I just read a post, sorry, I don't remember which one, that says that Druids in reality, contrary to what Blizzard says, shouldn't be a hybrid class. That kinda sucks-but is it really true?
I play strictly with my fiancé. We don't group with other people, we just like to play the game together. Not going to do a raid or anything like that (probably, you never know).
She plays a hunter and has a crab (darned effective little thing) that soaks up a LOT of damage. I enjoy kitty feral (bears are too slow) and sometimes i'll cast a spell or 2. But I mostly drop out of cat form to heal if need be.
So my question is this: should I really just devote my points to all feral? I like being a HYBRID, which is why I picked a supposedly hybrid class...
Another question: I'm utterly stuck on some of the glyphs. What should I use? I'm lvl 33 and my gear is constantly in flux as we keep changing it. I do my best to have either INT or AGI gear with some stamina thrown into the mix.
Thoughts?
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Stick to one tree until you fill all mandatory points and then you can delve into the other trees.
I'll let the feral druid posters take care of what you should glyph for and your stat stacking, I'm just a boomkin :(
I'll let the feral druid posters take care of what you should glyph for and your stat stacking, I'm just a boomkin :(
The value of being a hybrid has gone down since the two expansions, as things demand higher and higher stats so it becomes harder to excel at more than one thing at any given time. That being said, you can still do things other classes can't, while perhaps not as good as you could if you specced for it.
So you said you're Feral. That's nice, you can go Cat for DPS or Bear for tanking, which is always very useful when questing. If you keep an off-set with Int/Spi you can also heal pretty decently until much later in the game. That's something you may wanna aim for, by the way. Two separate sets rather than a single one with a mix of all stats. That way, it's a bit harder to change role on the fly, but you'll do much better in each role when wearing the appropriate gear.
As for putting all points into Feral, it's up to you really. If you're mostly in Cat form, it's probably best to focus on Feral, at least until you reach Mangle. (Awesome new ability, completely replaces Claw) Like I said, with the appropriate gear you can heal just fine, and even while not wearing that gear you can heal in a pinch to buy a few more precious seconds.
And as for glyphs, at 33 you should have 2 major and 1 minor. Quite frankly, while leveling there isn't a lot of awesome Feral glyphs as they seem mostly tuned for end-game. I would personally suggest Glyph of Rake and Glyph of Maul. Rake will prevent humanoid mobs from fleeing at low health (as long as Rake is ticking on them), which can be useful in some situations and Maul lets you hit 2 targets with Maul (bear ability), which is great if you need to tank in a pinch or AoE packs of mobs. In the minor slot you can put whichever one seems better to you. I would suggest the Glyph of the Wild, seeing as you need to buff yourself, your girlfriend and her pet every 30 minutes so you won't run out of mana before you finish buffing everyone.
Feel free to browse all glyphs available, just mind their level requirements.
So, umm, yeah... hope this helps a bit.
Enjoy your Druid.
Edit: I fail at linking...
Edited, Mar 27th 2009 12:33pm by Selverein
So you said you're Feral. That's nice, you can go Cat for DPS or Bear for tanking, which is always very useful when questing. If you keep an off-set with Int/Spi you can also heal pretty decently until much later in the game. That's something you may wanna aim for, by the way. Two separate sets rather than a single one with a mix of all stats. That way, it's a bit harder to change role on the fly, but you'll do much better in each role when wearing the appropriate gear.
As for putting all points into Feral, it's up to you really. If you're mostly in Cat form, it's probably best to focus on Feral, at least until you reach Mangle. (Awesome new ability, completely replaces Claw) Like I said, with the appropriate gear you can heal just fine, and even while not wearing that gear you can heal in a pinch to buy a few more precious seconds.
And as for glyphs, at 33 you should have 2 major and 1 minor. Quite frankly, while leveling there isn't a lot of awesome Feral glyphs as they seem mostly tuned for end-game. I would personally suggest Glyph of Rake and Glyph of Maul. Rake will prevent humanoid mobs from fleeing at low health (as long as Rake is ticking on them), which can be useful in some situations and Maul lets you hit 2 targets with Maul (bear ability), which is great if you need to tank in a pinch or AoE packs of mobs. In the minor slot you can put whichever one seems better to you. I would suggest the Glyph of the Wild, seeing as you need to buff yourself, your girlfriend and her pet every 30 minutes so you won't run out of mana before you finish buffing everyone.
Feel free to browse all glyphs available, just mind their level requirements.
So, umm, yeah... hope this helps a bit.
Enjoy your Druid.
Edit: I fail at linking...
Edited, Mar 27th 2009 12:33pm by Selverein
I agree with Arex stick to one tree, in this case the Feral tree. The general consenis is that Feral is the quickest way to level because you save your mana for healing yourself, so you can keep going with few breaks.
Being level 33 your choice of gylphs is limited. Luckly as a kitty you can get, and should get the Gylph of Shred, Gylph of Rip and/or the Gylph of Rake. I'm nopt sure what level you have to be to get your second major gylph. Seeing as how your playing with your fiance (WoW that is :) )who is a Hunter, I assume her crab "tanks" for the two of you. So your best approch would be to get behind the mob and shred until you have 5 combo points then Rip.
From a gear stand point, as Feral, you should be looking for Strength, Agility, and Attack Power. Unless you plan to repec later as Balance or Resto forget about Spell Power, Intellect, and Spirit. I suggest you don't buy any gear either since you will just end up replacing it with in a couple of levels anyway. If you think you want to try the other trees you can collect a second set of gear with the spell power, intellect, or spirit on it. I think most Druids have at least two sets of gear. I myself have three: Melee DPS (main), Tank (off), and in the bank I have a Resto set. With the patch and the duel spec I'll be doing Feral (DPS)/Resto.
With regards to Druids being a hybrid class, I think they are. Because you can fill any roll in a group just by respecing and changing your gear.
Hope this helps. If you have any other questions just ask. I think this is a great forum with lots of helpful friendly Druids(even the Alliance ones :) )
Being level 33 your choice of gylphs is limited. Luckly as a kitty you can get, and should get the Gylph of Shred, Gylph of Rip and/or the Gylph of Rake. I'm nopt sure what level you have to be to get your second major gylph. Seeing as how your playing with your fiance (WoW that is :) )who is a Hunter, I assume her crab "tanks" for the two of you. So your best approch would be to get behind the mob and shred until you have 5 combo points then Rip.
From a gear stand point, as Feral, you should be looking for Strength, Agility, and Attack Power. Unless you plan to repec later as Balance or Resto forget about Spell Power, Intellect, and Spirit. I suggest you don't buy any gear either since you will just end up replacing it with in a couple of levels anyway. If you think you want to try the other trees you can collect a second set of gear with the spell power, intellect, or spirit on it. I think most Druids have at least two sets of gear. I myself have three: Melee DPS (main), Tank (off), and in the bank I have a Resto set. With the patch and the duel spec I'll be doing Feral (DPS)/Resto.
With regards to Druids being a hybrid class, I think they are. Because you can fill any roll in a group just by respecing and changing your gear.
Hope this helps. If you have any other questions just ask. I think this is a great forum with lots of helpful friendly Druids(even the Alliance ones :) )
mm, I don't know about Shred glyph; stuff isn't going to be stunned often enough for it to be worthwhile I think. It used to be pounce-shred-etc was the way to do things, but now with Rake being so much better than it used to be I'd imagine you don't even need it at lower levels to kill efficiently...
Since you're Lv30 you have two majors and a minor; I would suggest one of the Majors be Glyph of Maul, as the extra target is invaluable for mass pulling or accidental links to get them dead faster. Glyph of Rake would be super nice for those lower levels, I can't count how many times I died because of fleeing mobs causing adds, though if you're quick you can get roots off on em before they get far enough to cause you trouble (I was good at this when it was a luxury, but far too many indoor areas; this is no longer a problem).
Once you start getting into the upper 60s and through Northrend, you'll find that there aren't nearly as many fleeing mobs, as well as stuff will just simply be dying much faster, so even if they do flee they won't make it far. Once you reach this point you'll want to replace that Rake glyph with something more like Rip or Mangle, especially if you start frequenting dungeons more often.
As a sidenote, while Blizzard may label Druids as a hybrid class, they haven't been treated like one pretty much ever, even by blizzard. Way back in vanilla it was impossible to be a druid as anything but resto and perform reasonably, our gear even said "HAY IMMA HEALZ", and even since the other two trees have received TLC it's still largely not an option to be both good at melee dps AND healing at the same time. The presence of the other "pure-bred" classes means they have to balance content around maximized statistics, not half-and-halfs, so those who try to mingle their specializations wind up finding themselves severely handicapped. Nature of teh beast, I'm afraid. Where druid has an advantage is that you can switch between melee dps, caster dps, and healer with a simple talent reset and a different set of gear, instead of having to level your character to 80 all over again and redo all of your reputation earnings and stuff like that.
Since you're Lv30 you have two majors and a minor; I would suggest one of the Majors be Glyph of Maul, as the extra target is invaluable for mass pulling or accidental links to get them dead faster. Glyph of Rake would be super nice for those lower levels, I can't count how many times I died because of fleeing mobs causing adds, though if you're quick you can get roots off on em before they get far enough to cause you trouble (I was good at this when it was a luxury, but far too many indoor areas; this is no longer a problem).
Once you start getting into the upper 60s and through Northrend, you'll find that there aren't nearly as many fleeing mobs, as well as stuff will just simply be dying much faster, so even if they do flee they won't make it far. Once you reach this point you'll want to replace that Rake glyph with something more like Rip or Mangle, especially if you start frequenting dungeons more often.
As a sidenote, while Blizzard may label Druids as a hybrid class, they haven't been treated like one pretty much ever, even by blizzard. Way back in vanilla it was impossible to be a druid as anything but resto and perform reasonably, our gear even said "HAY IMMA HEALZ", and even since the other two trees have received TLC it's still largely not an option to be both good at melee dps AND healing at the same time. The presence of the other "pure-bred" classes means they have to balance content around maximized statistics, not half-and-halfs, so those who try to mingle their specializations wind up finding themselves severely handicapped. Nature of teh beast, I'm afraid. Where druid has an advantage is that you can switch between melee dps, caster dps, and healer with a simple talent reset and a different set of gear, instead of having to level your character to 80 all over again and redo all of your reputation earnings and stuff like that.
I don't agree that the Gylph of Maul is the way to go. From what was said in the original post Talarel is only playing with one other person, a Hunter, who's pet can act as tank. He even says he goes as Cat and not Bear. With all that he's better served with two of three Major Gylphs. Shred, Rake, and Rip.
Tatarel, I suggest you review the way you play your charactet and pick the two that best fits your play style.
Tatarel, I suggest you review the way you play your charactet and pick the two that best fits your play style.
And the shred glyph isn't helping at all when the mob isn't stunned, so we'll agree to disagree. Situational utility > situational slightly more damage imo, and again it better equips you in the event you want to run dungeons (which you can even do with a friend, one less person to lfg for!)
Edited, Mar 27th 2009 4:58pm by Norellicus
Edited, Mar 27th 2009 4:58pm by Norellicus
I think everyone else answered you pretty well, I just wanted to add.
Even if you stick to feral, you are still a hybrid to the degree that it's not like you are suddenly locked out of your healing spells because your not spec'd Resto nor are you unable to root and moonfire because your totally not balanced. You just can't do those things efficiently with respects to say raids. In a pinch regardless of spec we are all healers, crowd controls, nukers, melee and tanks; just not optimized if we haven't spec'd for that role.
Even if you stick to feral, you are still a hybrid to the degree that it's not like you are suddenly locked out of your healing spells because your not spec'd Resto nor are you unable to root and moonfire because your totally not balanced. You just can't do those things efficiently with respects to say raids. In a pinch regardless of spec we are all healers, crowd controls, nukers, melee and tanks; just not optimized if we haven't spec'd for that role.
A little addendum here.
One thing to remember is with the advent of 3.1 looming upon us dual spec is coming. So if by chance you have 1000 gold you can spare you can actually level balance and feral having a spec for each of them.
Of course, this is if you have money to spare.
One thing to remember is with the advent of 3.1 looming upon us dual spec is coming. So if by chance you have 1000 gold you can spare you can actually level balance and feral having a spec for each of them.
Of course, this is if you have money to spare.
10 posts
Thank you all for your answers! Lastar had the main point: I did say I only use Cat...So mangle is useless to me. I'll think I'll stick with appropriate glyphs for that then, and use a lot of AGI and STR armor. Thanks again!!
If you're only cat, Maul is out of the question, but not Mangle. Mangle is a great bear move for sure, but just as important for cats (we get 2 versions of the ability, one for bear, one for cat)
I think he meant to say Maul in his post instead of Mangle. As he's only level 33 he doesn't even have Mangle yet. When he get to the point that he has Mangle he'll have to re-eveluate which gylphes he wants to use.
In reality, you could stay completely unspec'd, with no glyphs and spam claw and still get to level 80 with a BM Hunter. :P
In actuality, glyphs don't really matter until you're about level 60 because things drop like flies before that. Especially with a BM hunter and his pet tanking.
Once you get mangle, things will drop even faster.
Glyphs I use are Mangle glyph, Rip glyph and _______
There really aren't 3 great ones for kitty dps. I usually have the third spot filled with Maul. When I'm tank I use Frenzied Regen Glyph as well.
IMO, hybrid means that we CAN do a bit of everything. It doesn't mean we can do all of them incredibly well at the same time. We'd get NERFED TO THE GROUND by a crab....
I can always pop out and throw a moonfire/starfire/wrath if I'm stuck out of range. I can also pop out and throw a couple heals when need be. None of it will be incredibly powerful, but the simple fact that I can do it makes me a hybrid.
Gear IMO Agility > Strength > Attack Power > Stamina
You won't take a lot of damage if the hunter's pet is tanking, so you don't need to focus on anything but dps increasing stats for the most part.
In actuality, glyphs don't really matter until you're about level 60 because things drop like flies before that. Especially with a BM hunter and his pet tanking.
Once you get mangle, things will drop even faster.
Glyphs I use are Mangle glyph, Rip glyph and _______
There really aren't 3 great ones for kitty dps. I usually have the third spot filled with Maul. When I'm tank I use Frenzied Regen Glyph as well.
IMO, hybrid means that we CAN do a bit of everything. It doesn't mean we can do all of them incredibly well at the same time. We'd get NERFED TO THE GROUND by a crab....
I can always pop out and throw a moonfire/starfire/wrath if I'm stuck out of range. I can also pop out and throw a couple heals when need be. None of it will be incredibly powerful, but the simple fact that I can do it makes me a hybrid.
Gear IMO Agility > Strength > Attack Power > Stamina
You won't take a lot of damage if the hunter's pet is tanking, so you don't need to focus on anything but dps increasing stats for the most part.
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