On Tankadins (an Alliterative Aggro Addendum)

Okay, since a couple people pointed out the lack of Tankadins in the previous post, let me address them.

They are exactly the opposite of what I said before.

Tankadins start with full mana, like you. Unlike you, they don't have a huge honkin' pool of blue to burn through. They do, however, have abilities that let them regain mana - by being healed, hit, and hitting back. That being said, Pally tanks can have Oom issues. And that's where the fun begins. And by fun, I mean mobs flying everywhere and wiping you.

A pally tank has a much more difficult balancing act than a bear or warrior tank. Bears probably have it easiest - armor, stam, dodge. Strength/AP to do more damage and thus more aggro. That's about it. Warriors have to incorporate block/parry into that, but are otherwise much the same. A pally tank has to balance everything a warrior does, plus int, spell damage, and mana/5. That's a TON of stats to be concerned about. And thus, it means there can be a few different things that you need to be concerned about.

If the pally is well balanced, you should be fine except possibly in long fights. Once you're partway through a long fight, make sure you start paying attention not just to the amount of threat on the pally tank, but the RATE of threat. If that drops sharply, your tank is OOM, and you should be ready to back off. If you can, toss a HoT or two on the tank - this will save your healers some mana, but it will also provide a steady stream of mana back to the tank, which is in general more valuable than a large chunk at irregular intervals. Of course, if a fellow druid is healing the tank, he's probably got this going on already. :D In a worst case scenario, you could innervate, but Paladins are one of the classes which benefit least from this, and hopefully your tank has done his job and balanced his equipment, making this unneeded.

Paladins also generate a lot of their aggro by BEING hit. So, if your paladin tank is having aggro issues but is taking the hits fine, skip insect swarm. More hits = more aggro for the pally.

Also, AOE tanking is where the Paladin's ultimate strength lies. They completely outstrip warriors and druids for holding AOE aggro. This is especially good for healing them while they tank two or three or nineteen mobs. For fun, a Pally friend who was a Tankadin at the time and I cleared the entire lower platform of blood elves on the south platform of Black Temple (after we killed the elite). It was great fun.

Apart from that, the rest of the advice still applies - early on, be conservative, although the tank will probably be generating enough aggro so that you can go a lot quicker at first. Later on, ride the 110%-120% line. And again, to reiterate, talk to your tank! Paladin tanks are perhaps the most complex tanks in the game, but they definitely hold their own.

On Aggro

The enemy of the Balance druid. Aggro. Granted, in moonkin you can handle it a little better than squishy clothies - but face it, once you start raiding, anything other than trash mobs will likely two-shot you if you're doing anything resembling good DPS. And even some of those trash mobs will destroy you (Phantom Valet in Karazhan, anyone?)

Hopefully this is at least basically understood by everyone, but I'll go through the more specific details. Maybe you'll pick up something helpful.

The math of aggro is fairly simple. Whoever has the highest threat to the mob is the one the mob will attack (to an extent, see below). That is the person who has aggro.

Threat comes from a few different places. Damage is the most obvious - each point of damage you do to a mob will generate 1 threat on that mob. Healing generates .5 threat per point of actual healing done to ALL mobs in the fight. Special abilities generate a variable amount of threat. And of course, tankish classes tend to have things that increase their threat, while stabby/boomy/healy classes tend to have options that reduce it.

Now, once someone has gained the initial aggro - i.e., the pull has been made - the tank should be getting beat on. What you have to realize is that to pull aggro at range, you need to go 30% threat OVER the person who currently holds it. For the record, melee needs to go 10% over to pull aggro.

So, we know all the mathematical ways to reduce threat - Subtlety, the newly available subtlety to cloak enchant, and to do less damage. What I want to look at here is behavior.

Let's take a simple situation. The tank pulls a single mob. Let's say he generates about 2k threat in the first couple seconds. Meanwhile you're charging your starfire, and you drop a 4k-5k crit on the guy. Congratulations, you lose.

The basic thing to realize is that for tanks, threat generation is back-loaded. They need rage to do their thing. In order to get rage, they either need to hit the mob or get hit by the mob. So they start slowly, building up rage, then as they start doing more damage and taking some more hits, their threat generation takes off. You, on the other hand, are front-loaded. You start off with your full reserves and full potential to cause damage, until you go OOM and are then pretty much dead weight. So, what you need to do is build up slowly, and then go all out.

Here's one important thing to realize - as the fight progresses, you can take more and more advantage of that 30% buffer. Take the following examples with completely made up numbers:

20 seconds into the fight:
Tank threat - 15k
Your threat - 14k
Your threat = 93%

2 minutes into the fight:
Tank threat - 100k
Your threat - 93k
Your threat = 93%

For the sake of argument, let's say your damage is about the following:
Wrath - 1200/2400 Crit
Starfire - 2300/4600 Crit

Now, in both of these examples, you are at 93% threat. You probably have at least insect swarm going generating a constant moderate feed of threat. Do you push out the damage or do you hold back a little?

In example 1, you should hold back a little. Why? This early in the fight, a lucky crit or two will add enough threat to push you through that 30% buffer. In example 2, you can go balls-to-the-wall DPS for a bit. The tank is already at 100k, and you would need to generate 37k threat to overtake him, even if he stopped doing anything and just stood there. When it's later into the fight like this, push the envelope. Try to ride around 110%-120% threat if you can manage it without being inefficient and going OOM.

Generally, the start of a fight is a good time to do a couple things. First off, once the tank has aggro, and as long as he did not body pull, it's probably safe to toss faerie fire on the mob as it's running over to the tank. This will lower the mob's armor, which will help the tank's hits do more damage. That means a bit more threat generated early, and every little bit helps. Even better if you have improved faerie fire.

Once the tank has been beating on the mob for a couple seconds - a good rule of thumb is when you see a sunder/lacerate on the mob if the tank is a warrior/druid - toss up your insect swarm. The miss chance will help mitigate early damage a bit, which means slightly less healing. This helps your healers not pull aggro. If that is an issue, you may want to toss a lifebloom or two on the tank - this spreads the healing aggro around so no one healer passes the tank, plus if you let the spell bloom, all that healing aggro gets put on the tank.

Honestly, after I've put up faerie fire and insect swarm, I tend to wait a good two or three seconds before starting my starfire rotation. Your mileage may vary depending on your tank and the exact situation - sometimes I can jump right in, sometimes I have to wait longer. Keep in mind that if the tank has multiple mobs to handle, he won't be generating threat on a single one as fast, since he's probably going to have to toss a couple hits on the other mobs to keep them from going after the healers.

Oh, and one more thing - trees. If there's no place in a fight that you need to save your cooldowns for, toss your trees up ASAP. They hold their own threat list, so if worst comes to worst, they'll just pull aggro and get smacked. Chances are, they'll get to do their thing, and that's another good hunk of damage thrown in at the beginning without having to worry about it adding to your threat.

If you find yourself having issues with aggro, talk with your tank. See if there's something you're doing that is specifically making it hard for him to hold aggro. See if there's something he might be able to do to hold it better. People talk about the tank/healer dynamic all the time. The tank/DPS dynamic should be just as important, especially in fights that come down to a DPS race. And believe me, if you're asking your tank how to make sure he keeps aggro, he's going to love you. The fact that you're asking alone is going to put you above 90% of the DPS out there.

From the Peanut Gallery

So, this comes to us courtesy of Jerome:

"I am wearing my (bad) healing gear at the moment and am specced resto as of a couple days ago. I was a restoration druid up until level 50 and then I tried out balance (the inability to solo much of anything with a fully specced resto really became evident around that time). I levelled to 70 as a balance druid, and did not have much trouble finding groups (and Setthek Halls is a favorite instance of mine due to the fact that we do actually have some CC on the birds!)

"I've returned to the game after a few months away, and I am wanting to raid end game and get the tier armors (eventually tier 6, which is natural for everyone to want seeing as it is the last tier armor available at the moment...plus I absolutely adore how it looks!) I had got in touch with a guild leader on this server and s/he explicitly stated that "Balance sux. What is your +healing?" I told him how low it was, and I got no response until I said "How about I get some better gear and let you know" and he said "ok".

"ANYWAY, My question is this: Should I go resto and be a healbot until I'm able to get tier 6 balance armor (at which point I will go back to balance, naturally)? Or do you think it takes longer for a balance Druid to get each of the tier armors because no one wants one to come?
The reason this bugs me is because a few things have gained my attention. Firstly, a new patch is coming with ZulAman (I have no clue when) and I remember someone mentioning that there will be a BUNCH of Balance gear available in the instance (as well as being outdoors like ZF, so we would actually have some CC). Should I be relying on that? Or would it just be a quicker path to the tier 6 Thunderheart if I restoed for my tiers 4 & 5?

Thanks a million, not sure what to do in game until I get some advice from you guys! (although I *hate* not being able to solo anything..even in my damage gear.. with the resto spec)."

I think you've got a couple options here, Jerome, but let me say this first:

Do you enjoy healing? If you do, and you don't mind seeing new content in that role, then so be it. I love my resto druid friends, and I honestly don't mind taking a walk on the tree side now and then if need be. So if you're comfortable joining this guild as a resto, by all means do so. But keep in mind that if you join a guild with that attitude, 9 times out of 10 they're going to get pissed when you say you want to try Balance for a while. Frankly, chances are that as soon as you get your first piece of T6, if you DON'T turn it in for the resto version and get the balance one instead, you'll get kicked. And where are you then? Geared up for Black Temple as a healer, and looking for a new guild, probably having to repeat some content to get back in. And possibly facing the same issue.

So, your options:

1) Cave in and go Resto. (Self-explanatory)

2) Stick to your guns and go Balance, and try to find a guild that will take you. Try this approach - find a guild that is normally running with 3 healers in Karazhan. Say "Take me in as a Balance druid instead of your third healer. As long as your two main healers are decently geared and competent, I will off heal as needed and still bring DPS to the raid. Give it a run or two, and if you don't like it, that's fine." Make sure you have the gear to back up your claim. Mention Zul'Aman - let them know that it's going to be outdoor and roots and hibernate are supposed to be two of the main forms of crowd control. Plus, they'll have Moonkin gear in there, among other things, and if there are drops specifically itemized for you, that means they don't have to worry about you always bidding on cloth.

3) Try a Dreamstate healing Balance/Resto spec. It basically takes the mana regen of Dreamstate and the bonus healing of Lunar Guidance and adds it to a resto build. Look here for an example that relies on Healing Touch. You must downrank effectively for this build to be efficient, but if you can learn that, it can be great. And since it has a 34 points in Balance, it can still be quite viable for soloing.

4) Do what I did and create your own guild - but that's a whole different can of worms, and probably ended up being a heck of a lot more effort than if I'd done one of the other routes. :) And honestly, it was dicey at points. I'm still surprised sometimes that we've gotten as far as we have.

Okay guys...

My schedule is finally under control. I apologize for the huge amount of downtime, I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't happen again.

At the moment, I'm starting to work on some math comparing Int to MP5/Damage/hit/Crit. This is probably going to take me a few days, as the recursive stuff makes it interesting. In the meantime, if you have any questions in general that won't require a ton of math, let me know!

I live.

Barely. Will be back with more content soon.

*rails against hectic schedules*

On Shinies!

All right, continuing our quest for better gear, let's look at gems.

Now, most people usually start thinking of gems by color first. I want to avoid that. Our first and primary concern should be what stats they give us. Only then should we look at the color of the slots we have available and the socket bonus. If the socket bonus is something we don't particularly care for, it's probably better to ignore it if the requirements would make us sacrifice other stats.

So, first, I'm going to look at meta gems. Then we'll tackle each of our desired characteristics: spell hit, spell damage, int, and spell crit. Obviously, there will be some overlap. Also, I'm pretty much going to ignore green gems - these will all be blue quality or higher. I'm also ignoring the purple gems from Black Temple because, well, if you're in BT you don't need my advice!

Meta Gems:

One of the things we face is that there is no Balance gear with a meta gem slot until Tier 4. So drool over these a bit, but don't plan a build around them. :) There are a few choices here, so let's start with the easily craftable ones:

Insightful Earthstorm Diamond - +12 Intellect, chance on spellcast to restore mana
This is one of my favorites. Specifically, the "chance" is a 2% chance to restore 300 mana. Now obviously, this is going to proc a lot more if you're casting spells more frequently. Math wise, it breaks down as follows:

1 cast every 5 seconds: 6 mana/5
1 cast every 3 seconds: 10 mana/5
1 cast every 2 seconds: 15 mana/5
1 cast every 1.5 seconds: 20 mana/5

Now obviously, you're going to get a lot more mana back with faster spells like wrath, etc. But if you figure that even with your standard starfire/insect swarm cycle you'd be getting somewhere between 10 and 15 mana/5, that's some great aid in mana regen.

Destructive Skyfire Diamond - +14 Spell Crit, 1% Spell Reflect
This isn't bad, but spell crit is the least PvE desirable, overall, of our four key stats. The spell reflect might be occasionally useful, but I doubt it would ever be more than a lucky break.

Mystical Skyfire Diamond - 5% chance on cast that next spell will be cast in half time.
This is a decent gem. Overall, it translates into about a 2.5% dps increase. The only catch is that you have to make sure you don't try to cast Wrath instead of Starfire, or the global cooldown will end up eating any benefit you might've gained. Overall, I'd say this is a better gem for mages, but it's OK for us.

Here are some meta gems that aren't crafted:

Swift Starfire Diamond - +12 Spell Damage and minor run speed increase.
This one comes from your faction base in Terrokar, in exchange for spirit shards from Auchindoun. It's okay - really more of a PvP gem, but it's easy to acquire and is certainly better than nothing in the meta slot.

Imbued Unstable Diamond - +14 Spell Damage and 5% stun resist.
Again, not a bad gem, but a bit more of a PvP oriented one. Plus, this one is apparently a real pain to get - you need a group to complete a large portion of the Assault on Bash'ir quest in Blade's Edge. This from all reports requires pretty much a raid group of people, and good coordination. Nasty.


Anyway, those are the meta gems. Now let's look at the others by category:

Spell Hit:

This is one of our tougher stats to acquire. Gems can make a valuable addition to boost it without compromising on other gear.

Great Dawnstone - +8 Spell Hit
This is your meat & potatoes craftable "give me spell hit!" gem. It's nice, but most of the time you'll get better benefits from multiple multicolor gems.

Veiled Noble Topaz - +4 Spell Hit, +5 Spell Damage
I like this gem. It's craftable and thus readily available, it has both spell hit and spell damage. It is your friend. :)

Shining Fire Opal - +5 Spell Hit, +6 Spell Damage
This drops from bosses in heroic Mechanar. I love this gem. The only thing that makes me cry is that it is unique-equipped. *sigh*

Lambent Chrysoprase - +5 Spell Hit, +2 mana/5
A decent mix here, adds a bit of casting endurance to your spell hit. This drops in heroic Underbog.

Vivid Chrysoprase - +5 Spell Hit, +6 Stamina
Another pretty nice gem, especially because it can be used to add more casting power to blue sockets, which generally are harder to find PvE offensive casting stats for (except arguably mana/5). Stamina, as always, helps with survivability.

Spell Damage:

Veiled Noble Topaz - +4 Spell Hit, +5 Spell Damage
Shining Fire Opal - +5 Spell Hit, +6 Spell Damage
Both these were mentioned above, and are great choices.

Runed Living Ruby - +9 Spell Damage
Your standard pure Spell Damage cut. Not bad.

Runed Ornate Ruby - +12 Spell Damage
This costs about 7000 honor, so you could get this in a good AV weekend if you dedicate the weekend to it. Nice solid boost in one slot, great gem. Too bad it's unique-equipped.

Glowing Nightseye - +5 Spell Damage, +6 Stamina
This is a decent bread-and-butter gem for blue slots. Survivability and damage, lots of fun.

Fluorescent Tanzanite - +6 Spell Damage, +4 Spirit
Spirit doesn't give us as much of a useful mana regen boost as intellect, normally. This isn't bad, but I wouldn't make it my first choice.

Glowing Tanzanite & Infused Amethyst - +6 Spell Damage, +6 Stamina
Both of these are useful as well, giving you a good amount of spell damage in addition to the survivability of the stamina. The Tanzanite is a quest reward for killing Nightbane in Karazhan, the Amethyst is from heroic Black Morass.

Infused Fire Opal - +6 Spell Damage, +4 Intellect
Another beautiful gem. This one comes from heroic Steamvaults.

Mysterious Fire Opal - +6 Spell Damage, +5 Spell penetration
As I discussed before, spell penetration is all but useless in PvE. This would be very nice for PvP. You can get this in heroic Botanica.

Potent Fire Opal - +6 Spell Damage, +4 Spell Crit
Pretty decent gem. Drops in heroic Auchenai Crypts.

Potent Ornate Topaz - +5 Spell Crit, +6 Spell Damage
Another honor-bought gem, this one costs 8,500 honor.

Phew! Okay, ran out of time today, Int & Spell crit gems coming tomorrow!

On supplementals

So, this week's edition will be on the supplemental stuff you need to eke the most out of your gear, namely Enchants and Gems.

Let's start taking a look at enchants first, by category.

ENCHANTS:

Head - Yes, I'm starting with the head enchants that are available. Yes, I know they're not strictly "enchants" in the sense that an enchanter does them. Sue me. :P Anyway, to my mind, there is nothing that comes even close to the Glyph of Power from the Shat'ar vendor. You'll need revered to get it, but that shouldn't be too much. If you're looking for something a bit more hybridy and you like to mix it up with some feral action sometimes, the Glyph of the Outcast from Lower City isn't bad, but hey, this is a boomkin blog!

Legs - Again, not strictly an enchant, but Mystic Spellthread and Runic Spellthread are the obvious choices for a balance druid. I personally waited until I had some purple legs to splurge on the Runic Spellthread, but that's just me. The mats aren't bad at all for either one, except for the nether - that'll probably cost you 100-150g from the crafter, if you're not a tailor yourself.

Chest - Chest enchants suck. Face it. What sucks even more is the +150 mana to chest that was in Beta never made it through to BC. So what are your choices? I'd go with either the +100 mana or the +6 to all stats. I personally choose the latter, as 6 int gives 90 mana anyway, in addition to all the other int bonuses balance druids get, and the +6 to other stats is nice to have.

Gloves - Now we get into some interesting choices. There are three main contenders here: Blasting (+10 Spell Crit), Major Spellpower (+20 Spell Damage), and Spell Strike (+15 Spell Hit). If you're going to PvE, I think that blasting is something of a waste - what balance gear there is provides plenty of spell crit and very little spell hit. If you're low on spell hit, take Spell Strike. If you're doing okay with your spell hit (say, at least 50-60 points plus your Balance of
Power talent), major spellpower might be a better long-term DPS investment. If you've got a bunch of spell hit (100 or more, plus the talent), then spellpower is definately going to be the way to go.

Boots - There's not a lot of caster options for boot enchants. Vitality (+4 health & mana/5 sec) can give you a bit of a boost with mana/5, but I personally just go with Fortitude (+12 Sta). Remember that as you progress, survivability becomes a lot more imporant. It seems that ~8000hp absolute minimum is the magic number, at least through the beginning 25 man raids. To be safe, I'd aim a bit higher. And believe me, nothing beats being able to laugh at Aran as he fires his arcane missiles at you, and even if you don't resist at all, living and healing yourself. :)

Cloak - There are two readily available enchants that will probably catch your eye: Spell Penetration and Major Resistance. Spell Penetration looks great at first...until you do the math. If you are doing PvE, spell penetration is all but useless. Really. There are only a very few mobs that have resistance that can be reduced by spell penetration - a couple in MC, and the Arcane Watchmen in Karazhan. Those are the only ones I've seen pointed out specifically. And it helps with no bosses, which is huge. So it looks like you're stuck with Major Resistance, which is nice, but somewhat expensive. But wait! Come next patch, Subtlety will be commonly available, which I think is an incredible option for us.

Shoulder - Your shoulder enchants should be pretty obvious, depending on whether you're Scryer or Aldor. Inscription of Discipline and the Greater version of it are from the Aldor, Inscription of the Orb and the Greater version from the Scryer. I personally like the Aldor ones a bit more for PvE, but that's just my preference to spell damage rather than crit.

Bracers - There are 3 enchants that I find particularly appropriate for balance druids: Spellpower, Major Intellect, and Restore Mana Prime. I leand toward Spellpower if you've got a set of bracers that are going to last you a while, but Major intellect has the advantage of being really cheap, so if you're stuck with something you think won't last you too long, go for that. Restore Mana Prime gives 6mana/5, which is a decent amount and could help if you're having trouble with mana conservation.

Rings - If you're lucky enough to be an enchanter, you can get ring enchants from various factions. From the Keepers of Time, you can get a Spellpower enchant to add +12 spell damage to your rings. Best of all, you only need Honored with the keepers of time (I don't think you can manage to get Kara attuned without at LEAST getting honored, if not revered). And the mats are fairly cheap - two large prismatics, two greater planars.

Weapon - And finally, the big one. I see three main choices at this point: Major Spellpower, Major Intellect, and Spellsurge. The first two are a tossup - if you find yourself running out of mana a lot, intellect isn't a bad way to go, and 30 intellect also means extra spell damage, crit, and mana regen. If you're doing fine in the mana department, then go with Spellpower. Spellsurge is an interesting enchant - it seems that with just you alone, it means on average about 8-10 mana/5 to your group. The interesting thing is that it stacks if multiple people in your group have it. I've seen an analysis of a healer, a shadow priest, and 3 other casters all in a group, all with Spellsurge. The mana regen was disgusting. Also, I've seen people advocate trying Sunfire, since if you're doing a Starfire spell rotation the arcane damage applies. I personally don't like this - I don't feel the extra 10 spell damage on moonfire and starfire makes up for losing 40 damage on insect swarm, wrath, and most importantly, losing 40 healing as well.

Anyhow, I'm going to sum it up there for now, next post will be coming today or tomorrow with gems!