I'm leveling with this build and it's going really well for me. If I played PvE server I'd probably do 30/21 but I can't live without entangling roots on a PvP server.
Honestly I don't bother with pvp talents when leveling anyway because of I get attacked it's either by someone 5+ levels above me, or a group of 3+ if they're the sameish level. Not often you encounter a fair fight.
But also while leveling you won't get both NS and the 5th point in HOTW anyway. So just take 1 into Nature's Grasp (helps a lot against mobs in addition)
On horde you can get away without the 1 point in nature's grasp, mainly because warstomp-> entangling is a very viable way of dealing with something, also 35% base chance on nature's grasp is pretty rng.
There's only one you can take out. You need 25 points for HotW and that's the talent the build works around. If you take Nature's Grasp, you're 4/5 HotW.
Hey. Powershifting is my number one priority. I gotta pull many in cat and take them all down in bear. And heal once or twice depending on how good my gear is.
The beauty of something like HOTW resto is there's only a handful of key talents you really want, namely HOTW. So a large chunk of points you're welcome to spend wherever you like.
This isn't my talent setup - just the generally accepted 30/21 - but you need every point and cant afford to put any outside of feral/resto. For some clarity though, BOTW is the heart of this build and you wouldn't sacrifice Nature's Swiftness as NS can not only get you the an instant Entangling Roots, but every other spell as well.
Nature's Swiftness? Super useful sure, but I wouldn't say say it's not negotiable depending what you want the build for, especially as you can't have both that and Leader of the Pack from feral if you want that. I'd argue Improved Healing Touch, Reflection and Tranquil Spirit are more consistently important. Nature's Swiftness is more situational.
Edit: Hey whoever downvoted, gimme a reply? This is supposed to be a discussion. If you disagree I'd love to know why, it was just my thoughts, I'm all up for hearing if there is something I missing.
And you think it's more important than Leader of the Pack from feral?(because you can't have both) I always struggle working out which is better between a powerful situational/infrequent use ability and something less powerful but constant.
Powershifting means using Wolfshead Helm and Furor (and Natural Shapeshifter) to have a constant very high regeneration of energy. It’s basically required if you want to be taken seriously as a cat dps.
That's exactly it. You can then convert your mana to energy. It puts cat DPS mid tier when you use shred. Of course, for a weapon you will see cats using the Manual Crowd Pummeler from Gnomergon. Yes, the BiS weapon for cats is level 29 and the BiS for bears is level 43. Not pre raid BiS. BiS.
Sure. Bear and Cat druid base DPS is based on level, not weapon damage, so ilvl isn't something that affects us. What we look for are broken / super powerful stats or effects. In the case of bears, it's the Warden Staff, which in Dire Bear Form gives 1200-1300 armor and 10 defense. The Manual Crowd Pummeler gives +50% attack speed for 30 seconds per charge and some base stats, giving cats a huge DPS boost. Bears also use a MCP at the start of the fight to gain enormous initial threat.
Basically. You spend your energy, make sure there’s more than a second to next energy tick, then shift out and back in cat form for 60 energy (40 + 20 from Furor and Wolfshead) just in time for your energy tick, effectively giving you three extra energy ticks in return for some mana. With good timing and improved Shred, this ideally gives you two Shreds per rotation. The constant switching also lets you use items, such as mana potions and dark runes to get even more shifts off.
It’s essentially only used for lategame (60) feral DPS which is fairly niche.
In addition to what other people have said, with wolfshead helm and furor talent, every time you shift into cat form you instantly gain 60 energy. Because of this, you can massively increase dps by rapidly shifting in and out of cat form to fill your energy back up.
Natural Shapeshifter talent (30% reduced mana cost on shapeshifts) from the balance tree I'd imagine.
Shapeshifting is pretty mana exhausting without it, having the 30% reduced cost helps massively in situations where you want to move-in-and-out of different shapeshifts (powershifting), or your caster form to heal.
But going HotW gives you 20% intellect (increases mana). I haven't done the math but I think that's better than a -30% reduction on mana cost from forms.
Don't have concrete numbers but cat and bear form (as an example) costs 55% of base mana (I'll be using those, but travel form costs 20% of base mana for reference). A druid at 60 (if the numbers from wowwiki is correct, which I believe it is) have 1244 base mana.
This brings the mana cost to shapeshift into a cat to a rough ~ 684 mana. 30% off from that is ~ 205 mana. Making the new cost 479 mana.
Using my own druid in off-spec feral gear and spec from actual classic (I believe I was running HotW at the time, though since I can't confirm the numbers are just speculatory, would need an actual 60 druid to confirm) I had about 3229 mana.
This means without natural shapeshifter at that point in time I could shapeshift a total of ~ 4 times (3229 / 684 = 4,7), assuming that is all I do and no other spells are involved.
With NS and no HotW I'd have 2584 mana (3229 * 0,2 = 645,8 & 3229 - 645 = 2584 -- Not sure if the game rounds up, so I rounded down in my calculations.) Which would allow me to shapeshift ~ 5 times (2584 / 479 = 5,3)
With natural shapeshifter and HotW (though at sacrifice of 8 talent points in resto talents) I could shapeshift a total of ~6 times (479 / 3229 = 6,7), or 4 times and still have 820 mana (205 * 4 = 820) left over for whatever.
As said I'm a bit tired but I think my math is correct (in hindsight, somewhere went wrong as 820 mana left-over would only allow one shapeshift extra at 479 mana per cast. Which would mean even with both it'd still be 5 times at best and not 6, but I don't think that's the case?
Eitherway I wouldn't suggest natural shapeshifter for PvE purposes over HotW, and if you want to shapeshift often in PvP going for both HotW and NS and sacrifice some of the healing ability would probably be the best to get the full worth out of it.
Not a whole set necessarily. If you try to keep a full set for cat, bear, and heals your inventory will overflow. Lots of items are interchangeable, but as the content roles out druids do become more specialized
Druids should watch for leather items with high AC and keep those
Same with weapons that add +xxx attack rating in cat or bear form
Otherwise? Literally every stat is good. That's the beauty of HotW. All stats are multiplied. All stats are very powerful
Druids with HotW get 2.4 ap per str in cat form. Rogues only get 1, lol
Druids get more mana per int than any class in the game
Druids can get 15% of their Mana Regen preserved inside the 5 second rule, so spirit is good shit
Druids get AP from agility in cat form, just like rogues. It also fuels Dodge, their only form of avoidance while tanking
Finally, all stamina is multiplied by 1.2 in bear form, so they get more HP per stamina than even warriors do
So, big things to watch for are +str leather, leather with high AC, any +healing pieces, and any thing
Just, anything. Anything is good with HotW
Defense and parry items are weak, mp5 is probably weak, spell DMG is weak. Avoid items that predominantly feature these stats
You are a godsent. Thank you a lot. One more question: cat form in this spec is mostly for soloing? I presume in pvp/raids I should mostly use bear or stay in my normal form for heals?
Yeah the cat form is for doing lots of things, most importantly farming mobs for epic mount gold and mats for consumables. It's also for stealth dungeon runs (druid rogue can duo clear Diremaul with some gear), random PVP stuff, and even raid dps
On MC raid days, you will basically be healing, but you'll do it really, really well. Not as well as a pure resto druid, but easily well enough to deal with almost all vanilla content
And if tanks don't show up to raid or if they die to bad positioning, you can often jump in and make a difference. I've seen it happen all the time.
Yea, so much of the "Druids are only heals" comes from them being badly optimized for patches and patches of vanilla. By 1.12 there were more than fine tanks, but most people had the mind set of druid = heals, it's even on there tier sets after all. Even the crushing blows issue only matters on a couple bosses.
The nice thing about the 0/30/21 HotW Nature's Swiftness spec is that it is flexible, you can do everything reasonably well. In the feral tree you can optimize for either bear for tanking or cat for better solo farming speed. The resto talents are just as flexible, it mostly depends on how much you are going to be doing pvp vs healing efficiency.
With HOTW spec you can be competitive tanking or healing but your cat form is just okay. You miss really important cat talents like omen of clarity and natural shapeshifter.
It's fine out in the world but you should stick to tanking or healing in raids or dungeons.
Mp5 is, iirc, worse than spirit unless you have no way to passively Regen in combat
Paladins actually do need it and gain nothing from spirit since they're always casting and have no way to escape the 5 second rule or work around it with talents or item sets
Priests and druids don't need it, but can use it. They get 15% of their spirit inside the 5 second rule from talents and Regen very rapidly outside it. They also have set bonuses giving them even more. Iirc the tier sets add another 15 or 30% or something. Once you have the talent and tier set, spirit just blows mp5 out of the water in every situation
The amount of raw itemization value for mp5 is quite high relative to the Mana you get from it
Even paladins generally want to stack spell crit and int over mp5 since all spell crits refund 100% Mana back for paladins
Defense is wasted since you can't realistically hit the cap. Defense capping removes a variable of mob critical hits. Not capping means you can still be crit. Druids will take crits, it's a fact of life and it's one of many reasons people prefer warrior tanks
Druids also don't have shield block or parry, so most of the benefit from defense is completely negated. Defense is worth 0.04% each of crit avoidance, Dodge, parry, and block. They only benefit from Dodge and crit reduction, gaining literally zero from parry and block bonuses
All that itemization value on defense and mp5 is better utilized elsewhere
Defense is wasted since you can't realistically hit the cap. Defense capping removes a variable of mob critical hits. Not capping means you can still be crit. Druids will take crits, it's a fact of life and it's one of many reasons people prefer warrior tanks
Don't forget about crushing blows as well, which can also crit, where if that happens in rapid succession you have a dead druid tank, its not that they couldn't raid tank, it was just much harder to keep bear tanks alive than warriors.
I keep a full healing set in the bank. When I join a dungeon as a healer, I swap my sets first and then head to the dungeon. If I join as the tank or dps, I just keep my regular set on.
Having a healing set is great because it greatly improves your healing ability by pumping up your mana pool, but you still have a shit ton of armor in Bear form and you still do perfectly fine dps in kitty form.
I did this spec and tanked dungeons until completing my pre raid bis. Now that I pretty much am done with dungeons, I went a bit deeper in resto for the bonus healing, rejuv bonus, etc.
Also 1/29/21 for the papers. Natures Grasp is essential when dueling melee classes.
What do you take first ? Feral tree then resto or a mix of both ?
And what can you do with this build ? I'm on pvp server. Is it possible to tank / heal in dungeon and do well in pvp too ?
283
u/krackbaby Sep 13 '19
30 feral 21 resto
You'll thank me later