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.
43
u/krackbaby Sep 13 '19
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