druid sticky test page
hello,
this is a splash page for us to start dumping information.
- generic stat conversions from Friar's table http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t36999-feral_druid_numbers/ i want the table in the sticky tho
- attack mechanics from rogue forums, http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=4;mid=12176583197436143;page=1;howmany=50#m1217659305271076199, **will ask Theo if is still up to date - i think it is but want to make sure
- Form Overview: Cat durid is for fite type stuff.
Roles of the Druid
Leveling stuff.
(From Galenmoon - Starting on the basic FAQ, stolen from our current and modified for updated info. Will keep working on it if you guys want to focus on the level 80 pre-heroic/heroic/raid stuff)
I. Frequently Asked Questions - Do weapon procs work in Druid forms? - How does Druid tanking work? II. Introduction - What is a Druid? - What is the Druid 101? - What to expect if you roll a Druid
-- Do procs work on druid weapons? • Weapons with a "Chance on hit" effect as well as "Chance on hit" enchants such as Enchant Weapon - Crusader and Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing will now proc. "Chance on hit" effects built into armor pieces (as opposed to weapons), such as the Shattered Sun Pendant of Might's proc also work as of 3.02. • Weapon DPS and weapon +damage enchants have no effect, however, armor enchants such as the Enchant Ring - Striking enchant, and armor pieces such as the Crystalforged Trinket that boost weapon damage do work. The bonus damage from Weightstones and Sharpening Stones also does work. Weapon enchants that boost stats such as Attack Power and Agility rather than weapon damage also work. • Items with an "Equip: When hit ..." do work in forms. Some examples of these items are the Naglering and Darkmoon Card: Wrath's damage, Green Whelp Armor sleep and Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve proc. • Weapon skill with the equipped weapon has no effect. Instead, the natural weapons always have the maximum weapon skill for their level. • Previously, weapon procs and enchants would only proc in Moonkin and Tree of Life forms, but now also proc in feral forms.
What weapon should I use? Patch 3.0.8 removed specific feral DPS bonuses, made all weapons with more than 54.8 DPS grant feral attack power bonuses based solely on their DPS and increased the DPS of weapons which previously granted feral DPS in order to give them grant roughly the same feral attack power as they did under the old system. Prior to this patch, only specific weapons provided feral attack power bonuses, which came at the expense of DPS.
Your cat and bear form damage is based on a hidden feral weapon skill that is automatically set to maximum when you level up (5 times your level). You should use whatever weapon gives you the best stat increase (agility, strength, etc). This means that you do need to train to use each weapon type at the weapons trainers, but it is not too important to actually level up your weapon skill unless you are using Moonkin or Tree of Life form. (This ultimately also does not matter unless you are using melee to encourage OoC procs for some reason)
How do Druids tank? Druids tank with their face of course. :P
At level 10 you get your bear form. At that point all you really have to hold agro is your Auto attack and Maul. You can get the Glyph of Maul, which causes it to hit two targets. You can also use your Demoralizing Roar, which although not doing damage, causes a small amount of threat to each creature in range.
Luckily there won't be any instances before you get Swipe at level 16. Swipe now hits all mobs within a frontal cone in front of you. (Previously only hit up to 3 targets) With Patch 3.1, Swipe will no longer require you to be targeting a mob to use and will also increase the range on it from 5 yards to 8 yards. If the changes go through, you will also be able to hit mobs in a 360 degree circle around you.
Once you get Swipe, you have your full arsenal of attacks until you reach Level 50 and acquire Mangle.
Here is a great Pre-raid gear guide, brought to you by Horsemouth http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=6;mid=122712812519133661;num=10;page=1
-- What is a Druid? The Druid is a hybrid class. We are all about versatility and can do a little bit of everything. We can heal ourselves and others, we can survive a beating from heavy hitters (called tanking), and we can unleash loads of damage with our spells or with our claws (called magic DPSing or melee DPSing, respectively).
The difference between druids and other hybrid classes is that we specialize in only one of these roles at a time. Notice that does not mean we are limited to only one at a time, and successful Druids use all of their skills and spells according to the situation, regardless of their specialization.
What is the Druid 101? This guide is intended to help new and seasoned World of Warcraft players with the practical aspect of playing the class. The general sections will be kept brief and the focus of the guide will be on Druid-specific content and game-play.
What to expect If you decide to create a Druid you will find it's a play-style that rotates often to take advantage of every enemy weakness. For example, if your enemy is a hard hitter but doesn't have any ranged attacks, you can open a fight by rooting them in place and casting spell damage from a safe distance. When the Roots break away and they come into melee range you can shift into bear form and finish them off from behind your high armor rating. In the next fight you might go up against a caster, sneaking in close with cat form and tearing through their weak armor. The fast attack speed of cat form is effective at interrupting the enemy's casting.
When you reach level 40, another play-style option comes into the rotation if you follow the Balance talent tree. Moonkin form boosts your armor but utilizes your humanoid offensive spells. It plays like something of a battle mage, casting spells but not sweating it when the enemy gets in close.
You will get used to frequently changing forms and styles in reaction to changes in situation. In warning, some players actually find this frustrating. If you think it would be fun to be in cat form all the time, you might consider playing a Rogue instead. At times even a balance Druid needs to leave Moonkin form for bear to be effective.
The downside to all this versatility is that the class doesn't really come into it's own until the late 30s and early 40s. It takes a patient player to get through the tough levels where we feel weak compared to other classes, but in the end we can hold our own against anyone.
Solo, a Druid almost never has to stop and rest.
Moonkin Start.
General Overview - Moonkin is a variation of the druid class from the balance tree that focuses upon the use of spells cast at a distance to ultimately deal damage. The term Moonkin is derived from the level 40 talent point in the Balance tree known as Moonkin form. As an alliance character you will turn into a purple owlkin and as a horde you will effectively turn into a tan owlkin. Now there are a few names Moonkins have been given over the years and such terms are: Boomkin, Battle Turkey, Laser Chicken and my own little favorite... Boomkips! Now to let this guide begin where it needs to begin. The choice of your race.
Whether you pick alliance or horde the racial abilities have very little to do with general pve end game content, but as you level you'll find some very good uses for both racials that you can recieve from either Night Elf or Tauren.
Night Elf Shadowmeld - instant - 2 min cooldown Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect. Elusiveness - passive (Rogue/Druid only) Reduces the chance enemies have to detect you while Shadowmelded or Stealthed. Quickness - passive Reduces the chance that melee and ranged attackers will hit you by 2%. Wisp Spirit - passive Transform into a wisp upon death, increasing speed by 75%. Nature Resistance - passive Reduces the chance you will be hit by Nature spells by 2%.
Tauren War Stomp - instant - 0.5 sec cast - 2 min cooldown Stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yds for 2 sec. Endurance - passive Base Health increased by 5% Cultivation - passive Herbalism skill increased by 15. Nature Resistance - passive Reduces the chance you will be hit by Nature spells by 2%.
As stated before the choice between the two factions has very little to do with end game pve content so if your goal is to pve you merely could choose your race from an aesthetic point of view. For pvp Taurens seem to have a little edge in the fact that in close combat a simple stun could mean life or death, with the addition of extra health it is also a very good pvp choice with the given state of pvp as it is in. Night elf however has a lesser stealth detection because of Elusiveness giving you the ability to stealth with lesser chance of being detected. Also with quickness giving the 2% chance to miss also can mean a huge difference if one attack misses you. But, as I have said so far picking your race based upon racials doesn't make much of a difference like it does say picking a human warrior for passive expertise or an orc warrior for passive racials. So choose your race as it would see you fit. Do you want to be a reclusive Night Elf druid or a burly fur covered Tauren with the love of flowers?
Leveling:
If you choose to level balance you're going to want to get to 40 as soon as you possibly can to get moonkin form. Once you recieve moonkin form you'll notice that your survivability will increase dramatically with the increased armor and the extra passive 5% crit you recieve from the form. A pretty basic http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0xG0hiI0sz build is shown here picking up the most damage stats available with a small amount dipping into regen talents.
Stat Hierarchy/Stat Table Talents
End Game Content ~ With regards to gear progression and talent progression to lesser mana regeneration. 5 Man Regular 5 Man Heroic 10 Man Raid 25 Man Raid
Some Magic Numbers (IE: hit rating and all that jazz)
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/adoriele/280-tale_two_ratings.html ~ breaks down haste vs crit for boomkins. Gonna put this in stats and magic numbers crap.
Professions that min/max - can be done as a section for all specs
Addons, forgot about this one for moonkin. There is really only one addon and thats squawkandawe
Rotations ~ Lunar vs Solar Eclipse and the stat hierarchy
Glyphs ~ Figured this would be important as well.
Possible PVP stuff, not really sure how much I can put down I'm not the most qualified. I think PvP as a PvP section and talk about 3-4 PvP specs would work best. Also should add-ons be attached to the most useful spec or in their own section?
Cat Start.
Overview.
Stats Hierarchy In no real order. Agi, ArP, Hit, Exp, Crit, Str, AP. Haste is never that great for cats. Been reading up on agi vs ArP. It varies based on what Idol you are using, if Sunder Armor is being applied and the amount of ArP you have. Hoping they come to a consensus about ArP after the patch otherwise it will be confusing to new druids. If it remains a varied stat based on multiple variables then I will assume we should leave Agi as king for simplicity and list the debate as advanced reading.
Talent Builds Maybe a mangle bitch build, a standard raid build and a casual build
Standard Raid Build (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZgGMcfrz0eR0huAkbAczb:pVmz)
PvP Kitty Build (http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxMGssrd0eRhIuhzbAczb:opNz)
Rotation vs Priority System
Kitty druids use a priority system when approaching their DPS method rather than a rotation. This is due to a number of effects which can cause a change in the priority due to availability of combo points and energy. Such things as Omen of Clarity, Primal Fury, King of the Jungle and Berserk can all lead to different circumstances during a fight.
The position of the boss during combat also has a heavy factor in the priority system since shred can only be used from behind and boss movement can hinder development of combo points due to range issues.
Standard Priority System is as follows
Is Faerie Fire up, if not FFF Is Rake up, if not Rake Is Mangle up, if not Mangle Is Savage Roar up, if not Savage Roar (start rotation with 2-4CP, then try and always refresh with a 5CP) Is Rip up, if not get to 5CP and Rip (always Rip with 5CP if possible)
Gear: pre-heroic, heroic, T7, T8
Bear Start
Overview.
Stats Hierarchy Armor, agi, sta the trinity. Followed by dodge, def( tell not to avoid or stack), and the SD stats. That as of now I am not sure if non-leather pieces should be for SD, which kind of makes sense but I'll keep looking for something more definitive. I honestly feel that it will depend on the fight and the exact piece and what you are upgrading over.
Need survival caps for Naxx and Ulduar. As meeting those caps is key to how you have to gem/chant your gear. Explain concept of Survival cap first I guess. Then talk about avoidance and mitigation.
Survival cap: This is the bare minimal level of health and armor you need to survive. Typically, it places you above a one shot or preferably a 2 shot depending on the boss. Avoidance doesn't usually play in this as it is the worst case scenario. Where as a Time-to-Live calculation does include avoidance.
Usually the survival cap is you eating the bosses nasty special attack and one or two regular hits. After this point you typically gear for avoidance and/or threat. Preferring avoidance unless the DPS you play with are pushing your TPS then go threat.
Talent Builds / Glyphing : So happy all the calc have glyphs now
Max Damage - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGscrzceocczAkbAc0b:0nzzcM (General) Max Mitigation Build - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZvGGscrzceocczVzbAc0b:0nzzcM (Ulduar)
OT Build - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGMcfrzceRc0uVkbAczb:VpzzcM (Ulduar)
Heroics/Naxx Build - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0ZxGGscrzceRccdAkbA0z:M0zzcM (Naxx)
Rotation leads into primer, depends on Imp Mangle being the standard or not, which also depends on progression level.
Assuming Maul glyph, talk about the glory of maul and the everlasting orgasm of mangle. The AP threshold where Swipe over takes Lacerate on threat. The importance of putting Lacerate up on bosses/nasty trash to boost Maul + get SD procs.
Tanking Primer - maybe would work best as a link, or an overview with a link to a more detailed wiki page, not sure. Definitely have to talk about positioning and the general rotation or faceroll as it where.
Gear: pre-heroic, heroic, T7, T8 - I have gear lists for pre-Naxx and Naxx. Will modify based on new SD mechanics. Felhoof did a write up on his blog for Ulduar gear and where it stacks, also has T7 stuff in the mix will be nice to see what to get in Naxx to help for Ulduar. HAve to read his rank system better. Might use it to re-vamp the Naxx Raiders edition gear list. http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/04/druid-ulduar-loot-weight-loot-listing.html#links
Dropping PP as a bear when Exp on gear supports it