[Balance] boomkin and levling... wait what?

[Sunnydee]

yeah so im lvling my druid atm. lvl 86. nice and nifty. some DS /questing gear so not full 372.

and the dps is totally RUBBISH. what the hell? is this how it is all the way to 90? even at 90?
most druids i see are feral so if u put 2 and 2 together balance = shit?

[Alzu]

Nope, I was destroying any mobs when I was 86. Sounds like there is something wrong with your playstyle. At 88 and 89 sure, it gets quite bad but it's not surprising due to the combat rating scaling.

[Rotted]

I'm going resto and boomkin I think, instance and pvp leveling, or with a group of mates like I'm doing with my hunter, purely because I think Im going to be squishy solo on a boomkin

[Deleted]

I brought my moonkin to Pandaria and did the first 3, 4 quests.

Then I hearthstoned back to SW, reset my skills and learned how to play my druid as bear/cat.

I never had a good understanding of my moonkin, for it is only a miner/herbalist alt, but the combination of low damage (which was probably completely my fault) and low survivability (again, probably by my lack of knowledge ans skill) made me losing any motivation in leveling this char. So I went tank, dinged 86 only with gathering, then tanked and gathered to 89, did some Dread Wastes and Hit 90. Everything with a lot of double XP.

P.S.: I played 1-85 as moonkin, seemed easier with my main a mage.

[Grubjuice]

there a big jump in mob combat rating once you enter MoP questzones.

i can't think of any class that doesn't have to adjust the larger healthpools and harder hits. just get some better gear and keep spamming your Wraths and Starfires.

Remember a Moonkin and can self-heal (Glyph of Moonbeast and the tier-30 talents), healing yourself should be second nature for questing as that is your primary survival mechanic.

Also get used to switching talents between soloing and instances (for example I use Force of Nature and[now at lvl 90] Dream of Cenarius [or Heart of the Wild] to solo, and switch to Incarnation and nature's Vigil for dungeons and raids).

[Volitar]

I was leveling a druid right before the mop prepatch came out and I have to say my leveling speed/multipull potential went straight into the shitter. They did the same thing to priests, dots deal shit damage now and the benefit from multidotting is the procs you get.

[Lora]

yeah so im lvling my druid atm. lvl 86. nice and nifty. some DS /questing gear so not full 372.

and the dps is totally RUBBISH. what the hell? is this how it is all the way to 90? even at 90?
most druids i see are feral so if u put 2 and 2 together balance = shit?

Whatever you are doing, it's wrong. I leveled 85-90 as balance and I was aoe farming and shit as I did quests. I was taking on rares and soloing those all the time too. I only ever died when someone decided to gank me and then i'd gank them but i never died to npcs. it's easy.

[Elysara]

Balance is not shit. If you look up ANY WoL logs and top raiding guilds, Balance is the top DPS spec for druids because it hits like a fucking truck. DREAMParagon had 2 Boomkins and one resto when they were clearing heroic Mogu'shan

Right now I don't have much Boomkin gear myself (As I am a main healer) but even with all my healer gear when I am doing dailies and "Shooting Stars" procs, I hit for like 336k. I can burst 107k and Keep a maintained 60k+ -- I could pull more if my boomy set was not basically my healing gear, But still pretty damn good

Balance is amazing

[artem123]

Balance is not shit. If you look up ANY WoL logs and top raiding guilds, Balance is the top DPS spec for druids because it hits like a fucking truck. DREAMParagon had 2 Boomkins and one resto when they were clearing heroic Mogu'shan

Right now I don't have much Boomkin gear myself (As I am a main healer) but even with all my healer gear when I am doing dailies and "Shooting Stars" procs, I hit for like 336k. I can burst 107k and Keep a maintained 60k+ -- I could pull more if my boomy set was not basically my healing gear, But still pretty damn good

Balance is amazing

balance can be great, till you hit a fight where you have heavy movement. ><

[Elysara]

balance can be great, till you hit a fight where you have heavy movement. ><

As it can be with any caster that relies on sitting still. Boomies,Mages,Warlocks etc.

Sure I have seen ferals do pretty damn well (80k+ DPS) But boomkin outshines it by MILES

[Zareth]

I leveled as moonkin 85-90 when MoP launched. I found the first few levels to be okay, but I really started feeling overwhelmed at 88, and 89-90 was just horrible. If you wanna pull more than one mob, you better have offensive and defensive cooldowns ready, or you'll be in big trouble. Another thing; if you unexpectedly pull more than 1 mob, you better have a sprint and run as fast as you can or be a Night Elf for Shadowmeld..

Yes, moonkins can be frusrating to level if your gear is bad. For my alts now, I work around the problem by buying them tons of stuff - for example my lvl 85 hunter has 430 ilvl and my 87 priest is a bit above that.

Final note: dont be afraid to heal yourself, I used Renewal/Nature's Swiftness pretty much on cooldown.

[Jahlove]

I was leveling a druid right before the mop prepatch came out and I have to say my leveling speed/multipull potential went straight into the shitter. They did the same thing to priests, dots deal shit damage now and the benefit from multidotting is the procs you get.

Just wait until you get a little bit of gear and then it will honestly be easier than before.

Source: I has lots of gear

---------- Post added 2012-12-12 at 10:19 PM ----------

I leveled as moonkin 85-90 when MoP launched. I found the first few levels to be okay, but I really started feeling overwhelmed at 88, and 89-90 was just horrible. If you wanna pull more than one mob, you better have offensive and defensive cooldowns ready, or you'll be in big trouble. Another thing; if you unexpectedly pull more than 1 mob, you better have a sprint and run as fast as you can or be a Night Elf for Shadowmeld..

Yes, moonkins can be frusrating to level if your gear is bad. For my alts now, I work around the problem by buying them tons of stuff - for example my lvl 85 hunter has 430 ilvl and my 87 priest is a bit above that.

Final note: dont be afraid to heal yourself, I used Renewal/Nature's Swiftness pretty much on cooldown.

The latter levels were quite a pain from what I remember. I absolutely hated Townlong Steppes and I remember having to use combos of Typhoon, Ursol's Vortex, and Entangling Roots just to keep shit from destroying me. It gets much better with a bit of gear though.

[Deleted]

Balance is easy, just dot everything up, pop cds and just heal whenever you need to. That way its really quick

[Pascal]

Balance is great. In fact, my friend asked me if he should level his druid balance or feral, and I told him it would be better to go balance for the survivability - healing, kiting, CC, etc - and he said, well, I've been doing feral for a few hours and I can heal fine and everything's fine, I'm just gonna stay feral.

He got to 88 and he stopped leveling. He said feral was getting wrecked and it was too late/difficult to get balance gear to keep leveling.

I leveled balance 85-90 and had no issues. The DPS leveling anything is usually pretty bad, and it just feels bad with slow casts as a caster. But, uh, interesting decision, there, to base a class' usefulness at 90 on your experience leveling at level 86.

[Aphie]

I didn't have much trouble at all, in fact I was pulling multiple mobs at once, or as many as I think I could handle, kill them and carry on. Only time I started to become crap, was when I started losing hit, due to leveling and rating being higher etc. But that was only at like, level 88+ or so.

[Lora]

Balance is not shit. If you look up ANY WoL logs and top raiding guilds, Balance is the top DPS spec for druids because it hits like a fucking truck. DREAMParagon had 2 Boomkins and one resto when they were clearing heroic Mogu'shan

Right now I don't have much Boomkin gear myself (As I am a main healer) but even with all my healer gear when I am doing dailies and "Shooting Stars" procs, I hit for like 336k. I can burst 107k and Keep a maintained 60k+ -- I could pull more if my boomy set was not basically my healing gear, But still pretty damn good

Balance is amazing

Umm. No. Balance is amazing and all but feral out dpses balance any day assuming equal gear and skill.

[Elysara]

Umm. No. Balance is amazing and all but feral out dpses balance any day assuming equal gear and skill.

How many heroic guild runs have ferals in them? That are not guardians?

Let's see.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...Garalon-Hotfix

Acrol = Balance
Bushino = Balance
Notdiggz = Guardian
Zoomkins = Balance

Hmm....3 Boomkin druids as DPS and no feral...wonder why

Another Balance DREAMParagon http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...C3%A9/advanced

Midwinter Balance Druid - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ras/Dig/simple

All these top guilds with boomkins as DPS

[Lora]

How many heroic guild runs have ferals in them? That are not guardians?

Let's see.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/...Garalon-Hotfix

Acrol = Balance
Bushino = Balance
Notdiggz = Guardian
Zoomkins = Balance

Hmm....3 Boomkin druids as DPS and no feral...wonder why

Another Balance DREAMParagon http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...C3%A9/advanced

Midwinter Balance Druid - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ras/Dig/simple

All these top guilds with boomkins as DPS

Doesn't matter. If they were fully BIS and equally skilled Feral would do more. It outparses. You can like balance all you like, believe me i love it. I hate kitty but we do less damage than feral. It's a simple fact. It doesnt matter if guilds use them or not. Balance brings more utility than feral.

[Justignoreme]

The thing I dislike about balance is the lack of a direct interrupt. Unlike pvp where a roots/solar beam can be a great way to keep something out of a fight, it's completely and totally worthless even trying it in pve. I really wish they'd make a glyph that turned solar beam into a proper interrupt, not some AoE that everything moves out of to cast.

[neghinitza]

I lvled as moonkin back when MoP was launched, it was my raiding spec and it was really good geared and as people say around lvl 88 things start to go really slow. Your ratings go to hell .. your casting 2.4sec starfires that hit like wet noodles and most mobs have some stupid knockback/stun/whatever that fuck you up even more.

As melee these things affect you less and from what I've understood you can heal pretty well in form also. If you just leveled you might be able to buy some crafted feral gear from the auction house and try it out.

My second char was a warrior and it felt smoother on the way to lvl 90.