Post by Sorcha'Rei on Jan 6, 2006 7:15:16 GMT -5
((OOC))
I play three different alliance druids, all level 60 now. I'm taking up a pen and writing down what I want other people to know about druids. (When I say "specc", I mean how the talent points were spent. When I say "build" I mean what equipment the druid wears.)
First. Everything you knew about druids before the 1.8 patch? It's wrong. Forget it.
Druid Basics
Druids are one of three hybrid classes in the game (the others are paladins and shamans). Think of it this way: there are four different modes in the game: physical attack, spell attack, tanking, and healing. Some classes can do one of these well (mages and rogues, for example). Others can do two of them well (priests). Hybrid classes can do all four, although they don't usually do them as well as a specialist class does.
Blizzard designed the hybrid classes to be different from one another.
Paladin: This is the defensive hybrid. Paladins can do all four of the basic things, all at once. They wear plate, so they are hard to kill, and they come with defensive auras that give them (and their parties) significant spell resistance.
Shaman: This is the offensive hybrid. Shamans can do all four basic things at once. They wear mail, and have less ability to resist magic attacks than paladins, but their spells and melee damage have more potential. (Shaman spells tend to be more effective as attacks than paladin spells, and shaman control their melee damage more than paladins, who are basically waiting for things to procc to get melee burst damage.) They tank less well than pallis since they can't absorb as much damage.
Druid: The druid is different from the other two hybrids in that druids can do all four things, but can only be maximally effective at one thing at a time. A druid in Dire Bear form, for example, has excellent aggro management tools (especially if she's specced for that) and can have upwards of 11,000 armor (so absorbs a LOT of damage). However, she can't cast anything in that form, or use potions, or talk to NPCs. Similarly, a druid in elf form, healing, is approximately as squishy as a priest who is healing.
A level 60 druid who has spent no talent points could probably be a decent back-up healer, an okay addition to a DPS squad (but not an outstanding damage dealer in either Cat -- melee -- or balance -- spell -- form). And while I happen to know that a druid with no points in feral can successfully tank the Baron fight, she sure isn't as good at it as a druid who has spent talent points supporting tanking. Let's say that in general, an untalented druid is an okay off tank.
Druid Talents
In order to be good at something, a druid needs to spend talent points on it. Because druids have so much felxibility, their talent trees are also diverse. Two druids with different speccs will be very different kinds of players and team members indeed.
The three talent trees are . . .
Balance: the casting tree. Talent points spent here increase damage and reduce the cost of damage spells, as well as providing for stuns from some spell hits. The bottom-tier talent is the shift to moonkin, which gives everyone in the party a +3% spell crit aura and gives the druid a 3.6 multiplier on her armor. While in moonkin, druids can't cast anything other than Balance spells (so no healing, removing curses, or abolishing poisons -- for some reason cure poison is stll available while in moonkin). A well-equipped level 60 moonkin druid can compete on damage meters with rogues and mages. This tree also has some talents that indirectly support feral forms.
Feral: the tree for melee and tanking. Talent points spent here support Cat (melee DPS) and Dire Bear (tanking) forms. Some talents support both, others support one of the two. The bottom-tier talent is Leader of the Pack (LotP), which is a party aura giving everyone +3% crits in melee and ranged attacks. A well-equipped feral druid who is specced and built properly can be main tank for anything short of MC, and there are some who have successfully tanked all of MC. A well-equipped feral druid who is specced and built properly can be a dastardly damage-doer, and there are some who routinely out-damage rogues.
Restoration: the healing tree. Talent points spent here mostly make a druid a better healer. It contains things like reduced threat from healing spells, resistance to damage interrupts, increased effectiveness and lowered mana costs for heals, as well as a talent that allows the next heal to be instant-cast. The bottom-tier talent is Innervate which can be cast on anyone and which increases mana regen over its base by a factor of four, and allows 100% of regen to occur inside and outside the 5-second rule. A properly equipped restoration druid is an outstanding healer. This tree also contains a few talents that support feral forms, and one attack spell.
Druid Speccs and Builds
There are essentially five different kinds of druids running around. Since the 1.8 patch, I don't believe I've heard of a druid that isn't a variation on one of these five themes.
Healbot: This used to be the only decent role for a druid in an end-game raid, and lots of people think of druids as healers exclusively. The healbot druid usually has at least 31 points in restoration, and has Innervate. Some healbots spend the rest in feral (to get support for when they attract aggro as a healer and they want to turn into a bear and deal with it until a real tank gets there to pull the mobs off them). Some spend the rest in balance (to make a good solo'ing build -- they can nuke and heal without shifting forms). A healbot druid in decent blue gear (int, spirit, +healing, mana regen) will have between 5500 and 6500 mana wearing only her own buff.
Feral: This druid has put most of his talent points in the feral tree. He can ususally tank and do DPS pretty well, depending on whether he is in Cat or Dire Bear form. Most dedicated feral druids have at least 35 points in feral and the others are put into talents in balance and restoration that directly support feral fighting. Feral druids are wearing armor that focuses on strength, stamina, agility, +crit, +defense, and +dodge. A level 60 druid specced and built this way has a mana pool around 2500 to 3500. He can't really use that mana for anything other than shifts, anyway, since he can't cast anything in a feral form. A blue-equipped Dire Bear will have about 7000 to 9000 armor.
Moonkin: This druid is a nuking damage specialist. She's going to have armor that resembles that of a plate-wearer and she's going to cast spells that land crits of over 1500 damage. Her gear is likely to be int, +spell damage, and +spell crit. Her mana will be in the 6000 to 7000 range wearing only her own buff (which is likely to be fully improved). She can't heal or remove curses while in moonkin form, but she has enough mana to support frequent shifts back and forth.
PvP: This druid does a little bit of everything well. Usually, she's got her points spread fairly evenly across all three trees, with at least 21 points in at least one tree. PvP druids have different focuses, but they all need to wear armor that supports everything a druid can do. They seek armor with bonuses on all stats, and usually end up with bear armor around 6000, mana around 4000, and some combination of support for various activities (+healing, +spell damage, +crit, +spell crit, +defense).
Two-way druids: This druid is a PvE and solo'ing specc who has chosen two things to do well. You see them as nuker/healers, nuker/cats, nuker/bears, healer/bears, and healer/cats. They select armor that supports the two things and they usually end up in similar armor as a PvP druid (if their two things include a feral form) or as a healbot or moonkin (if they are a nuker/healer). These druids generally have at least 21 points in both of their chosen trees.
Clothes Make The Druid
What abilities does a druid bring to your party?
First off, you should know what kind of druid you are dealing with. You can ask -- druids prefer to be asked rather than have people assume we are all healbots! If you want the druid to do something other than their main specc, discuss it before they leave a city -- many druids have a second set of armor in the bank that will support other modes of play, but they need to change their clothes to change their mode.
Here are my druids as examples...
Sorcha is a Balance druid. Her usual armor won't support tanking, but it happens that she has an awesome tanking weapon and decent green tanking gear in the bank. If you want her as an off-tank, she needs to change her clothes. She carries with her three items she swaps out to make herself a better healer if that's what you want her to do; they have +healing on them since she has no talents improving her healing at all. (Her specc is 41 balance, 0 feral, 10 restoration.)
Devorah is a Feral druid. Her usual armor gives her 2900 mana which won't last long if she has to heal. She carries a full set of healing gear with her at all times, and when she changes her clothes, her mana pool jumps to 5790. She's still an inefficient healer, but she can do an okay job as backup healer. (Her specc is 11 balance, 35 feral, 5 restoration.) She can MT any Tier 0 instance and has been an effective OT in MC. I'm not interested in trying her as MT in MC, because her raid has very fine prot warriors in it.
Ljanna is a Healbot druid. Her usual armor gives her over 7000 mana and her heals are very very efficient. She was the only one of the three who was 60 well before the 1.8 patch, so she has lovely Cat and Dire Bear armor in the bank, which she hardly ever uses. She carries five casting pieces with her at all times to support solo'ing, and swaps armor a lot. (Her specc is 10 balance, 0 feral, 41 restoration.)
Cleansing, Buffing, Rezzing, and Crowd Control
Two very important functions druids perform in groups are cleansing (removing curses and posions) and crowd control (roots outside, and sleeping dragonkin and beasts anywhere). Druids can remove curses only in elf form, and while they can do cure poison in moonkin, they can abolish poison only in elf. Elf and moonkin can both do root and sleep. Feral forms can't do any of this.
If you need your main tank to do cleansing, you will be waiting until the end of the battle to get it done. This will work in a lot of places, but you might ask a mage to handle curses in Scholo and a paladin to handle poisons. Healbot druids generally use tools that let them see debuffs and will be cleansing as they heal (like priests do). If you want a moonkin to cleanse poisons, you need to say so.
Several druid skills and spells work only outdoors. Among them are travelform, roots, and improvements to speed in Cat form. One of the things this means is that the only instance where roots works everywhere is ZF.
Another thing you should know about roots is that they are very likely to break if the rooted mob is damaged at all. You should not put DoTs on rooted mobs, and you should limit damage to nature spells if you can, as they are less likely to break the root. Otherwise, even though the roots sometimes hold through damage, it's best to assume that it's like sheep: if you hit the rooted mob, the roots will break. Then it can be a pleasant surprise if they hold.
Sleep is like sheep and shackle. If you hit a slept mob, you will wake it up. Believe it or not, those Z Z Z Z Z over the head of a mob are not a neon sign saying "Hit me!!"
Of course, druids have buffs. In addition to the moonkin and LotP auras, they have Mark (Gift) of the Wild and Thorns. MotW increase all attributes, resitances, and armor. It can be significantly improved with restoration talent points (but like all buffs, the improvements don't show on your buff bar). Thorns does nature damage to any attacker who hits the person wearing it. Notice that this will imcrease the threat done by the wearer, so Thorns should only be put on tanks, possibly on hunters' or locks' pets; sometimes druids Thorn themselves to use as a timer to tell when the buffs should all be renewed.
Druids have a resurrection ability, called Rebirth. This spell is fast-cast (2 seconds, as opposed to the 10 seconds required for pallis and priests to rezz someone) and can be cast in combat. It has a 30-minute cooldown and uses a reagent. It resurrects the target with significant amoutns of mana and health.
Rebirth (also called a combat rezz or a battle rezz) is a wipe prevention tool. There are three and a half situations where it should be used.
1. It's gonna be a wipe. Right before the druid dies, she will cast Rebirth on a palli or a priest (or another druid if necessary). If it's going to be a wipe, this person should not accept the rezz until AFTER everyone else is dead and the mobs are reset. The idea here is to get someone who can do more rezzes to "survive" the wipe. (If the combat rezz went to another druid, it's because the priests were all dead and no pallis were in line of sight; the rezzed druid should then rezz an OOC rezzer. After everyone's dead and the mobs are reset.)
2. It's almost a wipe, but maybe it won't be. In this case, the druid may rezz the MT or a healer. This is done when, in the opinion of the druid, the rezz will put enough tanking or healing back in the party to prevent the wipe. If you do not have a rezz ability yourself, you should always accept a combat rezz right away and get back to fighting. If you are a priest or a paladin, you will need to use your judgment about whether this is a rezz to accept now, or if it falls into category 1.
3. It wasn't a wipe, but several people died, and we need someone with OOC rezzes, because the instance has repopped and people won't be able to get to us. This is an OOC use of the battle rezz.
3 1/2. See "it's gonna be a wipe". The combat rezz went to a druid who will now rezz a priest or paladin to get everyone else back.
There are a few other situations where someone might use a combat rezz. If you are unsure what situation you are in when you are offered the rezz, /tell the druid and ask. DO NOT EVER DECLINE A COMBAT REZZ IF YOU CAN AVOID IT; the reagent is gone and the cooldown is active from the moment the druid cast the rezz. You might as well use it.
And no, I will not use my reagent and my 30-minute cooldown to rezz your pet.
Druids and Loot
Obviously, the different kinds of druids want different kinds of loot. A lot of times, in order to get into an instance where the thing a druid wants will drop, that druid has to put on healing gear and heal. It is beyond annoying to do this, and to do it well even though you don't have any restoration talents, and then when the Felhide Cap drops be told that you can't roll because it isn't healing gear and you're doing healing in this party, so . . .
A druid who has been burned like this before will probably raise the issue of what she is allowed to roll on during the loot rules discussion. At this point, lots of people are like "Oh, please, don't bore us." The thing is, this is an important thing for lots of people in the raid to know. Encourage this conversation. If you are the master looter and no druid in the raid raises the issue, you ought to raise it yourself.
For example, is that Cat over there going to be allowed to roll on Shadowcraft gear? This is a tricky issue. Wildheart is pure junk for feral druids. The only full Tier 0 set with bonuses that makes any sense at all for feral druids is Shadowcraft. Now, my personal opinion is that SC is bad for druids, and it upsets rogues to lose it to a druid, so I prefer not to roll on it unless there is no rogue who doesn't have the piece (and even then, I would only use a greed roll on it, not a need roll -- but that's me). However, agility build feral druids want SC, and it's only fair to state up front whether they will be allowed to roll on it.
What about that tanking druid over there? If the Verdant Footpads drop, can she roll, even though they are healing gear and she's not healing in this raid? And can the healer in the back row roll on the Cadaverous Armor if it drops? What if that's why she came to Scholo and healed -- on the off chance that this feral piece would drop?
Some healbot druids want to roll on certain cloth items. I think they are crazy, since healing leather is actually available in the game, but there are even a few cloth items in Tier 0 with class restrictions that include druid, so apparently Blizzard agrees with those druids and not with me. Will the raid let them roll on cloth even if a mage or priest or lock wants it, too?
You can wreck an entire raid if you don't sort this out ahead of time. (Guild raids, not so much, but in PUGs, it's in everyone's best interest to have the conversation before there are actual items up for grabs.) I've been on more than one raid where a druid wasn't allowed to roll on feral gear, and the raid lost a healer in the middle. Or a druid was allowed to roll on Shadowcraft, and the raid lost a rogue in the middle. Sort it out ahead of time.
But most of all, please trust the druids you run across to know what they need and want. Don't tell them "that's rogue gear, not druid gear" or "you should want that, it's high int leather". Unless you know their specc, understand their build, and know what they have squirreled away in the bank, you simply don't have an informed opinion.
Things Feral Druids Want Priests To Know
There are two things my feral druid wants all priests to know about her when she is in Dire Bear form.
First off, she does have a self-heal ability. It's called Frenzied Regenration and it takes rage and turns it into health. It also surrounds the druid with green ribbons, much like Rejuvenation does to its target. This self-heal has a cooldown. Moreover, by using her rage to heal herself, the druid has effectively taken away her ability to use skills to manage aggro and stun her target.
In point of fact, Frenzied Regen is not a skill she ever wants to use in a party. Its main use is for solo'ing. Please please please do not count on her self-healing. If she's the main tank, heal her as if she were any other MT.
Second, she wants you to know that she uses Rage. When she's in Dire Bear form, her mana bar disappears and is replaced by a Rage bar (just like warriors have). She gets Rage in a variety of ways, but most of it comes from hitting and being hit. In order to use her Bear skills, she must spend Rage, so she needs to build it as quickly as possible at the start of each fight.
Lately, I've noticed priests bubbling Bears at the start of a battle. PLEASE don't do this! It prevents her from taking damage, which prevents her from gaining Rage at the highest possible rate. If you want her to be able to taunt a mob off you, she needs to have sufficient Rage.
Bubble her later in the battle if it's the only way to keep her alive; by then she will have lots of Rage built up.
Looking for group . . .
When you are looking for someone to fill a role, you're far better off saying "We need a healer to help us take down the Baron" or "We need a tank to hold Gandling while we kill him" than "LFG Scholo need druid". If you want a druid for crowd control and don't care what else they do in the instance, say "We need a druid to put some pesky dragonkin to sleep in UBRS".
When I hear "LFG need druid" I assume they want a healbot. When I get random /tell asking me to join parties, I can usually make them go away by saying "I'm feral. Still want me?" As I noted above, I can make all my druids into decent healers with the right gear. But there's only one of my druids I would trust to be the sole healer on a Scholo raid, for example, and that's Ljanna. The others can heal fine as part of a two-person healing team, but they don't have the mana pool, the innervate, or the healing efficiency to solo-heal a 10-man run.
Druids are flexible and interesting additions to a party, but they will work best with you if you tell them what you need.
By the way, Sorcha did all four instancea in SM at level 40 with a party of five druids. Rocked her druid world and worked great. That we could do that successfully should tell you something about the diversity of skills druids bring to the table.
Just remember: druids are flexible, but they can do only one thing well at a time.
I play three different alliance druids, all level 60 now. I'm taking up a pen and writing down what I want other people to know about druids. (When I say "specc", I mean how the talent points were spent. When I say "build" I mean what equipment the druid wears.)
First. Everything you knew about druids before the 1.8 patch? It's wrong. Forget it.
Druid Basics
Druids are one of three hybrid classes in the game (the others are paladins and shamans). Think of it this way: there are four different modes in the game: physical attack, spell attack, tanking, and healing. Some classes can do one of these well (mages and rogues, for example). Others can do two of them well (priests). Hybrid classes can do all four, although they don't usually do them as well as a specialist class does.
Blizzard designed the hybrid classes to be different from one another.
Paladin: This is the defensive hybrid. Paladins can do all four of the basic things, all at once. They wear plate, so they are hard to kill, and they come with defensive auras that give them (and their parties) significant spell resistance.
Shaman: This is the offensive hybrid. Shamans can do all four basic things at once. They wear mail, and have less ability to resist magic attacks than paladins, but their spells and melee damage have more potential. (Shaman spells tend to be more effective as attacks than paladin spells, and shaman control their melee damage more than paladins, who are basically waiting for things to procc to get melee burst damage.) They tank less well than pallis since they can't absorb as much damage.
Druid: The druid is different from the other two hybrids in that druids can do all four things, but can only be maximally effective at one thing at a time. A druid in Dire Bear form, for example, has excellent aggro management tools (especially if she's specced for that) and can have upwards of 11,000 armor (so absorbs a LOT of damage). However, she can't cast anything in that form, or use potions, or talk to NPCs. Similarly, a druid in elf form, healing, is approximately as squishy as a priest who is healing.
A level 60 druid who has spent no talent points could probably be a decent back-up healer, an okay addition to a DPS squad (but not an outstanding damage dealer in either Cat -- melee -- or balance -- spell -- form). And while I happen to know that a druid with no points in feral can successfully tank the Baron fight, she sure isn't as good at it as a druid who has spent talent points supporting tanking. Let's say that in general, an untalented druid is an okay off tank.
Druid Talents
In order to be good at something, a druid needs to spend talent points on it. Because druids have so much felxibility, their talent trees are also diverse. Two druids with different speccs will be very different kinds of players and team members indeed.
The three talent trees are . . .
Balance: the casting tree. Talent points spent here increase damage and reduce the cost of damage spells, as well as providing for stuns from some spell hits. The bottom-tier talent is the shift to moonkin, which gives everyone in the party a +3% spell crit aura and gives the druid a 3.6 multiplier on her armor. While in moonkin, druids can't cast anything other than Balance spells (so no healing, removing curses, or abolishing poisons -- for some reason cure poison is stll available while in moonkin). A well-equipped level 60 moonkin druid can compete on damage meters with rogues and mages. This tree also has some talents that indirectly support feral forms.
Feral: the tree for melee and tanking. Talent points spent here support Cat (melee DPS) and Dire Bear (tanking) forms. Some talents support both, others support one of the two. The bottom-tier talent is Leader of the Pack (LotP), which is a party aura giving everyone +3% crits in melee and ranged attacks. A well-equipped feral druid who is specced and built properly can be main tank for anything short of MC, and there are some who have successfully tanked all of MC. A well-equipped feral druid who is specced and built properly can be a dastardly damage-doer, and there are some who routinely out-damage rogues.
Restoration: the healing tree. Talent points spent here mostly make a druid a better healer. It contains things like reduced threat from healing spells, resistance to damage interrupts, increased effectiveness and lowered mana costs for heals, as well as a talent that allows the next heal to be instant-cast. The bottom-tier talent is Innervate which can be cast on anyone and which increases mana regen over its base by a factor of four, and allows 100% of regen to occur inside and outside the 5-second rule. A properly equipped restoration druid is an outstanding healer. This tree also contains a few talents that support feral forms, and one attack spell.
Druid Speccs and Builds
There are essentially five different kinds of druids running around. Since the 1.8 patch, I don't believe I've heard of a druid that isn't a variation on one of these five themes.
Healbot: This used to be the only decent role for a druid in an end-game raid, and lots of people think of druids as healers exclusively. The healbot druid usually has at least 31 points in restoration, and has Innervate. Some healbots spend the rest in feral (to get support for when they attract aggro as a healer and they want to turn into a bear and deal with it until a real tank gets there to pull the mobs off them). Some spend the rest in balance (to make a good solo'ing build -- they can nuke and heal without shifting forms). A healbot druid in decent blue gear (int, spirit, +healing, mana regen) will have between 5500 and 6500 mana wearing only her own buff.
Feral: This druid has put most of his talent points in the feral tree. He can ususally tank and do DPS pretty well, depending on whether he is in Cat or Dire Bear form. Most dedicated feral druids have at least 35 points in feral and the others are put into talents in balance and restoration that directly support feral fighting. Feral druids are wearing armor that focuses on strength, stamina, agility, +crit, +defense, and +dodge. A level 60 druid specced and built this way has a mana pool around 2500 to 3500. He can't really use that mana for anything other than shifts, anyway, since he can't cast anything in a feral form. A blue-equipped Dire Bear will have about 7000 to 9000 armor.
Moonkin: This druid is a nuking damage specialist. She's going to have armor that resembles that of a plate-wearer and she's going to cast spells that land crits of over 1500 damage. Her gear is likely to be int, +spell damage, and +spell crit. Her mana will be in the 6000 to 7000 range wearing only her own buff (which is likely to be fully improved). She can't heal or remove curses while in moonkin form, but she has enough mana to support frequent shifts back and forth.
PvP: This druid does a little bit of everything well. Usually, she's got her points spread fairly evenly across all three trees, with at least 21 points in at least one tree. PvP druids have different focuses, but they all need to wear armor that supports everything a druid can do. They seek armor with bonuses on all stats, and usually end up with bear armor around 6000, mana around 4000, and some combination of support for various activities (+healing, +spell damage, +crit, +spell crit, +defense).
Two-way druids: This druid is a PvE and solo'ing specc who has chosen two things to do well. You see them as nuker/healers, nuker/cats, nuker/bears, healer/bears, and healer/cats. They select armor that supports the two things and they usually end up in similar armor as a PvP druid (if their two things include a feral form) or as a healbot or moonkin (if they are a nuker/healer). These druids generally have at least 21 points in both of their chosen trees.
Clothes Make The Druid
What abilities does a druid bring to your party?
First off, you should know what kind of druid you are dealing with. You can ask -- druids prefer to be asked rather than have people assume we are all healbots! If you want the druid to do something other than their main specc, discuss it before they leave a city -- many druids have a second set of armor in the bank that will support other modes of play, but they need to change their clothes to change their mode.
Here are my druids as examples...
Sorcha is a Balance druid. Her usual armor won't support tanking, but it happens that she has an awesome tanking weapon and decent green tanking gear in the bank. If you want her as an off-tank, she needs to change her clothes. She carries with her three items she swaps out to make herself a better healer if that's what you want her to do; they have +healing on them since she has no talents improving her healing at all. (Her specc is 41 balance, 0 feral, 10 restoration.)
Devorah is a Feral druid. Her usual armor gives her 2900 mana which won't last long if she has to heal. She carries a full set of healing gear with her at all times, and when she changes her clothes, her mana pool jumps to 5790. She's still an inefficient healer, but she can do an okay job as backup healer. (Her specc is 11 balance, 35 feral, 5 restoration.) She can MT any Tier 0 instance and has been an effective OT in MC. I'm not interested in trying her as MT in MC, because her raid has very fine prot warriors in it.
Ljanna is a Healbot druid. Her usual armor gives her over 7000 mana and her heals are very very efficient. She was the only one of the three who was 60 well before the 1.8 patch, so she has lovely Cat and Dire Bear armor in the bank, which she hardly ever uses. She carries five casting pieces with her at all times to support solo'ing, and swaps armor a lot. (Her specc is 10 balance, 0 feral, 41 restoration.)
Cleansing, Buffing, Rezzing, and Crowd Control
Two very important functions druids perform in groups are cleansing (removing curses and posions) and crowd control (roots outside, and sleeping dragonkin and beasts anywhere). Druids can remove curses only in elf form, and while they can do cure poison in moonkin, they can abolish poison only in elf. Elf and moonkin can both do root and sleep. Feral forms can't do any of this.
If you need your main tank to do cleansing, you will be waiting until the end of the battle to get it done. This will work in a lot of places, but you might ask a mage to handle curses in Scholo and a paladin to handle poisons. Healbot druids generally use tools that let them see debuffs and will be cleansing as they heal (like priests do). If you want a moonkin to cleanse poisons, you need to say so.
Several druid skills and spells work only outdoors. Among them are travelform, roots, and improvements to speed in Cat form. One of the things this means is that the only instance where roots works everywhere is ZF.
Another thing you should know about roots is that they are very likely to break if the rooted mob is damaged at all. You should not put DoTs on rooted mobs, and you should limit damage to nature spells if you can, as they are less likely to break the root. Otherwise, even though the roots sometimes hold through damage, it's best to assume that it's like sheep: if you hit the rooted mob, the roots will break. Then it can be a pleasant surprise if they hold.
Sleep is like sheep and shackle. If you hit a slept mob, you will wake it up. Believe it or not, those Z Z Z Z Z over the head of a mob are not a neon sign saying "Hit me!!"
Of course, druids have buffs. In addition to the moonkin and LotP auras, they have Mark (Gift) of the Wild and Thorns. MotW increase all attributes, resitances, and armor. It can be significantly improved with restoration talent points (but like all buffs, the improvements don't show on your buff bar). Thorns does nature damage to any attacker who hits the person wearing it. Notice that this will imcrease the threat done by the wearer, so Thorns should only be put on tanks, possibly on hunters' or locks' pets; sometimes druids Thorn themselves to use as a timer to tell when the buffs should all be renewed.
Druids have a resurrection ability, called Rebirth. This spell is fast-cast (2 seconds, as opposed to the 10 seconds required for pallis and priests to rezz someone) and can be cast in combat. It has a 30-minute cooldown and uses a reagent. It resurrects the target with significant amoutns of mana and health.
Rebirth (also called a combat rezz or a battle rezz) is a wipe prevention tool. There are three and a half situations where it should be used.
1. It's gonna be a wipe. Right before the druid dies, she will cast Rebirth on a palli or a priest (or another druid if necessary). If it's going to be a wipe, this person should not accept the rezz until AFTER everyone else is dead and the mobs are reset. The idea here is to get someone who can do more rezzes to "survive" the wipe. (If the combat rezz went to another druid, it's because the priests were all dead and no pallis were in line of sight; the rezzed druid should then rezz an OOC rezzer. After everyone's dead and the mobs are reset.)
2. It's almost a wipe, but maybe it won't be. In this case, the druid may rezz the MT or a healer. This is done when, in the opinion of the druid, the rezz will put enough tanking or healing back in the party to prevent the wipe. If you do not have a rezz ability yourself, you should always accept a combat rezz right away and get back to fighting. If you are a priest or a paladin, you will need to use your judgment about whether this is a rezz to accept now, or if it falls into category 1.
3. It wasn't a wipe, but several people died, and we need someone with OOC rezzes, because the instance has repopped and people won't be able to get to us. This is an OOC use of the battle rezz.
3 1/2. See "it's gonna be a wipe". The combat rezz went to a druid who will now rezz a priest or paladin to get everyone else back.
There are a few other situations where someone might use a combat rezz. If you are unsure what situation you are in when you are offered the rezz, /tell the druid and ask. DO NOT EVER DECLINE A COMBAT REZZ IF YOU CAN AVOID IT; the reagent is gone and the cooldown is active from the moment the druid cast the rezz. You might as well use it.
And no, I will not use my reagent and my 30-minute cooldown to rezz your pet.
Druids and Loot
Obviously, the different kinds of druids want different kinds of loot. A lot of times, in order to get into an instance where the thing a druid wants will drop, that druid has to put on healing gear and heal. It is beyond annoying to do this, and to do it well even though you don't have any restoration talents, and then when the Felhide Cap drops be told that you can't roll because it isn't healing gear and you're doing healing in this party, so . . .
A druid who has been burned like this before will probably raise the issue of what she is allowed to roll on during the loot rules discussion. At this point, lots of people are like "Oh, please, don't bore us." The thing is, this is an important thing for lots of people in the raid to know. Encourage this conversation. If you are the master looter and no druid in the raid raises the issue, you ought to raise it yourself.
For example, is that Cat over there going to be allowed to roll on Shadowcraft gear? This is a tricky issue. Wildheart is pure junk for feral druids. The only full Tier 0 set with bonuses that makes any sense at all for feral druids is Shadowcraft. Now, my personal opinion is that SC is bad for druids, and it upsets rogues to lose it to a druid, so I prefer not to roll on it unless there is no rogue who doesn't have the piece (and even then, I would only use a greed roll on it, not a need roll -- but that's me). However, agility build feral druids want SC, and it's only fair to state up front whether they will be allowed to roll on it.
What about that tanking druid over there? If the Verdant Footpads drop, can she roll, even though they are healing gear and she's not healing in this raid? And can the healer in the back row roll on the Cadaverous Armor if it drops? What if that's why she came to Scholo and healed -- on the off chance that this feral piece would drop?
Some healbot druids want to roll on certain cloth items. I think they are crazy, since healing leather is actually available in the game, but there are even a few cloth items in Tier 0 with class restrictions that include druid, so apparently Blizzard agrees with those druids and not with me. Will the raid let them roll on cloth even if a mage or priest or lock wants it, too?
You can wreck an entire raid if you don't sort this out ahead of time. (Guild raids, not so much, but in PUGs, it's in everyone's best interest to have the conversation before there are actual items up for grabs.) I've been on more than one raid where a druid wasn't allowed to roll on feral gear, and the raid lost a healer in the middle. Or a druid was allowed to roll on Shadowcraft, and the raid lost a rogue in the middle. Sort it out ahead of time.
But most of all, please trust the druids you run across to know what they need and want. Don't tell them "that's rogue gear, not druid gear" or "you should want that, it's high int leather". Unless you know their specc, understand their build, and know what they have squirreled away in the bank, you simply don't have an informed opinion.
Things Feral Druids Want Priests To Know
There are two things my feral druid wants all priests to know about her when she is in Dire Bear form.
First off, she does have a self-heal ability. It's called Frenzied Regenration and it takes rage and turns it into health. It also surrounds the druid with green ribbons, much like Rejuvenation does to its target. This self-heal has a cooldown. Moreover, by using her rage to heal herself, the druid has effectively taken away her ability to use skills to manage aggro and stun her target.
In point of fact, Frenzied Regen is not a skill she ever wants to use in a party. Its main use is for solo'ing. Please please please do not count on her self-healing. If she's the main tank, heal her as if she were any other MT.
Second, she wants you to know that she uses Rage. When she's in Dire Bear form, her mana bar disappears and is replaced by a Rage bar (just like warriors have). She gets Rage in a variety of ways, but most of it comes from hitting and being hit. In order to use her Bear skills, she must spend Rage, so she needs to build it as quickly as possible at the start of each fight.
Lately, I've noticed priests bubbling Bears at the start of a battle. PLEASE don't do this! It prevents her from taking damage, which prevents her from gaining Rage at the highest possible rate. If you want her to be able to taunt a mob off you, she needs to have sufficient Rage.
Bubble her later in the battle if it's the only way to keep her alive; by then she will have lots of Rage built up.
Looking for group . . .
When you are looking for someone to fill a role, you're far better off saying "We need a healer to help us take down the Baron" or "We need a tank to hold Gandling while we kill him" than "LFG Scholo need druid". If you want a druid for crowd control and don't care what else they do in the instance, say "We need a druid to put some pesky dragonkin to sleep in UBRS".
When I hear "LFG need druid" I assume they want a healbot. When I get random /tell asking me to join parties, I can usually make them go away by saying "I'm feral. Still want me?" As I noted above, I can make all my druids into decent healers with the right gear. But there's only one of my druids I would trust to be the sole healer on a Scholo raid, for example, and that's Ljanna. The others can heal fine as part of a two-person healing team, but they don't have the mana pool, the innervate, or the healing efficiency to solo-heal a 10-man run.
Druids are flexible and interesting additions to a party, but they will work best with you if you tell them what you need.
By the way, Sorcha did all four instancea in SM at level 40 with a party of five druids. Rocked her druid world and worked great. That we could do that successfully should tell you something about the diversity of skills druids bring to the table.
Just remember: druids are flexible, but they can do only one thing well at a time.
