Shifting Perspectives: How to group with a druid part two
by Dan O'Halloran 
Jun 26th 2007 at 8:30PM
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran.Two weeks ago I talked about grouping with Feral druids. This week I promised to focus on Balance (Moonkin) and Restoration (Healing) specs. But when I started writing about the Balance druids, the article grew quite large. So apologies to the Restoration druids out there looking for their day in the sun, you will have to wait two more weeks for my next column. Today's article is focusing squarely on the ups and downs of grouping with our Boomkin brothers.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A MOONKIN DRUID: DPS, baby. And plenty of it. Moonkin spec got a nice, fat dps boost with the Burning Crusade expansion. Their current arsenal includes two dots, two different flavored nukes, an AE damage dealer, 5% crit aura, damage-boosting and crit-boosting talents plus the treant pets if the druid took the 41pt talent. Before the expansion, all this firepower would drain the druid's mana in no time, but the days of Oomkin are no more. Between mana-saving and mana-regenerating Talents plus better itemization, Balance druids can conserve mana with the best of ranged damage dealers. Welcome to the Age of Boomkin.
Emergency Healing. Like any other non-healing druid spec, Balance druids are more than capable of off healing in a pinch. They must shift out of Moonkin form to do it, but when the group's health stabilizes, the druid can always shift right back and help with the clean up work. Who wouldn't want a mage who can group heal?
Emergency Crowd Control. At level 70 druids get a limited crowd control spell: Cyclone. It can render a mob unable to act for 6 secs on the first cast, 3 secs on the second and 1 sec on the last. After that the mob becomes immune to Cyclone for a short time. I know 10 seconds of crowd control doesn't sound like a lot, but I guarantee you'll change your mind when a mob refuses to stop pounding on the healer or makes a run for help. Plus, this spell is not restricted to select mob types unlike sheep or sap. Cyclone is also useful for split pulling and is castable while remaining in Moonkin form.
Melee. Yes, that's right. Don't be surprised if you see the big owlbear dude swinging his big glowy staff. While in Moonkin form, the druid can gain mana back by doing physical attacks. If the druid is OOM, his mana potion and Innervate are on cooldown and the battle is still raging, this is the fastest way for him to regain the mana he needs to start tossing out the big bombs again. And if he takes a few hits himself, remember he has enhanced AC while in Moonkin form. It's also a useful if the druid has drawn aggro. He can regain mana through physcial attacks while the main tank works to regain the mob's attention.
Emergency Off Tank. I'll delve into it more under the Playstyle heading below, but suffice it to say, a leather wearing druid with the Moonkin 400% AC boost and the Barkskin spell (20% damage reduction for 15 secs) is anything but squishy. Some Balance druids even Main Tank trash this way. Sure they don't have high levels of dodge, parry or block, but if an add is beelining for the Priest, a Moonkin can step in until the main tank can catch up. And that can be the difference between a successful run and a corpse run.
Finally, expect the Balance Druid to understand his own aggro. He should not be opening up with his biggest nuke and then shrugging off the irritation of his groupmates because he can take more hits than a clothie. Controlling aggro is the single most important skill any player can have. Often druids leveled up under a different spec, then change to Balance for BC. They may still be on a learning curve when it comes to grouping in Moonkin form. If you have a nuke happy Boomkin in your group, ask him politely to hold off on the major firepower for a few seconds until the tank gains solid aggro. Moonkin have plenty of other low aggro spells they can be casting at the opening of the fight to keep busy (i.e. Faerie Fire for mob AC reduction, Insect Swarm to decrease mobs chance to hit, etc.)
WHAT NOT TO EXPECT FROM A MOONKIN DRUID: While a Balance druid can rival, and sometimes surpass, a mage in damage to a single target, they are not ideal for AE damage or intricate, long lasting crowd control. Also, don't expect their summoned trees to tank. They can be used as short crowd control, but will die very quickly if they are hit. They are high damage/low health pets.
BALANCE DRUID PLAYSTYLES: There are three major styles of Balance play: Panzerkin aka Doomkin, Clothkin and Hybrids.
Panzerkin: These Balance druids wear a lot of leather gear for the AC and STA. They don't mind taking melee damage. They like to offtank or crowd control by gaining aggro. The extreme ones will even drop Talent points into the feral tree to get the 10% boost to AC from items Talent meant for feral tanks. If you group with one of them, accept that they are good offtanks and let them do their thing.
Clothkin: Stats on leather armor for Balance druid are usually spread out to include a little spell damage and a little healing boost. Many druids want to see big damage numbers so they will sacrifice the AC & STA that leather offers in exchange for the larger amounts of spell damage that cloth items can provide. If you group with one of them, don't expect them to offtank effectively. Also, their off healing is weaker due to the lack of +heal on their gear. They usually carry a set of healing gear if they know an encounter will require heavy healing from them (i.e. a boss encounter.)
Hybrids: These druids have split their talents between Balance and Restoration, usually with an emphasis on the Balance tree. Their Leather gear gives them equal boosts to damage and healing. They are very good at switching between the two roles mid-fight. You may even see them switching into cat form when OOM and attacking to regain their mana quicker.
That's it for today. In two weeks, I will give Restoration druids some Feature Article loving as well as discuss loot issues for grouping druids as I continue my How To Group With A Druid series. Until then, enjoy next week's Druid column by David Bowers.
[Gorgeous painting illustrated by Seiunchin]
Filed under: Druid, Features, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tiforix Jun 26th 2007 9:08PM
70 Moonkin here. I think you spun the mana regen from melee'ing a bit too much. It's honestly not that great in a group situation. There's no reason to run OOM on trash pulls, and in a boss fight, getting in melee range could be dangerous. I'm not syaing it's *never* useful... just that it's not something I'd want to rely on. Just bring some mana potions instead. :P
Also, most spell damage gear also has +healing on it, so a Balance Druid can make a pretty respectable off-healer simply by remaining in caster form and wearing his nuking gear. (My Moonkin has about +715 damage AND healing).
It's really nice to see the playerbase finally waking up to see what Moonkins have to offer though. :)
Galipan Jun 26th 2007 9:10PM
grats on this article man, it was an interesting, i always like to know about the other classes in the game to make myself seem less like the huntard i am
Prester John Jun 26th 2007 10:02PM
Moonkin dance, say no more.
freehugz Jun 26th 2007 11:49PM
Moonkin fun fact: NE druids are left handed in caster form and right handed in moonkin form.
Timelimit Jun 27th 2007 4:14AM
70 moonkin here as well :)
Must say that over the last couple of months balance has been accepted more and more into instances. And yes we do make good off-healers in an emergency :D I get 20% crit chance and around 700 +heal/+damage in caster form (25% crit in moonkin) and aside from loving the big pew pew crits on targets, I also like to see the big heal crits on party members :)
Squirl Jun 27th 2007 4:14AM
A MAGE that can group heal. Please - which mages have you been grouped with? The ones who just wand?
Hory Jun 27th 2007 5:07AM
825 +damage/heal, 23% crit on my wife's Boomkin in all but one piece of gear being leather. She sits at about 11k armor and 9k hp. She's works tuesday nights as the Shaman tank on the Maulgar fight in Gruul's Lair. :)
The problem I see at the moment is, after Kara (beyond T4/5 sets) there are no leather caster damage peices (belt/bracers/boots) until you get to Black Temple.
More gear for Boomkins please!
Nyctanessa Jun 27th 2007 5:13AM
"A MAGE that can group heal. Please - which mages have you been grouped with? The ones who just wand?"
As a 70 moonkin with over +720 dmg, I can easily out-DPS frost mages in instances.. well-geared fire mages, however, are another story. But, they're bigger aggro h0rs than I am... I like NOT getting massive amounts of threat and ending up dead. :D
Kaylek Jun 27th 2007 8:16AM
Just another example of druids getting way too much attention in the expansion.
Ekimus Jun 27th 2007 8:44AM
@9 Before BC Druids where treated as the bastard child of WoW. Now, we have 3 viable roles that can fill in for some of the primary classes. I say it's about time.
Now...Blizzard, give Shammys some love!
P.S. I've played my druid since open beta. I've played many of the popular specs, which for 2+ years was restoration.
Fireflash38 Jun 27th 2007 9:19AM
Moonkin synergize very well w/ 33/28 mages (scorch spam) as we scorch mages depend on crit. However, druids get on my shitlist for rolling on EVERY SINGLE THING that drops (excluding mail and plate). FFS, i have lost so many pieces of gear that are geared for mages to some tard druid. (manasphere shoulderguards, multiple staves, almost all cloth drops)
So sorry Jun 27th 2007 9:52AM
"WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A MOONKIN DRUID:"
Aggro, and lots of it baby.
Prauche Jun 27th 2007 9:54AM
@11 So...what you're saying is "all loot is hunter loot" is misleading because in reality, all loot is drood loot? Good times.
Mick Jun 27th 2007 4:37PM
"As a 70 moonkin with over +720 dmg, I can easily out-DPS frost mages in instances.. well-geared fire mages, however, are another story. But, they're bigger aggro h0rs than I am... I like NOT getting massive amounts of threat and ending up dead."
Are you kidding? The only reason you out dps a mage is because they are constantly sheeping, spell stealing, and counter spelling mobs. They actually bring some utility to group besides pew pew.
And that fire mage still has 10% less threat production than oomkins. So if he still out aggro's you then he's doing over 10% more damage to top the treat chart. So keep up that moonfire spam going.
And as far as 2 dots, insect swarm and moon fire dot.... that's like a warrior bragging about the dps from rend.
Carmentia Jun 27th 2007 12:37PM
70 Boomkin. I agree, leather +dmg caster gear is hard to come by. But I refuse to wear cloth, so you won't see me rolling on the warlock and mage stuff. I am staying the course and going to continue to work to get rid of all my leather gear that has only +healing. I agree, more Moonkin gear!
Lucas Jun 27th 2007 12:45PM
Ran Bot and Mech last night, Myself a MM hunter, a BOOMkin and a pro Pally tank. (also had a scrub rogue and healer who were largely insignificant.)
We cut through both instances in little over an hour. The Boomkin and I were neck and neck on damage the entire time and ended our damage to within .02% of each other. It was a damage competition and we couldn't pull aggro from the tank at all. BOOMkin was opening up with 5k crits everytime. 4 mob pulls were dead in
Niekon Jun 27th 2007 1:18PM
70 Moonkin and have loved it since I went balance pre-TBC. Was tempted at one point in the recent past to respec to Resto but have not wanted to simply for the fact that I want to be able to go out and solo farm stuff without getting too much of the pain from the mobs.
But it's interesting that most people when asking me to heal or tank, when I mention that I'm Balance they hem and haw and say "nevermind"...
Maybe people will start to open their eyes those of us that went Balance. I've only done a few dungeon runs but when we were pulling multiple mobs, I always had the 2nd mob and held my own while everyone else was working on the main mob.
Awann Jun 27th 2007 2:05PM
70 Tauren Druid Moonkin. 904 spell dmg in all leather. I switch in 2 pieces of cloth in raids to bring it up to 935. @11-Personally, and I know other druids like me, I never, never roll on any cloth drops. The only time I take cloth is if NO clothies in the group want it at all; I even pass to a Holy Priest if they want spell damage gear for farming. Leather wearers who roll against someone who can ONLY wear cloth should not be grouped with again. However, I expect to be given the same priority on trinkets, gems, rings, etc as other casters. I heal instances from time to time, but when invited, I let the group know ahead of time that I am primarily a caster and let them know what items I would intend to roll on.
Urthona Jun 27th 2007 4:32PM
Squishykins FTL.
There's a armor set for us in Heroics. The Stormrage Lookalike. I'm waiting for them to do a special feature on it like they did for Purple Judgement, Green Wrath, and the shammy "Typhoon" set. It's shexy, and I want one.
I wonder what they'll call it... Nether-Rage? Stormfury? I like "Nighthaven". (Matches Moonglade set.)
RadiXx Jun 28th 2007 1:28AM
@19 - your assumptions on a few points seem to be a bit off...
"Are you kidding? The only reason you out dps a mage is because they are constantly sheeping, spell stealing, and counter spelling mobs. They actually bring some utility to group besides pew pew."
Actually Wrath scales at a higher rate than Fireball, although it's very close... Druids will outdps even fire mages once they both have the same amount of +dmg gear and that number is reasonably high. In 25-man raids where both CoE and CoS are up, that's where fireball starts scaling better (because Wrath is nature dmg).
"And that fire mage still has 10% less threat production than oomkins. So if he still out aggro's you then he's doing over 10% more damage to top the treat chart. So keep up that moonfire spam going."
I wasn't aware that mages had 30% threat reduction... Since Moonkin can now choose to spec into 20% threat reduction.
"And as far as 2 dots, insect swarm and moon fire dot.... that's like a warrior bragging about the dps from rend."
Insect swarm isn't terribly exciting but Moonfire is definitely worth the 1.5 secs global cooldown if you let the dot run. There is no mage spell that can do as much dmg in 1.5 secs.