Boomkin and Heirlooms

[Garnik]

Ond of the great advantages of leveling as moonkin is the 370% additional armor. Makes you able to tank alot of damage. Then again, if you're using the Cloth Heirlooms, you will lose abit of that armor, instead of using the leather ones.

And just abuse entangling roots, all the time. Can't count how many times it have saved me when i leveled.

And on the move, you can just moonfire spam, so long you're not glyphing for it.

Have to agreed with though that Feral is easier to level as, but not as fun. Of the 5 chars i have leveled, moonkin is the most fun i've ever had during leveling.

[Verth]

I just finished leveling my druid as feral to 80. Just go feral, ultra fast, 0 downtime!


FEral is boring!?

Boomkin rotation - Wrath, wrath, wrath.....wrath wrath? To me this seems to be boring

This.
How the hell is feral more boring than oomkins? I've tried both speccs and feral is better till 80. Avoiding fights and survivability, plus leather gear mostly offers melee stats.
Moonkins have the worst survavability for lvling. Ooming pretty fast and dying even faster. As a cat you'll never have these problems and tanking instances gets you in pretty much faster than queueing for dps.

If you like boomkins gather up some gear at lvl 80 and well, what can i say happy spamming.

[Cyclone Duke]

Rip? Rake? FB? Mangle? SR? And i know i'm missing some.

Realistically though while levelling it's mangle, mangle, mangle, mangle, mangle. Even when you get savage roar (post 70, at which time balance will at least have gotten eclipse) you just keep roar up while spamming mangle.

[Cpttrips]

i leveled balance the whole way, even though people told me all the time i should switch to feral for me personally im glad i didnt listen to them i never had issues and i enjoyed every minute of it i did try feral for a level and i felt i had as much downtime as i did on balance, i know as balance i rarley took a hit most everything was dead before it reached me or entangled and dead shortly..

so really id say its a personal preference.

also if your planning on going boomkin at 80 why not get all that practice in now? itll make you a better critchicken in the end.

my 2 cents

[Cpttrips]

I just finished leveling my druid as feral to 80. Just go feral, ultra fast, 0 downtime!


FEral is boring!?

Boomkin rotation - Wrath, wrath, wrath.....wrath wrath? To me this seems to be boring

lvl'n a boomkin you couldnt be farther from the truth with that statement lol

try

moonfire,insect swarm,wrath,entangling roots--get some dist--starfire-dead least that was my typical single target rotation around lvl 60.

and even lvl 80 boomkins dont go wrath wrath wrath wrath lol silly troll

[Garnik]

moonfire,insect swarm,wrath,entangling roots--get some dist--starfire-dead least that was my typical single target rotation around lvl 60.

Back when i leveled, i did it like this...
Starfire, insect swarm, moonfire, roots, make distance, another starfire, additional wraths if the target is not dead

edit:
also, if you plan to stay moonkin once you hit 80, i would recomend you level as balance to, so you can learn the spec.

[Geminiel]

I've leveled both as Feral and Moonkin and once you hit 40+ glyph innervate and Wrath because really there isn't much else thats useful to glyph and mana becomes much less of a problem, if you are an alchemist make sure you have the best mana pots to reduce downtime all together. If you have money enchant your gear as best as you can. BoA trinkets for the 4% mana return are huge.

I rolled my moonkin on a new server = no BoA gear, no gold nothing and once I got into a groove making gold and healed isntances from 30-40 on occassion tanking them I got plenty of SP drops and bought the rest of my gear off of AH and I found Moonkin to be roughly equal speed and more exciting then feral.

Once you ding 60 and Recieve Starfall it isn't even comparable anymore between Moonkin and Feral. Moonkin takes a huge leap ahead of Feral with Starfall, with Starfall glyph a minute cooldown bursting down AoE groups with Barkskin, Starfall, Hurricane(so long as the mobs don't knockback/interrupt) and even typhoon if you are taking to much damage. Feral has decent AoE from Swipe but Swipe just can't burst the mobs down as fast and efficient as Starfall can.

Once you have eclipse I would just open with Starfall then spam Wrath, whichever eclipse procced, assuming it did, I would use until its duration ended then resume a normal rotation.

With Starfall on such a short cooldown it keeps things very fresh so even if you find yourself spamming wrath more often because mobs just died to fast for me to even apply IS or MF and then apply rejuv on yourself maybe regrowth as well and pull like 8 things at once and starfall the fuck out of them. It takes practice and you may die once or twice but once you understand the AoE potential that Starfall has along with all of its cons you become a beast at efficiency somethign a feral druid doesn't make up for in its non-existant downtime.

[Raroo]

I just finished leveling my druid as feral to 80. Just go feral, ultra fast, 0 downtime!


FEral is boring!?

Boomkin rotation - Wrath, wrath, wrath.....wrath wrath? To me this seems to be boring

Yeah.. I found Feral just quite dull. Idk why. But I just did.

[Norcyz]

So, a cursory search of Wowhead finds 170 leather or cloth armor items between levels 1 and 40. And another 47 rings, cloaks, off-hands, or trinkets. That's not even counting the pure INT items that are definitely still nice for casters of any type.

This isn't vanilla. This isn't BC. This is WotLK. And there is tons of spell power gear at low levels out there. Leveling as balance works better than ever now. Especially with the sexy BoA gear you can get.

[Geminiel]

So, a cursory search of Wowhead finds 170 leather or cloth armor items between levels 1 and 40. And another 47 rings, cloaks, off-hands, or trinkets. That's not even counting the pure INT items that are definitely still nice for casters of any type.

This isn't vanilla. This isn't BC. This is WotLK. And there is tons of spell power gear at low levels out there. Leveling as balance works better than ever now. Especially with the sexy BoA gear you can get.

The final thing Druids really need imo to put the final nail in the coffin and make Balance a completely self sufficient leveling spec from level 1 is a lower level requirement for innervate. A low level innervate such as level 10 and make other mana regen abilities such as evoc and shadowfiend also available at that level to bring leveling more in line for mana dependant classes. Most classes have been granted or will be granted lower level versions of higher level abilities in order to improve the leveling process come Cataclysm, really all that casters need is a mana regen ability available at a low level to make them more efficient. This wouldn't make any aspect of these classes OP because in PvE at low levels many classes never have to stop and regen to output max dps and mana regen merely cripples the classes that require it making them less viable.

Also the biggest benefit is that getting it at level 10 would mean you could skip using bear form for 10 incredibly painful levels god nothing worse then Bear form from level 10-20.

[Sylreick]

I personally leveled as boomkin without boa's, so shouldn't be too hard with them. Just act as if it's a weaker version of a mage, that can hop into cat if mana gets low. Also, if you plan on grouping, you could go as heals until you reach boomkin state.

All in all, it isn't tough, but yes it may not be the fastest route.

[Raroo]

I personally thought that leveling as a moonkin was a fun and interesting way to go. It was difficult at times yes, and I couldn't solo some stuff and actually had to get someone to help me out. But I wouldn't of traded it for the world. But once you hit 40 and can get moonkin form things will got a lot easier.

[sleekit]

Heya. I was just wondering if any of you had any experience leveling a boomkin with heirloom items. Reading the sticky about druid leveling on this forum, I've been led to believe that from 10-60 it's very inefficient to level boomkin as SP isn't readily available on vanilla items, and you will go OoM very quickly.

With the advent of heirlooms, though, does this fix the problems with boomkin leveling at lower levels, or does the amount of SP on the 3 items (cloth chest and shoulders and staff) not justify leveling balance?

I have a set of the cloth heirlooms/Staff as well as the AP leather from my rogue. I think I would enjoy either spec, but if Balance is close to cat, I would prefer to do that. If cat is still much faster, I'll have to break down and purchase the lava dredger and lvl feral.

Thanks for the advice. Peace

if you find a friendly leather worker you'll find almost all the leather gear they can make that that doesn't suit a rogue or feral has recently had its stats altered to have spellpower etc

[axxey]

At lvl40 you get innervate and dual spec...
?!?... Profit...

[Elysia]

I've never understood the "feral is the fastest" notion when it comes to leveling. Feral's fine to level, but it went about a hundred times faster when I switched over to boomkin at level 52. Things fall over so, so much faster as two people in my guild are currently learning while leveling alts. They both hit outlands as feral and had nothing but complaints about how slow things were dying. Both went boomkin and haven't looked back.

But, when it ultimately comes down to it, level as whatever you want to. Both will get the job done, but my vote goes for balance (personally, more fun and faster than feral).