New to Druid...and WoWFollow

A couple of tips from someone who leveled as a balance/resto hybrid:

You'll want to bite the bullet and get Insect Swarm (IS) in the balance tree ASAP. Why IS? It gives you 2 DoTs (damage over time spells) instead of 1 when soloing. This really increases the damage you can do, and you shouldn't be hurting for heals before then. If you level as a hybrid you'll find yourself pulling a few mobs, and rolling your 2 DoTs on them while keeping HoTs on yourself.

I grabbed points in this manner:

-Balance to IS
-Resto to Intensity
-Balance to Dreamstate
-Rest of the points in Resto

As glyphs came out I gave myself the Insect swarm and Healing touch glyphs (I took the points in Naturalist). I gave up the hybrid spec at 73 when healing the new instances with it proved more difficult.

The reason for intensity and dreamstate being goals is that they help keep you keep your mana up. Since you won't be a particularly powerful killing machine with so many points in resto, fights become a battle of attrition. This can make leveling very long and boring if you don't keep pulling multiple baddies at a time. Thankfully the spec works fairly well for it, and you basically find yourself chain-pulling mobs while your DoTs tick away on them.

When you are leveling it doesn't matter so much, you can do whatever you'd like really. There's nothing about doing it either way that will keep you from getting to level 80. Points in balance means more damage, points in resto means better healing. Points in both makes you kinda 'meh' at both.

Most people will choose one tree and plan on putting at least 51 points there. They will fill out that tree first, then put a few points in another. The hybrid balance/resto thing is more a throwback to the time before dual-spec, the dungeon finder, and the quantity/quantity of blue gear available these days.

Really if you want to spend most of your time in groups as a healer, you might as well go full resto. If you want to see the world, quest, and solo some, you'll want to have at least some points in balance. Killing things alone in a full resto spec can get slow.

Edit: My hybrid spec looked like this before it really started to become hard to heal with it. Really though, expect that if you put points in 2 trees like this you'll hear a bit of "you're doing it wrong" from others in-game.

Edited, Jul 6th 2010 2:05pm by someproteinguy

Back in the day (or I guess early WotLK) this caused all sorts of arguments on EJ. I remember people saying "that fraction of a second really can be the difference between life and death" others would tell them if they "adopted a more proper spec." they wouldn't find themselves in that situation so much. Eventually I think someone broke down, listed the pros and cons, and they started handing out citations to whoever discussed it. It was quite amusing really. I'll say while leveling I had that extra 0.5 seconds save lives, but I don't remember how often that was honestly.

Thinking back I probably had that 1 point in Subtlety instead of Natural Shapeshifter (boy it's hard to remember what you were doing a year and a half ago ). Unfortunately if you do some hybrid spec, you won't be shapeshifting much. Yay for big floppy elf ears...



I think the only real reason I went with Insect Swarm over Moonfire was runners. You know those little guys who take off at like 10% health to go tell their friends you are here? Never mind the fact that if they were smart enough to do it at half health they would have mustered an army big enough to kill you. I hated those guys, and I was never fast enough on my wrath button, so moonfire was my fall back. I could moonfire them and they'd drop dead. But really if you can watch their health bars better than I did, the IS damage reduction is good stuff. *shrugs*

First off, sorry for the double post, but I wanted a little advice.

If you take a look at my armory now (See opening post), am I going in the right direction with my talent build for a full resto druid? And how is my gear looking?

Also, what is the best dungeon for gear for me (I am lvl 29, almost 30)?

PS: Yes, my helm makes me look stupid, but it is good. =P

Edited, Jul 11th 2010 12:39pm by Lavathing9

Your spec is fine. You can move those points from Naturalist into Subtlety if you find yourself grabbing aggro too much, but it's not critical either way.

Aren't you starting to move through the Scarlet Monastery instances about now? Graveyard, Library, Armory, etc... You probably be running those a bunch, and will be sick of that place by the time you finally hit 40-something and are done with them.

Helm is awesome.

Drink more.

You heal better while drunk. Blizzard knows this and balances it out by pairing you with total noobs who don't know what they are doing. It's true.

There is a random rare miniboss that spawns in the outside area. Get Atlas to get a map with the possible locations. Most groups skip those.

I'm not sure how much of it is having too good gear and such, but I was able to solo the bits the party left out on my Resto druid at level 30, getting myself some extra EXP, a private boss to loot and a boost in confidence.

But yeah, the place is kind of short and lame. The luckiest you can get is having a tank and a priest decked out in Heirloom gear pulling the whole place and then the priest Holy Nova'ing it down, doing a good chunk of healing in the process.
You should start getting the other Scarlet Monastery instances soon. I personally think they're all better than Graveyard, but Cathedral can be a bit tricky if your group isn't doing what they're supposed to.

Edit: Also, you might want to get this cloak from PvP while you're level 29. I believe it's better than the one from the random bag.

Edited, Jul 11th 2010 10:33pm by Kalivha

The one I suggested also gives 7 spell power.

Spirit and Intellect... it requires maths to find out which is better, and by how much, and I don't feel like doing that right now.
Spirit basically provides mana per five seconds, even in combat with Intensity (which you have). Intellect increases your mana pool. It's a bit more complicated but that's the gist of it.
Spell power makes your spells more powerful. It's mostly up to you to decide what you prioritise - if you feel comfortable with your mana in general, always go for spell power at this level.

An attempt to do the maths gives me something like this:

Your current cloak has 5 "mana stats".

The other one has 6 spirit which for the sake of simplicity I'll set equivalent to 3 "mana stats" (I think that's what it comes down to effectively), so less. But it also has 7 "throughput stats".

Overall it's more on the PvP cloak, but you have to decide which you want to go for at the moment. I personally went for the PvP cloak on my druid, but I've got heirloom gear to aid me with my mana pool.

I also noticed that I linked the Horde version of the cloak, but the only difference is the name and where you buy it, so it shouldn't matter.

Yeah, I noticed you linked to the hordie one, but I found the other one. Anyways, only thing I have trouble with is when I get a piece of gear that is like:

+12 Intellect
+6 Spirit

And I am wearing a piece of gear, in that slot, that is like:

+6 Intellect
+12 Spirit

I have trouble with decided which one is better for me.

Also, does spellpower effect healing? Or is it just DMG spells?

Ok, sweet. I was under the impression that spell power was only for damage. I guess that makes my belt all the more awesome.

So besides my cloak change up, any suggestions on the rest of my gear? Like, which pieces should I try to replace? So you know, I have a nice Shoulder piece to equip once I ding 30.

Thanks!

Ok, I need a bit of advice on which necklace I should use:

Currently Using This One (Of the sorcerer); It gives +5 Stamina, +5 Intllect, and +6 Spell Power.

Just Looted; +1 Agility, +7 Stamina, and +10 Spirit.

See, one of them has intellect/spell power and the other has a lot of spirit. Which would you guys suggest?

It's hard to answer this one, since we aren't running instances with you. I'd look at why people are dying due to your healing.

Rule of thumb:

If you are consistently losing people because you are running out of mana, you need more mana stats: Mp5, intellect, spirit.
If you are consistently losing people because you can't keep up with the incoming damage you need more throughput stats: spellpower, critical, haste.
If neither of these is true, it probably doesn't matter too much.

Really the best thing is to keep both with you. Most serious end-game healers will keep several extra pieces of gear, and switch out pieces as the situation dictates. A high mana set, high throughput set, and good survivability set are all common.

Having a extra piece will give you more flexibility if you suddenly find yourself in a low dps group, and you need more mana to last through the longer fights; or if you get a squishy tank, and you need bigger heals to keep him up.

Now we just need some bigger bags to hold all that darn gear...

@someproteinguy: Ok, ty. I am actually starting to find myself swapping gear as the situation calls already. I have a dagger/offhand that gives me a lot of SP, spirit, and intel; and a staff that has decent spirit and intel but good DPS. I use the dagger/offhand for instances, then the staff for solos. =D

@Friar Rarebeast: Haha, ty. I actually just ding'd 35 ;D