I used to be so die-hard Resto4Life (haha) that I refused to even map my shapeshifting abilities. If I turned into a Bear, it was only to /dance. Fortunately however, PvP has opened my eyes to a whole host of advantages to our various forms, and I’m happy to say that I’m now never more than a thumb movement away from turning into a happy woodland — or underwater — creature. Here are a few of the tricks I’ve learned for each form:

Cat Form

• Prowl + Dash past groups of enemies the rest of your group or raid has to carefully avoid.
• Bravely leap from ledge to ledge on the ramps in Karazhan.
• Dash back to your raid after being the victim of an ability that signficantly displaces you (ex. waterfalls on Morogrim).
• Dash back to your raid (wait for a straightaway like that of Curator’s hall in Karazhan) after a wipe so you can blog — I mean, buff — after a wipe.

Bear Form

• Mob out of control and running to bash your skull in? Turn into a bear and Bash his skull in instead, giving your tank 3 seconds to mosey over and give you a hand. PvP-specced Druids often have the Brutal Impact skill, making this a 4-second stun instead of 3.
• Impending doom from a Gruul Shatter? Pop Barskin and turn into a Bear. You’ll get more hit points and take 20% less damage than you would otherwise.

Aquatic Form

Turning into a seal lets you travel through water faster than everyone else. This is great for getting back to the circular platform that surrounds The Lurker Below in SSC after a Whirl, Geyser, or ill-timed Spout. And does anyone else get really annoyed by the fact that a few random AIR bubbles knock us out of Aquatic Form on our way through the drainpipe to Coilfang Reservoir?

Tree of Life

Use Tree of Life form on Blackheart the Inciter (possibly any mob that charms; I’m not sure) and during the phases where he charms your whole group, you’ll wander around ineffectually slapping your groupmates with your branches.

Flight Form

• Die in an unsafe spot? Click the “Resurrect” button and hit your Flight Form button for a quick getaway!
• One of my favorite things to do in game is to leap off Aldor Terrace, drop halfway down, turn into a bird, glide into the bank, and shift out so that I’m thrown across the room and land beside the mailbox. Sometimes, I even /bow. Not exactly combat-focused, but tremendously entertaining.

All-Terrain Travel Form Macro

Rather than creating and using multiple buttons for your various forms, consider creating a macro that will use Travel Form, Flight Form, Aquatic Form, or your mount based upon your current conditions:

/cast [swimming] Aquatic Form; [flyable,nocombat,noswimming] Swift Flight Form; [noswimming,outdoors,combat] Travel Form;
/use [noswimming,outdoors,nocombat,noflyable] Reins of the Swift Frostsaber

So what special form-based tricks do you use?

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Matticus posted a great article on the Priest spell, Shackle, today. Shackle is very similar to the Druid crowd control spell, Hibernate:

• Both are limited target. While Hibernate can be used against Beasts and Dragonkin, Shackle Undead can be used against … well … Undead.
• Both have three ranks, cost 150 mana, and have a 1.5 second cast time.
• Both can be refreshed before their durations have elapsed.
• Both have a chance to break early that can be reduced by wearing items with spell hit.
• Both break on damage. Yes, even yours, Mr. Swipe-Happy-Druid-Tank!
• Neither can be cast at the same time as a heal spell.

Due to their similarities, I recommend going over there, reading his article, and mentally substituting the word “Hibernate” everywhere you see “Shackle” for a stellar set of tips on how to leverage this limited-use crowd control spell effectively. And so as not to be a complete slacker, I’ll throw in a tip of my own for using Hibernate in instances. You can use a focus target macro to easily associate your crowd control target with your Hibernate ability for the duration of the fight:

#showtooltip Hibernate
/clearfocus [button:2]
/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus,exists,nodead] Hibernate
/stopmacro [target=focus,exists,nodead]
/clearfocus [target=focus,exists,nodead]
/focus [harm,exists,nodead]

Assuming you do not already have a focus target, this macro will store your current target as your focus target. From that point on, you can click or press the button to automatically cast Hibernate on that mob without switching targets. If your focus target dies and you click the button, your focus target will automatically be cleared (or reset to your new target if you have one selected). Alternatively, you can right click on the button to clear it manually. In a hectic fight, this macro can be a lifesaver since it’s not always easy to target your assigned Beast or Dragonkin while keeping everyone alive. It also makes refreshing your Hibernate before its duration elapses a lot easier.

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I’m probably behind the times on this one, but I recently discovered a quick and easy change that I can make to the interface options that has has greatly improved my soloing ability — and one that will likely be a big help when I start PvPing again. This is the Auto Self Cast toggle on the Basic interface options tab. This causes any helpful spell you cast to be cast on you by default should no other target be selected (be it a standard target, a mouseover, a focus target, etc.).

This option, first pointed out to me by frequent reader and commentor, Someone of Some Server (Some Region), eliminates the need for me to use an additional targetting parameter in all of my healing and decursing macros. However, if for any reason that’s more your cup of tea, how to accomplish this using macro commands is demonstrated below.

/cast [target=mouseover,help][target=target,help][target=player] Lifebloom

You could also dress up a macro like this one with a Swiftmend to intuitively “pop” your Rejuvenation when you press down the CTRL key:

#showtooltip /cast [modifier:ctrl,target=mouseover,exists,help][modifier:ctrl,target=target,help][modifier:ctrl,target=player] Swiftmend; [target=mouseover,exists,help][target=target,help][target=player] Rejuvenation

In PvE, this (the interface option or the macro modification) allows me to throw a heal on myself without losing my current DPS target. By DPSing using Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Thorns and using macros like these for Lifebloom, Rejuvenation, and Swiftmend, I never have to worry about spell pushback, which means I don’t have to worry with casting Entangling Roots unless my target is a particularly heavy hitter. In PvP, this will allow me to easily heal myself while running away from the Skillherald hurtling toward my delicate elven features.

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So I kind of wimped out with my talent spec when Patch 2.3 was released. I gave up on my radical idea of going healing Boomkin and instead went with a much more traditional spec of 11/0/50. Since Mr. Phae is taking a break from PvE at the moment, I decided that I'd take a break from PvP and pull my points out of the Feral tree to pick up Living Spirit and a few other more PvE-oriented talents. And before you comment with "OMG DURIDS R 4 HOTS", I sunk points into Healing Touch talents due to the increased emphasis on Heroic instances from daily quests and badge rewards. So far, I'm really enjoying the changes.

One of my favorite changes to my spec is the addition of Insect Swarm, the 11-point Balance talent:

While Insect Swarm is one of the highest DPM (damage per mana) spells in the game, it has the added benefit of preventing 2% of incoming damage on your tank. That's 2% less damage you have to heal and it scales in a way that nothing else (available to Druids) does. The more damage your tank takes, the more damage that's mitigated, completely independent of your +Healing or +Damage totals.

While the benefits of Insect Swarm are fairly obvious, the hardest thing about using it was figuring out how to integrate it into my healing strategy. After all, healing is different than dpsing, and mixing the two can be cumbersome. Which is why I developed the following macro:

#showtooltip Insect Swarm /cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=target,exists,harm][target=targettarget,exists,harm] Insect Swarm

This macro first attempts to cast Insect Swarm on your mouseover target, assuming it exists and that it's aggressive toward you (harm). If it cannot find a mouseover target, it will attempt to cast upon your normal target with the same stipulations. By combining this macro with the techniques described in my earlier article on Healing via Focus Target, you can set your main tank to your focus target, then mouseover Insect Swarm his current target. You still have the liberty to Insect Swarm other mobs, but be careful that you don't DoT something that will later need to be crowd controlled. For this reason, it's often a good idea to make sure that your tank's target is missing a bit of life before you cast Insect Swarm on it, both so you're sure it's not a target he's only targetting to generate a little bit of aggro and so that he has time to build some threat before you DoT it.

Here is a revised version of the above-mentioned macro to also include Faerie Fire and Moonfire. It will cast these spells in the order Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, Moonfire and will reset its sequence after 7 seconds:

#showtooltip Insect Swarm /castsequence [target=mouseover,exists,harm][target=target,exists,harm][target=targettarget,exists,harm] reset=7 Insect Swarm, Faerie Fire, Moonfire

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According to recent reports from the PTR, Blizzard has swapped all MP5 on Season 3 armor for Spirit at a value of 1:2.5. At first glance, this appears to be a nerf to Restoration PvP viability as Spirit is generally regarded as worthless in a PvP setting. However, consider that the shorter an Arena game, the greater the equivalent MP5 value of Innervate (more mana returned over a shorter period of time). On the other hand, in 2.3, all players will be able to see the buffs a player has, making Innervate that much more vulnerable to dispel. While it’s still up in the air whether this is a buff or nerf, it should at least make Arena- and Battleground-obtained armor more attractive in PvE (where many Druids espouse the value of stacking Spirit).

• Previous Stats via MMO Champion
• Updated Stats via MMO Champion

Mookysolo of Ner’zhul, well-known Druid Arena PvP mogul strongly objects to this change as a substantial nerf to the PvP viability of Druids. Here’s a snippet of what he says:

The irony of it all is that these changes could not have come at a worse time. With the recent change allowing enemies to see your buff/debuffs AT ALL TIMES, this means the chances Innervate will be dispelled is very high. Currently in high rated Arena (specifically 2v2/3v3), my Innervate will be dispelled the moment I’m in LoS of a Priest/Shaman; now this is just with the use of mods like Focus Frame, Cenemycastbar, etc. After the buff change, every single Priest/Shaman will remove my Innervate without thinking twice even if I take the time to go out of LoS, Innervate, and buff myself with “filler” buffs like Lifebloom, R1 Rejuv, R1 MotW, and R1 Thorns, players will make it a top priority to spam purge on me until my Innervate is removed. This also means they will not need to Purge until they cannot Purge anymore buffs, this means they Purge, check if I still have Innervate, repeat.

Edit: Huzzah! Recent reports from the Public Test Realm indicate that this change has been reversed!

In other Patch 2.3 news, Cromlis of Cenarius is reporting a signficant change to spellcasting for Druids while in forms:

If you try to cast a spell while you are in a form, then you will automatically shift out and cast that spell.

For example, if you are in bear form, and you press regrowth (via spellbook or a button on an action bar), then you will automatically shift to caster form and start casting regrowth. This works for moonkin, and any form really. As long as it is a caster ability that you cannot use in your current form, you will automatically shift out and cast it.

This signifies an end to the need for using the “/cancelform [stance:1,2,etc.]” command at the beginning of all heal spell macros since the game will now automatically shift you to caster form if you current form denies you the ability you’re attempting to use. And for those who aren’t necessarily comfortable with this change, note that it can be disabled by entering the following console command:

/console autoUnshift 0

Thanks to Kai for this helpful tip!

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