Barking At Twitter
OK, short on post ideas today. So, I asked Twitter to do all the work for me, by asking me questions to answer! Let’s see how this goes…. Oh, and don’t expect this to be short folks. You all know I babble!
1. What sort of spells are you using as a tree? And what’s your spell priority? (from Amber/divinebubbles)
Oooh, oooh, this totally gives me the chance to make a flowchart! I mean, I could put it briefly… but where’s the fun in that? (for those who like brief: Rejuv raid, Rejuv and Lifebloom tanks, Wild Growth)
For the more flowcharty minded… (oh, and I lack computer-generated flowchart skills, so you get drawings. Which means a big ass image. Sorry)
Hopefully you can click to embiggen!
2. What’s the best way to learn Druiding? Have a low-level one, but it doesn’t seem very rotation focused, which is what I am used to. (from Jos/Snorklewacker)
In BC, I was a tank. I never intended to heal, so I also levelled as feral. Why? Because it was easy, I was highly unlikely to die, and there was little down time!
For me, this is kinda a difficult question to answer. I guess the first thing I want to know is what you want to learn about Druiding (ie – what’s your end plan?). Honestly though, if you just want to level and live, you can pretty safely make it up as you go along. It’s tough until you get bear form. Then you just out live stuff. Then you get kitty, and you are sweet!
Pre-Bear form levels: Nuke things with your crappy arsenal of spells. Might have to occasionally whack a couple in the face as well. Die some.
Bear form/pre-Cat levels: Smack em around with that big ol’ paw of yours. Try not to pull too many – you are still just a wee bear.
Cat form levels (until 70): Kitty is kinda OP when levelling. Stuff dies like you wouldn’t believe. Beat on things. Loot them. If you screw up and pull too much, shift to Bear. Beat on things. Loot them. Still having trouble? Root a mob in place, quickly heal your butt, then rinse and repeat.
70+: Most people level as a Cat, but I had more fun running around as a Bear. Just pull groups of 5 or so. Swipe. Win.
Honestly, I think with Druiding, you don’t really work it out until you are level capped. There might be levelling rotations for Boomkin… but I just smacked stuff round.
Most unhelpful answer ever, right? 
3. Does your tree ever struggle with her "inner warlock"? (from Nibuca)
All the time. I generally resolve this by sneakily using my Warlock nature to determine who gets healed.
- Are you a Rogue? Ooops, seems I keep misclicking when I go to heal you! My bad
- Am I bored? Let’s see how long the tank can stay up without heals!
- Barkskin was totally designed so Trees could pull, right?
4. Blizz said "we want druids to use more forms" what’s your response? (from Nibuca)
I actually use a wide variety of forms in the soloing context. I shift between them mid combat. I perform more than one role at a time in the same fight. However, I just do not think that it is very plausible in the instancing/raiding/arena context.
The game rewards min-maxing to a VERY high level. If Druids shifted constantly, the stat juggling would mean that we would be unable to min-max effectively. Jack of all trades is very rarely given priority on group invites. While I think it would be incredibly FUN… it would also make Druids highly undesirable for raiding.
Thanks for all the questions guys, and feel free to follow me on Twitter!
Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who did their leveling as bear instead of cat when going feral. I suppose it would be similar to a warrior or pally leveling prot.
Maybe its just me, but when I click the chart it doesn’t embiggen, it actually gets smaller.
P.S. Your handwriting is really quite good.
heh, since my technical knowhow is.. well… not good, I’m not surprised the image shrinks.
I think at this point I am the only person I know who leveled 10 levels as a bear. I tend to be… unfocused while questing, and would often die through pulling mobs and not paying attention. Bear gave me a chance to live!
My students always comment on my handwriting. Typically in a negative fashion (‘Why do you write your ‘f’s like that? What’s with those capital ‘G’s?’) I would have liked to do that more neatly, but it just didn’t happen. Glad to hear it’s legible though!
Re: bear leveling – I gave it an honest try, I really did. However, at low levels, I had serious problems with rage starvation. Like, worse than leveling 45 levels as a prot warrior, during which I never had rage issues.
Yeah, I found bear to be HIGHLY ineffective at low levels. Stuff dies so easily nowadays at low levels anyway that you can easily kitty a couple of mobs down. Between 70 and 80, I was usually fine just through pulling HUGE packs of mobs. It also taught me how and when to use my ‘Oh Shit!’ buttons – something I notice many tanks have trouble with!
I have found use for healing touch! Wel, not that *I* actually invented it, I was forced to find out but well – here goes:
When you are faced with the Big Bug with 24 other people being heroes with you, the only spell that will actually stop the penetrating cold from killing your friends off is glyphed and specced Healing Touch. It’s cast time goes down to 0,83 (for me), and it heals for 6,3k (with no raid buffs and no crit). The only problem you get is the annoying click of clipping it off, since the gcd is still 1 second. It is still pretty exnesive, but you use it only in phase 3. Untill that time, whoever gets hit by pen cold can be nourished, and whoever else gets hit (and is not a tank) will probably just drop dead. Damage made by small bugs is rejuvenated, which is practically for free
Otherwise, I do tend to use regrowth somewhat more, which is a leftover from two or three patches ago (before nourish got boosted to OP-ness you have now). Regrowth was my spell of choice for any and all direct heals, and I have also blanketed with it when applicable. So what I do now on fights where I can predict damage spike is – start with RG, so that it will hit at the time when the damage spikes, and sneak a RJ in before it is finished casting.
I have also found another use for LB – on champion’s fight in TOGC. Most of my time there is spent running around hysterically, so I will pepper the raid with one stack LB and RJ for that additional 3k bloom hit.
Uff…. This turned into a blog post
[...] decided to take a page from Saresa’s Hermia’s playbook and ask Twitter to do all the work for me. Little did I know Twitter wanted to find out about [...]