Okay, no earth-shattering revelations; no blinding flashes of inspiration; but lots of good suggestions for staying alive and increasing your effectiveness as a Druid.
There are lots of great add-ons and mods to help us do our job. We both agree that the add-on that should be at the top of every druid’s list is Outfitter. This add-on automatically changes gear based on form and other special circumstances (riding, Argent Dawn, etc.). Download it. Use it. The other mod I’d recommend is a action bar mod. You can certainly get by with the default action bars, but I’ve found customizing the bars can make them a little easier to use.
Jeff extolled the joys of Frenzied Regeneration - also one of my favorites. Always know what key FR is bound to. It can save your hide. If I’m in a particularly rough fight, or fighting multiple mobs, I will probably not use a lot of my rage and save it for a Frenzied Regeneration if I need to. You can regain health without switching out of bear form. This is a very good talent for PvP also. I don’t do much PvPing, but FR helped me beat a Warlock one time and his comment after the fight was “how did you get your health back???” Jeff reminds us that FR is a great way to use leftover rage, and he’s right. I would just add to be aware of the cooldown - don’t pop FR right before a boss fight where you might need it.
Jeff also called out a lot of our innate talents like Thorns, Roots and Swiftment/Nature’s Swiftness. I think the point here is to make sure you understand your talents and how to use them. Experiment with them; many of our talents can be used in multiple ways. Entangling Roots is not just good in PvP, it’s our crowd control technique for PvE. You get the idea.
Bruennor had a number of good strategy comments. Use Hibernate and Soothe Animal to pick herbs without having to kill surrounding mobs. If you still get attacked and don’t feel like fighting, just cheetah and run away. If you’re the tank and need to innervate a healer, then communicate with them to get a shield on you. You should be able to quickly pop out of bear form, hit the priest with an innervate, and switch back without taking much damage. Same strategy could be used for Rebirth.
Bruennor also followed the theme of making sure to use our talents and stressed to always have Demoralizing Roar up on your targets. It’s not just about decreasing the amount of damage you take - that effect ripples down to your Priests as they then have to use less mana to heal you and therefore the entire party can last longer. Bruennor suggested a number of synergies with other party members:
- Demoralizing Roar and Thunderclap
- Faerie Fire and Sunder or Expose Armor
- Coordinating your Bash and Stun with Rogues stun abilities to keep the target stunned even longer
Another good strategy comment Bruennor had was to use Swipe to quickly get aggro on a number of incoming mobs so other party members can do their job without having a mob in their face. I must admit, I have never been a big fan of swipe, but this is a great comment and helps me understand the value of this talent.
My comment was to remember all the scrolls, potions, elixirs and flasks that can give you some very nice buffs. While Bruennor corrected me on armor buffs from potions not being multiplied in Bear form, you can still get a +550 armor buffs with the strongest current potion. I’ll do some research and post a separate entry on all the consumables you should be on the watch for. They can vary in price, especially the highest levels, so it makes sense to keep an eye out for them on the AH and buy replacements when you can find them at a reasonable cost. Or maybe you have a guild Alchemist who can make them for you.
Finally, there was a post from Damh giving some tips on how to kill us Druids. He claims it was a honest misunderstanding. I’m inclined to believe him - Hunters aren’t known for being *cough smart cough*, I mean insightful and compassionate. And he was nice enough to an apology giving us Druids some insight on how to handle a hunter. The best part for me though was forming a ummm, “kinship” shall we say, with BRK. All I can say is that if you’ve never had your Night Elf toes licked by an 800-pound, 10-foot long purple male cat, you haven’t lived!
So there you have it fellow Druids - our first list of tips & tricks for being better players. I hope there was a gem in there for you, there was for me. Please continue to post ideas and suggestions and I’ll continue to feed them back via the blog. Just remember - we can help our party in many ways. Don’t get so locked in to one thing that you forget about all the other tools we have at our disposal.
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