New Druid specs for expansion

[reirei]

While i think a lot of the basics of the trees are well thought out i think it's missing some tweaking. Here is what I think good trees are from a purely PvE perspective for Restro and Boomkin. I think the trees are great. Some ppl have complained about bloat, but I think it really allows ppl to choose what they want and will offer a lot more then cookie cutter specs. You'll have to choose based on your spell rotation or tanking/dps role. I didn't do feral simply because itemization is uncertian at this point and it seems to be the tree most likely to change in the coming months.

Boomkin:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?http...05213315100231

I took out Typhoon and Forces of Nature. I think most ppl agree that typhoon is a pure PvP talent, and with the tree so full as it is I think it is unneeded. Forces of Nature has some useful application in PvE particularly in spawning them at the beginning of the fight as they don't count towards your aggro. Because in some fights with enrage timers squeezing every dps out is vital. However, being point conscience, they also usually wind up dead and don't do much then.

I left out both Intensity and Dreamstate. Some ppl may argue about going oom. I find this highly unlikely. With totems, shadow priests, hunters, disc priest and restro druids all regenerating mana raid wide, I think you'll see better responses to this. But more importantly, blizzard gives you an option to regen mana: crit. While crit didn't scale well as a stat in BC mostly because talents like Wrath of Cenarius made spell dmg equal greater point for point dmg, additional talents such as Eclipse while allow crit to become a damage buff and a mana regenerator with moonkin form. And any dps u may lose from stacking crit over spell dmg I think will be made up by the extra talents. In addition, Omen of Clarity is getting majorly buffed, and provides the best talent point per mana saved in the tree.

I choose Nature's Focus over Imp Mark of the wild for the same reason I put in 1 point into Owlkin frenzy. Blizzard has focused on pushback in almost every class in addition to changing the way that pushback will work. They have also indicated greater raid healing will be needed. Given this, it means your probably going to be attacked. Pushback reduces casting time and hence dps. At present, from what they have shown the occurance of raid dmg isn't enough to focus on pushback, but enough to make it a concern. Let the restro druid take Imp Mark of the Wild, they're going to anyways. And why not more points in Owlkin Frenzy if I believe they are incorporating more raid damage. Well, why I would like to, there simply aren't enough points and investing one point gives you the ability, the rest just increase the proc rate.

So, why not genesis and improved faerie fire but choosing Nature's splendor? Again, its about choice. Insect swarm and moonfire don't scale well with crit, which appears to be the primary stat on most leather items geared towards boomkins. Regardless of that, with starfire being reduced to 2.5 sec and an inherent 6% spell haste, it will easily out dps those spells. So, my typical rotation would be to cast Faerie Fire; insect swarm; spam wrath until the Eclipse talent procs, then moonfire; spam starfire. Refresh the spells as needed rinse and repeat.

I only choose 3 points in Earth and Moon because the rest are unnecessary. Within 12 secs with no haste gear on, you can cast 5 starfires within 12 sec, the likelihood is that the debuff while stick one of those times, and in high mobility fights, you will most likely be using wrath, which gives u greater odds of it procing (because of the innately shorter cast time). I doubt any more points will be needed. Plus this debuff doesnt stack with Warlocks Curses, so if the have improved curse of element you may wish to forgoe these talent points altogether because their debuff gives greater spell damage increase. (I know this is Affliction, but blizzard has stated into making this spec more viable in WoLTK for raiding.)

Now, why Gale winds and Starfall? Well, mostly because it seems AoE casting will be needed in WoTLK and if your attitude is well leave that up to the mages to do, well most likely you won't have a spot in the raid. After all they only really need one boomkin for the Aura, why bring the boomkin who doesn't AoE? And starfall is nice because its an instant cast AoE.

Now, with WoTLK coming out, raid environments may govern changes, but this seems best from what I can tell.

Restro:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

Mostly the Same but I included Nature's graces, with Regrowths 50% bonus crit, it's hard to justify not doing this. In regards to some peoples concerns that regrowth is not spammable, I would have to ask what level gear your at, because about 50% of my healing comes from Regrowth. Mind you I'm at a T6 level and my mana regen can afford it. And with the this Glyph:

Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.

Regrowth- has a much greater healing throughput then Nourish. And if all your doing as a restro druid is spamming HoT's I would have to say your not doing a good job as a healer because Lifebloom and Rejuvenation go tick tick tick, bam the tanks dead raid wipes. What do u say sorry my swiftmend was on CD? This is the reason why they are nerfing Lifebloom. Because while Lifebloom looks pretty in healing meters, if someone dies because you cast Lifebloom on them and not regrowth; you fail as a healer. If a mage is at 20% Health, that Lifebloom isn't going to tick fast enough to get him back up before he's oneshoted by something else. Lifebloom spamming is why other healers hate you in 25-man raids, because they have to pull your weight and make sure ppl don't die, while u just tick tick tick LB everywhere making yourself pretty on Healing meters.
And the argument that regowth costs 10% more mana is a false argument. This is based on you base mana percentage, at my level of gear fully raid buffed, I have 4 times the mana as my base mana pool.
Now, I took a point from Replenish, because while it has the potential to be a good raid buff, I feel it doesn't matter how much mana/rage/energy/runic power ppl have if ppl start dieing and that .5 sec can make that difference. Mind you depending how flourish works out I may be inclined to take that point from Improved Tranquility. Also they have yet to be firm on whether gift of the earthmother will stack with haste. I already have some haste and plan on keeping that stat in Wrath, so if it doesn't reduce the casting time below 1 sec, taking points from there is a good option come wrath with a decent amount of haste on you.

[Kakura]

The purpose of keeping lots of HoTs rolling on the tanks is to blunt the spike damage a bit so that other classes with larger direct heals can take care of the bulk damage.

With the 9 second duration of lifebloom (with the balance talent) and the 19 second duration of rejuvenation, and the 1 second cooldown on both, you're going to be able to keep a LOT of them rolling.

Regrowth is looking like the champion raid heal at this point, though. Something about that is likely to change, because otherwise I don't see anyone ever casting nourish. The synergy with the huge crit chance of regrowth (easily 60% if you have a moonkin around), nature's swiftness, living seed, and the glyph is just too great to ignore.

[reirei]

I understand that perspective, but the advantage of a druid is we can do both, we can keep HoTs up to blunt incoming damage, but our regrowth spell is actually a more powerful direct heal then flash of light. so if your swiftmend is on CD, or the tank isn't low enough that u want to waste it (i personally only use swiftmend as a omg the tank is going to die button).
As far as i'm aware Rejuv will only be extended to 18sec (30% of 15 is 3.90, but since rejuv only ticks every 3 sec, it's fair to say it will only last 18 sec) And between this much longer HoT uptime and the added man/rage/energey/runic power regen, I think it will be the HoT of choice over Lifebloom. And regrowth also has a 27 sec HoT at the back end which is smexy.
There is no one right spell for every situation but far too many druids underestimate the power of regrowth and it's their loss ultimately and their raids loss because HoTs do exactly what u said they blunt damage, similar to a power word shield but when push comes to shove and someone needs a big heal, i just feel druids have to learn to step up to the plate.

[Firebug]

Note: Primal Precision is 5/10 expertise Skill, not rating. So at 80 its worth approximately 45/90 expertise rating. And reduces the targets chance to parry/dodge by 1.25/2.50 % chance. So 2 points equals either 2.50 - 5.00 chance to hit depending on if you are behind the mob or not.

[Bloodysorc]

While i think a lot of the basics of the trees are well thought out i think it's missing some tweaking. Here is what I think good trees are from a purely PvE perspective for Restro and Boomkin. I think the trees are great. Some ppl have complained about bloat, but I think it really allows ppl to choose what they want and will offer a lot more then cookie cutter specs. You'll have to choose based on your spell rotation or tanking/dps role. I didn't do feral simply because itemization is uncertian at this point and it seems to be the tree most likely to change in the coming months.

Boomkin:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?http...05213315100231

I took out Typhoon and Forces of Nature. I think most ppl agree that typhoon is a pure PvP talent, and with the tree so full as it is I think it is unneeded. Forces of Nature has some useful application in PvE particularly in spawning them at the beginning of the fight as they don't count towards your aggro. Because in some fights with enrage timers squeezing every dps out is vital. However, being point conscience, they also usually wind up dead and don't do much then.

I left out both Intensity and Dreamstate. Some ppl may argue about going oom. I find this highly unlikely. With totems, shadow priests, hunters, disc priest and restro druids all regenerating mana raid wide, I think you'll see better responses to this. But more importantly, blizzard gives you an option to regen mana: crit. While crit didn't scale well as a stat in BC mostly because talents like Wrath of Cenarius made spell dmg equal greater point for point dmg, additional talents such as Eclipse while allow crit to become a damage buff and a mana regenerator with moonkin form. And any dps u may lose from stacking crit over spell dmg I think will be made up by the extra talents. In addition, Omen of Clarity is getting majorly buffed, and provides the best talent point per mana saved in the tree.

I choose Nature's Focus over Imp Mark of the wild for the same reason I put in 1 point into Owlkin frenzy. Blizzard has focused on pushback in almost every class in addition to changing the way that pushback will work. They have also indicated greater raid healing will be needed. Given this, it means your probably going to be attacked. Pushback reduces casting time and hence dps. At present, from what they have shown the occurance of raid dmg isn't enough to focus on pushback, but enough to make it a concern. Let the restro druid take Imp Mark of the Wild, they're going to anyways. And why not more points in Owlkin Frenzy if I believe they are incorporating more raid damage. Well, why I would like to, there simply aren't enough points and investing one point gives you the ability, the rest just increase the proc rate.

So, why not genesis and improved faerie fire but choosing Nature's splendor? Again, its about choice. Insect swarm and moonfire don't scale well with crit, which appears to be the primary stat on most leather items geared towards boomkins. Regardless of that, with starfire being reduced to 2.5 sec and an inherent 6% spell haste, it will easily out dps those spells. So, my typical rotation would be to cast Faerie Fire; insect swarm; spam wrath until the Eclipse talent procs, then moonfire; spam starfire. Refresh the spells as needed rinse and repeat.

I only choose 3 points in Earth and Moon because the rest are unnecessary. Within 12 secs with no haste gear on, you can cast 5 starfires within 12 sec, the likelihood is that the debuff while stick one of those times, and in high mobility fights, you will most likely be using wrath, which gives u greater odds of it procing (because of the innately shorter cast time). I doubt any more points will be needed. Plus this debuff doesnt stack with Warlocks Curses, so if the have improved curse of element you may wish to forgoe these talent points altogether because their debuff gives greater spell damage increase. (I know this is Affliction, but blizzard has stated into making this spec more viable in WoLTK for raiding.)

Now, why Gale winds and Starfall? Well, mostly because it seems AoE casting will be needed in WoTLK and if your attitude is well leave that up to the mages to do, well most likely you won't have a spot in the raid. After all they only really need one boomkin for the Aura, why bring the boomkin who doesn't AoE? And starfall is nice because its an instant cast AoE.

Now, with WoTLK coming out, raid environments may govern changes, but this seems best from what I can tell.

Restro:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?drui...00000000000000

Mostly the Same but I included Nature's graces, with Regrowths 50% bonus crit, it's hard to justify not doing this. In regards to some peoples concerns that regrowth is not spammable, I would have to ask what level gear your at, because about 50% of my healing comes from Regrowth. Mind you I'm at a T6 level and my mana regen can afford it. And with the this Glyph:

Glyph of Regrowth - Increases the amount of your initial Regrowth heal by 50% if your Regrowth effect is still active on the target.

Regrowth- has a much greater healing throughput then Nourish. And if all your doing as a restro druid is spamming HoT's I would have to say your not doing a good job as a healer because Lifebloom and Rejuvenation go tick tick tick, bam the tanks dead raid wipes. What do u say sorry my swiftmend was on CD? This is the reason why they are nerfing Lifebloom. Because while Lifebloom looks pretty in healing meters, if someone dies because you cast Lifebloom on them and not regrowth; you fail as a healer. If a mage is at 20% Health, that Lifebloom isn't going to tick fast enough to get him back up before he's oneshoted by something else. Lifebloom spamming is why other healers hate you in 25-man raids, because they have to pull your weight and make sure ppl don't die, while u just tick tick tick LB everywhere making yourself pretty on Healing meters.
And the argument that regowth costs 10% more mana is a false argument. This is based on you base mana percentage, at my level of gear fully raid buffed, I have 4 times the mana as my base mana pool.
Now, I took a point from Replenish, because while it has the potential to be a good raid buff, I feel it doesn't matter how much mana/rage/energy/runic power ppl have if ppl start dieing and that .5 sec can make that difference. Mind you depending how flourish works out I may be inclined to take that point from Improved Tranquility. Also they have yet to be firm on whether gift of the earthmother will stack with haste. I already have some haste and plan on keeping that stat in Wrath, so if it doesn't reduce the casting time below 1 sec, taking points from there is a good option come wrath with a decent amount of haste on you.

Holy crap, you are an awful druid. what level of "T6 content" are we talking here. wiping to rage and naj? Anything further than that and the rest of your raid is carrying you extremely well. You're terrible.

[reirei]

Holy crap, you are an awful druid. what level of "T6 content" are we talking here. wiping to rage and naj? Anything further than that and the rest of your raid is carrying you extremely well. You're terrible.

Lol, useless flaming. worst druid based on what? You probably don't know enough about the class to make an intelligent argument. Doesn't even look like your a druid, u just enjoy reposting rawr and elistist jerk posts. Ever have a thought in your head besides one you've read?