By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about the change to itemization whereby the +Healing and +Spell Damage stats are being retired for the less specialized Spell Power stat. What, exactly does this mean, though, and what can you expect at the release of Patch 3.0?
With the upcoming change to give healers FREE spell damage, I’m considering something a little wild … something a little craaaaaaazy. I’m considering respeccing Phaelia 34 Balance, 27 Restoration for Arenas (and because I’m a cheapskate, for PvE raiding, too). Here’s the spec I’m contemplating: 34/0/27
Rather than the popularly accepted tri-spec that picks up key talents from both Feral and Balance, this spec would ignore our Feral tree altogether and instead dig deep enough into Balance to pick up Moonkin and Dreamstate. The idea would be to switch into Moonkin instead of Dire Bear Form as a defensive measure, retaining my ability to crowd control the Rogues and Warriors who try to kill me in the face. I’d also have the ability to generate a respectable amount of DPS when it was called for (somewhere around 700 or so with Insect Swarm, Moonfire, and Wrath spam).
The drawbacks of using Moonkin Form instead of Dire Bear Form:
- Less Armor
Dire Bear Form gets 550% bonus armor with 3/3 Thick Hide. Moonkin Form only gets 500% bonus armor.
- No Free Hit Points
Dire Bear Form gives 25% extra Stamina. In my current PvP kit with 664 Stamina, that’s 1660 hp (664 * .25 * 10).
- No Special Feral Abilities
No Frenzied Regeneration (which does not scale with +Healing), Rocket Bear, or Brutal Impact.
- No Mana Protection
Moonkins are vulnerable to Mana Drain and Viper Sting.
The benefits of using Moonkin over Dire Bear Form:
- Crowd Control
Many Druids complain that they are effectively crowd controlled when forced to switch to Bear Form as a defensive measure. While a Moonkin loses access to her healing spells, she does retain her ability to Cyclone and Entangling Roots opponents, allowing her to switch out and heal.
- Damage
A Moonkin retains access to her damage spells: Moonfire, Wrath, Insect Swarm, and Starfire (useful for tricking someone into counterspelling the Arcane school).
- 5% Extra Crit
While Druids are not crit-based healers, spell criticals in this build trigger Nature’s Grace, a talent that reduces the casting time of the next non-instant spell cast by 0.5 seconds.
- Mana Regeneration
Moonkins do not suffer from the reduced mana regeneration formula of Dire Bear Form but instead regenerate mana at the same rate as caster form. They also retain the ability to cast Innervate, drink Star’s Tears, and Shadowmeld (useful when drinking). Further, a Moonkin can melee to regenerate mana, despite being a risky method of doing so. This could work out well against a pet that’s been sent to prevent me from drinking. Line of Sight his master and whack away at it with my Earthwarden for around 300 MP5. Mmmm!
- Curse Removal
My currently competitive team is comprised of an Arms Warrior, Holy Paladin, and myself. Curse of Tongues can be debilitating to my Paladin. I would be able to remove curses in Moonkin form after Patch 2.3.
- WTH?! Value
Potential misdirection of opponents into expecting the weaker heals of a Balance Druid and perceiving me as less of a threat. While they may expect me to have 700 +Healing, I’d be closer to 1400, making my more limited heals more potent than they would likely give me credit for.
- Moonkin is Cheaper than Bear Form
Which makes sense when you think of the cost of something covered in fur vs. the cost of something covered in feathers. While Dire Bear Form costs 35% of base mana (828 at 70), Moonkin only costs 22% (520). Even with 3/3 points in Natural Shapeshifter (reducing the cost of DBF to 24.5% of base mana), Moonkin is still a cheaper shapeshift.
- Moonkin Dance > Bear Form Dance
‘Nuff said.
Other items of note concerning this spec:
- I’d be sacrificing a lot of healing power to get that much from Balance. Most notably, I’d have to lose Swiftmend (OUCH). I’d also lose the high crit chance for Regrowth (which would admittedly be totally overpowered if combined with Nature’s Grace) as well as Empowered Rejuvenation. And unlike some Balance/Restoration hybrid specs, I wouldn’t be ramping up the power of my Healing Touch (a spell considered mostly worthless in Arenas except used in conjunction with Nature’s Swiftness).
- I’d be picking up a lot of the excessively delicious talents from Balance including :
- Moonglow: 9% mana reduction on all healing spells except Lifebloom and Tranquility — basically a mini Tree of Life all the time and with no movement restriction.
- Lunar Guidance: 25% additional +Healing (and +Damage) from Intellect. At approximately 475 Intellect in my PvP gear, that’s 120 free +Healing. This is similar to the Tree of Life +Healing aura but based on Intellect instead of Spirit and available all the time.
- Nature’s Grace: Shaves 0.5 seconds off the cast time of my next non-instant spell, including Regrowth and Healing Touch. Spamming Rank 1 Moonfire (pimped out at an additional +10% critical chance because of Improved Moonfire) has never seemed more appealing. Die, totems, die.
- Dreamstate: 47 MP5? Yes, please.
- Nature’s Reach would increase the range of Cyclone and Entangling Roots by 6 yards, from 30 to 36. While a nice boost, I’ve never been very good at estimating my range well enough to take special advantage of this.
- Unfortunately, I’d also be losing Natural Perfection. While somewhat lackluster, the loss of this talent would require reitemization to bump up my Resilience rating. Of course, with Season 3 armor, I’ll likely be beyond the “soft cap” anyway. On the upside, I would gain a 4% reduction of my chance to be hit with spells (along with a 4% increased chance to land Cyclone and Entangling Roots via the Balance of Power talent).
My question for you, dear readers: would you still consider me to be Resto4Life when I have more points invested in Balance than in Restoration? Even if I’m taking all the Healing-synergy Balance talents and wearing “pure” +Healing gear? Oh, the agony! *places back of hand to forehead and looks away* *peers at you from between two fingers*
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I am excited that BRK is back, though!
/cry I love you, ty for everything.
Phae…if it feels good, do it!
And you’ll still be Resto4Life to me.
Pfft, resto is resto ~ you think resto, that’s all that matters! I’m currently running the modified PvP build and really really missing the 34/0/27 (altho I am enjoying learning tree).
When you start talking about tanking gear and blaming healers for letting you die, we’ll talk. =)
/agree with halite.
Phae, regardless of your spec and your URL, you’re probably the most prolific and accessible resource for druids in the blogosphere. Your math and views are monitored, mentioned, and then showcased by WoWInsider.
If this experience does anything, it will only serve to further inform you, and in turn, inform us.
/thumbsup
As Malfurion Stormrage used to say… you can’t be the best tree until you have been a bird, because birds land on trees… and stuff…
Ok that’s a lie, but yeah. You’d still be resto4life as long as you spec with resto-ring others in mind.
I’d miss our tree dances and tree jokes and I’d be the only true. Standing alone. But moonkin rocks so do what makes you happy.
Would still love to read your blog.
Awesome design(all that pictures at every post <3), hot topics, regular updates, pvp oriented... i love it.
Not to mention i’m playing 34/0/27 moonkin myself(in balance gear atm, but with all that +spelldamage i really might use ‘healing’ items in s3)
//Denetor @ Laughing Skull @ EU
I can’t believe no one is counseling against this! It’s not that I think moonkin isn’t great, it sure is! It’s just not the defensive juggernaut that bear is. In fact, it’s not even close. While the armor increase is still the same (although probably not even that since you wont be going to get Thick hide) you lose out on a 25% stamina boost (which is huge itself) and more importantly Feral Charge. I may be off target here but if you play your resto arena like I do (I modeled my strategy off Hafu) Feral Charge is one of the best defensive skills a resto druid has. Before I saw her videos I never saw FC as a defensive ability but I realized how wrong I was- that video changed my life as a healing druid. I think all too often you’ll be caught in moonkin form with no outs. Take it from me. I get owned by rogues and feral druids in arena when I’m moonkin because there is just no escape. When I’m resto I laugh at them for days.
If you want to go for a bit more offensive build, I’d go with something along the lines of 19/11/31. That way you’ll be able to get Improved Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Vengeance in the balance tree while still maintaining your survivability with Feral Charge, Nature’s Swiftness, and Swiftmend.
I did that (or something like it) for a while, but I missed swiftmend. In fact I had to put an extra lifebloom button where my swiftmend button was cuz I knew I’d be hitting it.
I flipped it and I’m surprised that my dps is still alright. Woo! I know I’ll go full tree eventually.
Adendra
Scarlet Crusade
Yes, sadly, no Feral Charge and no Swiftmend are going to make you feel extremely vulnerable when the other team decides that you are the assist train target.
While you are correct in that Moonkin doesn’t cut off Cyclone and Roots, I personally can never get them off in caster form when good melee are on me due to interrupt (kick/pummel)—to me they are CC spells, not escape spells, I really only go for them when I’ve already established some distance and tempo.
Also, keep in mind that a good portion of DPS from Moonkin relies on crits, crits being the most mitigated by Resilience. At the same time, you are now subject to the same LOS issues that plague other ranged classes (irony, because as a Druid, they complain about our innate ability to LOS)—and unlike other DPS casters, have no blink, spammable snare, no reliable stun, etc. to keep other polehumpers in sight to DPS down.
Just my preliminary thoughts. BTW, I was Moonkin spec for my 3 month duration while farming the Marshal rank, 33/0/18 IICR, so the .5 DPS/.5 Healer thing isn’t all too strange for me. But that was for BG, a whole different story (for one, I had tons more room to kite).
Thanks for all the amazingly supportive comments. It’s really been weighing on my mind – whether the decision made sense from a “I want to play a healer” perspective. The thing is, in 3v3 I find myself running crowd control and back up healing (my other two teammates are a Holy Paladin and Arms Warrior). And while Bear Form’s Feral Charge is flat out amazing in 2v2, I find myself using it less in 3v3. It seems like being forced to drop into the slightly less defensive Moonkin form (I’d still have around 18k Armor) wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world since I could Root my attacker and Cyclone the opposing team’s Healer.
While this isn’t a strategy employed by Hafu – it may not have been a viable strategy until now (or at least until Patch 2.3). I predict that we will see a great many more “hybrid” healers than we did before now that the free damage makes Balance talents more viable in a build intended for healing. Druids mixing Balance and Restoration and Shamans mixing Elemental and Restoration (Priests need Disc, but maybe this will increase the viability of the tri-spec). In any case, I figure I can at least give it a couple of weeks to learn and try it out. I’ll definitely report on my impressions! Thanks again, everyone; I really appreciate you sharing your opinions and recommendations!
@Delos: The 25% Stamina boost is basically 1600 HP. While that’s pretty amazing, I don’t think it’s a reason to discount Moonkin altogether. And I use Feral Charge less in 3v3 than I do in 2v2 so I don’t anticipate missing it too much. And I will have a Paladin to back me up if I do get into trouble, so I don’t anticipate “getting owned” because I’m stuck in Moonkin any more than I get owned because I’m stuck in Bear Form. =)
@Megan: The reasons for taking the build wouldn’t be to become uber DPS – that would just be an occassional fringe benefit. But I agree that it’s going to be painful to go without Swiftmend. That caveat alone may force me to make a switch. I’m not sure if it’s a difference in our competition, but TBH I don’t have much trouble getting a Cyclone off against Warriors. I just wait till he uses an ability like MS or Hamstring and immediately start casting Cyclone so that he can’t Pummel me. I’m having to do that now but in caster form without the 62% damage reduction I’d have were I in Moonkin form.
Just out of curiosity (cause I’m sure you thought about this) if the point isn’t for uber-dps — why not grab imp. nature’s grasp and/or imp thorns/roots?
Nature’s grasp in particular is handy in the sense that, from my understanding, it’s an instant cast cc (when it procs), can’t be spell-locked because of the instant nature, and there’s no mana cost associated with it.
I tried a dreamstate heal-build sometime ago and had to say that I wasn’t impressed with it but that was for pve purposes. It seems like this type of respec *might* be feasible in pvp for 2.3
As a Balance spec I couldn’t let this post go without some form of comment. Go for it Phaelia. The new heal/damage patch, along with the future boomkin set from Zul’Aman, and Balance will be fireing off 10k crits with a flick of our feather wrists.
And Delos, whats wrong with you? Feral and Rogues owning a Boomkin? Get real. A properly armored and spec’d moonkin has no trouble dispatching those classes. It’s the damn healers that give us fits. Freakin Pally’s and their wussy bubbles. I hate’em (unless they’re healing me in instances).
So, I say again, come over to the balance, and live life as a gigantic – feathery – waddle butted – bird.
With the role you are trying to fill on your 3v3, I’d say you should try a more traditional Boomkin build while wearing your resto gear. Perhaps even a 40/21 build for the emergency nature’s swiftness heal? Quite a few balance arena druids spend a good amount of time out of Moonkin especially vs caster classes. You can be hotting and dotting at the same time. Regardless, you are going to be the jack of all trades, master of none. On a 3v3 with a holy pally and ms warrior, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing?
Just a few thoughs about the talents choice..
First I’m not sure if nature’s reach is that important in arena. I have never tried 3vs3, but certainly in 2vs2 I’ve had no “out of range” problems so far (hard to have them when you’re the one healing though ^^).
What I don’t see is why furor. I love this talent, but without feral gear or talents (specially feral charge) it’s not that useful (sure some balance druids start in kitty form and pounce to have a combo point to maim with, but isn’t it better to buff up all your party?)
I’m not convinced about vengeance either if you’re planning on using a lot of +healing(+dmg/3) gear because you’ll have like 7-8% crit, +5% in moonkin (in full balance gear you should be able to at least double that); 13% of your spells doing 200% damage instead of 150%? I don’t know.. Maybe with some +crit pieces..
And I’d really consider getting swiftmend, improved regrowth, or both. Swiftmend has saved my life so many times.. And regrowth, well, it’s the closest thing to a flash of light we have.. You already got a healadin, but it’s a nice talent to climb up to swiftmend anyway
Buuut if you sacrifice swiftmend (which I’d understand since it requires quite a lot of resto talents), are you sure you wanna spend 5 talents in gift of nature? You may want (for example) to have the chance to spam wrath with celestial focus instead!
With a paladin healing I wouldn’t think of moonkin as a defensive form; I’d rather begin with it, teaching them not to mess with dr00ds, and shift out when the pally is in danger. I don’t use bear form as a defense that often anyway (chaaarge!!), as rogues are the class I fear the least. Lifebloom, abolish poison, barkskin, travel form.. we have plenty of tools already
Warriors are a bit more annoying though :/
For hybrid builds I’d either drop moonkin form and go a bit higher on resto (heal & spank) or go for 1/31/29 or something like that. Already having a healer, if I were doing the moonkin experiment myself, I’d keep just a few of my best healing purples and then go crazy with +crit/+dmg and balance talents. /dance!
check out http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=2315DC87D9F1687961A271DBDA06E0F0?topicId=443120796&sid=1#3 for a good chart showing the benefits of nature’s reach vs other classes. If the link doesn’t go right to it, use ctrl – f and look for Mathcraft vs. Theorycraft
@Erin: I have always considered the Brambles talent to be pretty worthless, especially for requiring a 3 point investment. Roots has never been a good source of our damage, and the different to thorns seems negligible. I didn’t pick up Improved Nature’s Grasp because I didn’t feel I had the points to spare. While I don’t intend to be “uber” DPS, the investment in abilities that increase my crit chance on Moonfire (in the hopes of proccing Nature’s Grace) seemed more wise. I may decide to sink more points into that talent, however, after I get beaten to death by a Warrior the dozenth time. =)
@Pesce: Thanks for the encouragement. I don’t think I’ll be picking up any traditional Balance items, though, as the idea is to continue wearing my Healing gear and still pew pewing with some efficiency when necessary. /waddle /waddle =)
@Drikke: I will still have Nature’s Swiftness in this build. I did, however, want to bolster my healing abilities as much as I could and still keep Boomkin as a defensive mechanism and so haven’t invested as deeply in Balance as I might otherwise (still have to heal for my guild raids in addition to PvP healing).
@Ermongol: I wasn’t really sure about Furor, either. I would be able to Bash instantly, but that doesn’t really seem to be a huge deal, especially without Feral Impact. It came down to having a bad taste in my mouth looking at the worthless 5-point investment that is IMotW. I think I’d rather throw my points away than mislead any Blizzard developer surveying which first-tier talents are chosen.
And you’re right. My crit will not be that high, especially in pure healing gear. But I will hope for some crits with Moonfire at the very least since that’s a damage spell I can easily throw around. I’m afraid that it isn’t possible to pick up Swiftmend and Boomkin, and Boomkin is the sole purpose of t he build change. However, come WotLK … oooo! The 5/5 in Gift of Nature is to augment my heals more than my damage spells. I basically wanted to try to help make up for the “gimping” I was having to do to my healing ability to pick up Moonkin by offsetting it with every Healing-synergistic talent from the Balance tree.
@Drikke (again): Thank you so much for pointing out that chart. I will have to find a range indicator to help me make good use of Nature’s Reach.
Hello there.
You could be a Restokin4life
i love that specc, right now im at +1500 healing with 34/0/27, Dreamstate build rules in Heroics and Raids. used to be a tree, but i couldnt farm in that specc, now i´m gettin free +500 spell dmg for my farming with the new patch.
Great Page by the way, i check it all the time, keep the good work.
@Petrav: Thanks for the comments!
Restokin … I love it. I think that might just work with WotLK when you can nab Swiftmend AND Moonkin in the same talent build. =D
Hey there.
First of all, I love your blog ;9
Enough chit-chat, heh. I’d like to point you towards this blog here
http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/World-of-Ming/The-New-and-Improved-Druid/
wherin a 2300 rated healing druid explains his strategy concerning healchick. I found it very interesting and think I’d just have to share
Enjoy
@Kaymoo: Thanks for the link! The article is very interesting and makes me more than curious to try this build after all once I resume PvPing. Bookmarked. =)