bonus could be beneficial for that. I am going to try it and if I don't care for it (questing can't be any slower than it was as a resto) I'll spend the 20G (is what I think I am up to now) to respec. I guess I'll go ahead and grab some honor gear while I'm at it.. *off to check the gear lists*

I say go feral.

I've had the most fun playing WoW these past couple days just going in BGs and killing every warlock I see.

Now with Beserk - See a lock, Kill a lock.

As a note :- Was reading the TKASomething forums and a few high level raiding Hunters are saying that the only classes that are beating them in DPS currently are Boomkins!

Mind you, this is in a raiding situation with a fair bit of AoE rather than leveling and is also at a high gear level, but it is good to see our feathered friends getting some fun.

sorry i came in this thread a little late, but with the 3.0 changes imp FF actually affects spell hit by 3% AND gives you 3% more crit chance on targets affected by it. while before 3.0 i was one of the "FF haters" as i wanted to put out as much dps as possible.. now it actually helps us out and theres a possibility of getting MORE dps out of it.