Category: Druid

Best Druid Titles

Phaelia in Druid 10 Comments

What’s in a title? An in-game title can be a glamorous advertisement of objectively determined skill — as with The Proven Healer or Battlemaster. Or it can be an indicator of how one enjoys spending their time: Loremaster, Professor, Bloodsail Admiral (each of which is likely to be an indication of a masochistic personality). Pursuing a special title is a completely optional exercise, and yet I think many players have a special affinity for a moniker that has struck a chord with how they view their character.

Of course, not all players feel the need to pursue this particular avenue of achievement. When asked why his character sports no title at all, Mr. Phae gamely replied, “You only need a special title when other players don’t already know who you are.”

Dramatization of Mythic+ LFG with no Title

To my mind, there are really three distinct categories into which the most desirable Druid-oriented titles fall:

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Leveling Restoration in Legion

Phaelia in Druid, Mailbag 2 Comments

Shaikov of Garona (US) writes:

Hey there, I was just wondering how you leveled your Resto Druid in Legion. I feel like a lot of people say choosing a DPS spec is totally viable because of the way artifacts work but at the same time it kind of [frustrates me] to keep on changing between raids/dungeons and [World Quests]. What do you recommend?

Although I leveled as Restoration all the way through Wrath of the Lich King, once Blizzard introduced zero-cost talent respecs, I have been less dogmatic about avoiding at least one of our other two (now three) talent specializations. I recognize that my DPS as a Balance-specced Druid is abysmal, but it is still an improvement over that of my Restoration specialization, so I generally elect to make the switch when engaging in World Quests. However, I think it is totally viable to level exclusively Restoration, especially with the heroics (and a not insubstantial amount of showboating) of our Legion bodyguard, Broll Bearmantle. Simply set him as your focus and ensure your healing macros are set up to preferentially heal your focus if one exists (and can be helped). Something like this:

/use [@mouseover,help][@target,help][@focus,help][@player] Rejuvenation

Likewise, you can set your harmful spell macros to preferentially target your focus’s target, assuming you don’t already have something else targeted yourself. This can be useful when fighting multiple mobs. Something like this:

/use [@target,harm,nodead][@focustarget,harm,nodead][@targettarget,harm,nodead][@target] Sunfire

Note that the [nodead] modifier helps to ensure you’re not happily nuking away at a corpse. The final [@target] modifier may seem redundant but ensures that your spell displays the correct icon, even if you don’t have an enemy targeted.

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Patch 7.2: Deeply Rooted Disappointment

Phaelia in Druid 7 Comments
Daphne (of Greek Mythology) — the original victim of Deep Rooted — by Valkyrie Ghost

Patch 7.2 will present players the opportunity to unlock a new gold-framed ability within the Artifact tree. Restoration Druids will be able to unlock Deep Rooted:

When one of your Restoration heal over time effects heals a target below 35% health, its duration is refreshed.

Unfortunately, this trait isn’t likely to be very helpful outside of 5-mans. There is simply too much competition for a limited amount of damage to be healed in a raid environment for players to stay at 35% and not get almost immediately topped off by another player (and, really, that player is just as likely to be you with a Swiftmend). One of the stated goals of this patch is to give players something impactful to work toward:

Posted by Lore on Feb 9, 2017

We’re planning to have relatively minimal changes to core class design in 7.2. This is for two primary reasons:

  • The 7.2 changes and additions to Artifact Traits will have a lot of impact on classes, and so we’d like to keep core functionality relatively stable.
  • We just made a very significant amount of changes to most specs in 7.1.5, and don’t want to pile another heap of changes on the community just yet.
Source: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20753237046?page=1#post-10

I feel like the Development team may have missed their mark with this ability. In response to complaints that DPS specs seem to be getting the most attention so far, Blizzard actually mentioned specifically that they are looking at feedback on Deep Rooted at Chubie’s thread, Restoration Druid – New Gold Trait. Some of the suggestions from players so far include:

  • Raising the percent cutoff of the proposed ability from 35% to 50%.
  • Allowing double Lifebloom.
  • Making each cast of Rejuvenation progressively cost less mana (to a point).
  • Increased duration of Innervate.

I encourage you to share your thoughts on that thread (and also here because that would be awesome) in the hopes of an improvement (or replacement).

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Patch 7.2: New Artifact Traits

Phaelia in Druid 7 Comments

MMO Champion has published an extensive list of new Artifact Traits to be released in Patch 7.2. There appear to be four brand-new abilities for Restoration, including:

  • Deep Rooted (Rank 1): Your Heal over Time effects automatically refresh when their target goes below 35% maximum health.
    This seems pretty similar to Cultivation. I suppose this would be useful in cases where you need to ignore your tank in favor of raid healing?
  • Joy of Spring (Rank 1): Efflorescence’s healing increases by 0% every 2 sec.
    Presumably, this won’t be 0% in actuality.
  • Eternal Restoration (Rank 1): Increases the duration of Essence of G’hanir by 1 sec (up to 8 additional seconds at Rank 8).
    Depending upon the eventual strength of Joy of Spring, this is probably going to be my favorite of the three new abilities.
  • Infinite (Rank 1): Placeholder ability.

The full list of additional ranks — and speculation about what these changes may mean in terms of artifact progression — after the break.

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Patch 7.2: Updated Travel Form

Phaelia in Druid 11 Comments

In addition to giving players the ability to unlock flight in the Broken Isles, Blizzard has announced that they will be adding class-specific mounts in Patch 7.2. Because the utility of our Travel Form is unmatched, the Druid “mount” will be an update to our epic flight form. Thanks to the ever-diligent MMO Champion, you can preview each our new owlish form in each of the four Druidic races: Night Elf (purple), Tauren (brown), Troll (red), or Worgen (black).

Jan 23 Edit: Data-mining by MMO Champion seems to indicate that Druids will acquire an item called a Moon-Kissed Feather with the on-use effect of “Teaches you how to transform into the Archdruid’s Lunarwing Form.” The flight form is called Archdruid’s Lunarwing Form and is described as “Shapeshift into Lunarwing Form, increasing movement speed by 280% and allowing you to fly. Cannot use in combat. The act of shapeshifting frees the caster of movement impairing effects. Can’t be cast in Tree of Life Form, Moonkin Form. Account wide. Instant.”

I understand why Blizzard decided to create an updated model for our Travel Form, but I have to admit that I’m a smidge jealous of the gorgeous mounts that the Monk and Paladin classes will be getting! Personally, I would love a quest for Druids to befriend a Wild Dreamrunner. I’ve seen Hunters asking to tame these creatures, but I prefer to think that unicorns would only agree to accompany someone equally attuned with nature.

I admit to occasional daydreams about the adventures of
Phoebe Phaelia and her Unicorn.

On a related note, can I just say how disappointed I am with the Glyph of the Doe? Players have been complaining for years that our forms were non-gendered, and many who play female characters were especially frustrated when our cheetah Travel Form became an obviously male stag. The model for the unglyphed Travel Form has a jeweled harness, decorative barding on his legs, and jewels dangling from his antlers. Applying the (not inexpensive) Glyph of the Doe transforms the blinged-out stag into a female doe with no ornamentation at all. You can see the difference below:

I’m so fancy.
I buy bottle service with my rent money.

I’m grateful that Blizzard made the effort to be more inclusive, but some enterprising model designer really ought to grab a bedazzler and fix this!

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