A lot of people have asked about STARFIRE. I tested starfire and had poor results - the last Sarfire upgrade was at level 34 but we had a wrath upgrade at 38 at level 40 wrath spam resulted in faster kills and better time. Hope that makes sense.
What's the mana to damage efficiency difference of starfire to wrath. Kinda think its weird that u said having 2 sets as resto is fine but with balance it's tedious. I'm gonna play feral just wanted my say.
It has been a year since the video, what I noticed is to go as balance with improved thorns and using moonfire before every pull before going cat as a boomkin helps speed up the kill because thorn hits almost as hard as cat white hits with improved thorns. Now being boomie is better at pvp due to shapeshifting cost as feral
@@Whoputthatonthestove Rank 3 Starfire (lvl 34): 1.29dmg/mana spent on avg Rank 6 Wrath (lvl 38): 1.26dmg/mana spent on avg Therefore, Starfire is 2.38% more efficient than wrath, which of course is not nearly enough to compete with feral if it was done in the test here.
@@Edgelord007-hn3fxWe're comparing killing speed. So all druid specs would get travel form, what matters is within combat bonuses. Moving mob to mob won't be relevant with many places.
As someone who likes to play resto/balance I look at it this way: I play healer when in groups but I'm a caster (and hate melee) at heart. I like to just have one set of gear (being my healer set) unless I encounter something along the road that is better for leveling. If I'm only using balance skills, I'd be using auto attack when I OOM anyway so I might aswell shift when almost OOM to use kitty instead of AAing while getting mana back. To me, I'm playing the class as a whole without only focusing on one aspect (moonkin or feral) of the class. So from a lore standpoint, I can justify starting moonkin and swapping feral when needed for the regen.
Erika Emileah Healer has feral buffing talents aswell. I always thought balance would be the most fun if you play like a feral but all more hybrid talents. Playing caster is trash more 10% more damage and clarity procs will help.
I like leveling balance with natural shapeshifter to cast down mobs and finish them in bear form, and I rarely drink. The slower bear form leads to big maul crits and I restore mana while in bear. Though u didn’t give that sample your information was very valuable and I appreciate you taking the time to make this video. Long live HC classic wow!
That was a good comparison video ! It also confirms that some people are clueless about 'unconventional' stuff, even on specialized discord and such. I am sure I am not the only one who heard "never level in resto, it's by far the worst", while at the same time discussing leveling balance. It's good you insisted on "play how you like". It's important, especially for druid for whom the discrepancy between specs isn't that big of a deal.
Idk how many people have actually tried this but, I leveled a balance druid 1-52. Specifically to see what leveling was like. Balance damage is HARDLY any better than feral casting spells. The real damage output in balance lies in spll crit which there's nearly none of in leveling gear. Balance is really only awesome in group settings. Basically your rotation is either spam Starfire or wrath and keep moonfire up till about 40% then melee it down and hope omen of clarity procs often and then bandage often after fights to conserve Mana. Yeah you can also blow your Mana and cat form while mana Regen but if you're gonna cat AT ALL you might as well be feral tbh I started this project trying to redeem moonkins but it's anything but convenient. It is fun I'll say and a bit of a challenge so if you're looking for something fresh in classic try balance druid for sure. Just be aware of gear phases cuz moonkins suck till like ZG. But yeah if you're a veteran leveler go doomkin
I'm surprised you made it to level 52. I struggle to make it to 20 on a druid, I couldn't imagine going to 52 or even 60. No spirit tap, no life tap. Mages aren't much better, but at least they get stacks of water to keep a consistent, cheap option to nuke/drink/nuke/drink or mix things up with AoE farming.
A talent to regain some mana would've made balance really cool i reckon, and a bit more fun. Maybe a talent like the holy paladins illumination that gives 100% mana back, but on offensive spell crits would've been cool!
Hey man thanks fofr this video, i was trying balance myself out , got to 25 and 26 respectively in HC and died twice, but not because the spec was preforming terribly, just made some bad choices and got punihsed for them. Personally i tried to rush Clarity my first time thinking it would some how magically make hybrid work better, but i got the same results as u, 2/3 sitting in cat, spending a lot of mana to heal back up, get like one mob down with wrath and moonfire, back to cat, repeat. How ever, second play through, i skipped Clarity, really useless 6 talents to be honest, I was a considerable amount of time faster, i could check my streams to see, but i think like 6-7 hours faster , and i also knew the quest zones better and had better routes ( my first time alliance ) Anyways cool video and test :) i think balance is not as bad as people think it is lol, its definitely a sub par mage, but it has its own swag for being sub par and functionable.
I chatted for a while with someone that leveled as a balance druid and he used this rotation: Starfire->2 or 3x Wrath->Moonfire->Auto Attack. 3x Wrath if your target is a higher lvl or is a monster with increased hp like bears for example. If you finish off your kill with melee attacks you have a chance to proc Omen of Clarity + your mana regen starts after 5sec of not casting so you can regen a fair amount of mana before you start with your next kill. Its even better if your Omen of Clarity procs cause you get a free Starfire cast and even if it didnt proc you get 1 or 2 mana ticks off because Starfire has a 3sec cast time.
Great info, the video clearly demonstrates that feral is the best leveling spec in terms of kill speed. It doesn't the further bonus of feral by getting Feline Swiftness. Not only will your kill speed be ~25% faster in feral, you'll also be running 30% faster after level 20. At 30 you get cheetah so things might seem to even up, but at 32 you get track humanoids. Going through STV in cat form with track humanoids up is substantially safer than running around in cheetah slightly faster. The only way I could rationalize putting any real amount of points into balance while leveling would be if you're a night elf and you want 5/5 Nature's Grasp for pvp so you continue onward to grab Omen of Clarity, but you wouldn't put points in that until after Feline Swiftness and Feral Charge.
Way back when I leveled my druid, I leveled as Resto/Balance. I mainly healed in dungeons with guildies and I picked up some balance talents to boost my damage and mana efficiency in between heals... I loved it, good healer and a nice dps boost to the party... :) Ended up being something like 26 Resto/25 Balance or something... :)
the way i am doing is lvling mostly with balance talents, first get reflection and insect swarm, then dump everything else to get moonglow, getting omen of clarity as soon as possible first use starfire moonfire faerie fire and insects on a mob, turn into cat, kill it, turn back into a cow, cast a heal and aggro another mob the same way only moments i need to stop for mana is when i need rebuffs, and i solved that by getting sagefish while leveling fishing, so it takes a while before i go oom when i end up aggroing more than two mobs i turn back caster, use nature graps to root at least one, and when there is only two attacking i use stomp and immidiatly use regrouth, usually it is enough i don't think balance was meant to be only a caster build while leveling, but a build for the true hybrid that uses all branches together, with omen i get a lot free cat attacks and healing for when the battle is over, sparing some 400 to 500 mana or some precious 3 to 7 seconds in combat as a cat my set is mostly strengh, agility and spirit, so it is a fight without end, i don't even leveled wrath since it is a spell that would need to be casted twice to hit more than starfire, a spell i only use to aggro targets i am absolute shit on pvp tho, mostly just kite, dot, more kiting and just being a very annoying thing to kill in general, not that i care, as a druid on grobbulus i am very much a pacifist druid that helps everyone in need, unless they attack me
How did this work out for you while leveling? I just hit 30 and I am thinking about re-speccing to this exact spec but I want to know if it will work without making leveling TOO tedious
@@scottgeraci5751 it is great, i am just coming back from a hiatus (run away from the beginning of the pvp patch) i am lvl 50 and rarely go out of mana, and have to play smart to avoid too many mobs and watch out for for ally that can gank you the amount of keybinds i have is somewhat absurd sometimes, because you need to turn into cat, back to cow, back to cat, use elixirs change weapons and so on i absolutely love it, now that i am lvl 50 i barely even need sagefish to recover my mana anymore, have high spirit enough to keep going without much pause
I'm liking what im reading here, my big gripe with playing a druid is that I'm not fond of playing feral, and I actually like to heal so that's what i want to ideally jump into dungeons as. I somewhat toyed with the thought of using Omen of Clarity so this only encourages me.
@@zennim125 I know it's an old ass post, but just in case a miracle happens and you still read this and you didn't abandon wow. I'm kind of skeptical about going strength and agility as main stats, isn't that just a feral build but with balance talents and spell casting? Wouldn't focusing on intellect/spirit give better results seeing as you're casting so many spells there and just using the cat to accelerate the death of the enemy? Maybe i'm just getting the wrong idea, i'm new to wow.
well done man. i did the same test with Shaman and questing as full resto was great for the mana sustain. i don't mind killing a bit slower as long as i don't have to drink.
I love the video but no way a balance build was properly tested. Starfire spam is the most efficient with chance of stun too if do believe feral is the optimal way and I levelled to 40 as resto so definitely would say it's comparable to other specs in fact insect swarm is suck a cheap cast with moonfire then drop into cat and the dps is very very similar to feral on single mpbs I dpsd dungeons as resto finished 2nd twice in SM and RFD...so this vid is awesome explore your class and love druids
when i first started playing i leveled resto in kitty form haha. I went resto because my mage cousin kept running out of mana. Back when innervate was a talent.
But what if you took improved thorns and spread moonfires and healed through the damage and killed multiple mobs at the same time. Seeing comments claiming people are “clueless if they think balance can be good”, But nobody is willing to think out of the box and push the boundaries of your class, and so they resign themself to cookie cutter builds with cookie cutter play styles. My balance pulls multiple mobs at once and creates value and damage/mana efficiency with thorns and maintaining moon fire and autoing. Currently I can kill multiple mobs at once and never drink so....
Level 38 as balance and enjoying, I make sure to heal when doing dungeons. PvP so far has been great and I win most fights when fighting the filthy alliance
I understand that cat is the way to go, and the video is just showing the difference between specs, but how is not using innervate or starfire fair? You would be pressing that button every time it's off CD when leveling as balance. It's not a consumable or a fringe talent, when leveling, avoiding drinking is its primary purpose. Also, mage water is not such a big problem. Even if you tip, and no mage ever got mad if I didn't, especially since you want higher-lvl mages who'll have more money, it will be cheaper than buying. There are disadvantages, like having to resort to buying from vendors if you got too little water, or losing it when you log off, but "you'll lose too much gold and will have to buy all the water" is not really accurate.
I am talking about water at the start of the game while everyone is leveling, wouldn't be as much of an issue down the road. I tested starfire it resulted in slower times, as well as using roots and I also tested a resto build using moonfire and insect swarm. Innervate in a 10 minute test saves you 30 seconds, which equals 1 mob kill. Hope that answers your questions :)
I imagine that the front loading strategy that all casters use would be best for balance as well. Starfire then a couple of wraths, insect and moonfire dots then use your staff until it dies. I understand in the test you are going for speed, but front loading damage and regening while meleeing and then using innervate off cooldown if you go oom might save you some drinking time.
Just FYI, cant use insect swarm in moonkin form (changed in TBC though). and also yes he should be front loading. from this video he knows NOTHING on how to play as moonkin, horrible rotation....
As of now... WOTLK prepatch leveling a balance druid is pretty good. Also being able to collect 1 set for healing and dps for dungeons is nice. Soon as hurricane and barkskin is trained you can tag mobs with a insect swarm and a.o.e. them down. It's killer. Also learning the mounts earlier help too. People should not sleep on balance druids for leveling in wotlk era.
I think a balance Druid is designed to be played mixing it up. Casting and in animal forms. There’s a talent that reduces the transformation mana cost and one to increase physical damage to encourage you to get a free cast proc as well. So it’s in the name “balance” and also to be able to heal since you’ll have int gear already. It’s a well rounded spec. Fun. But it’s all a matter of play style and preference. It’s your toon ;)
Not sure if you tried this with your hybrid leveling run. But have you tried using full feral gear in a balance spec and leveling with a full feral playstyle (I.e. no casting besides heals). If it was even more comparable to feral it would be an option for those who want the ability to world PvP in a balance spec.
it should be close to the resto/feral gear attempt. but with natural weapons and omen it would be a bit better! It would be you next best option to full feral I think.
as far as talents go restoration is much better for caster dps early on than balance is, 5%crit chance and 10% more moonfire dmg doesnt really affect you without late game. where as the early healing talents from restoration are all very good and you can also heal/dps dungeons with spell dmg gear with restoration talents.
No real surprises here, one would be the higher than expected effectiveness of resto with feral gear as you also pointed out. Someone else here also pointed it out, but the 30% run speed in cat form is also a real benefit when questing and also to a smaller degree when grinding mobs in large areas. I am really looking forward to the dungeon leveling video, I have been curious about that ever since I watched your 30-40 race in SM. I am quite interested in learning if it still has potential when the participants are not as pimped out in terms of gear, consumables and professions as you guys were when doing the runs.
If you want to be most mana efficient with moonkin you should just spam starfire, moonfire and wrath are both pretty mana inefficient. Though obviously even then, feral is better, especially for leveling, because balance needs spellpower and especially spell crit, which there is very little of in the leveling gear.
I would add two things - feral is likely better for someone who wants to have a gathering profession as you’ll have less downtime between collecting nodes or skins. Also, feral being better is partially dependent on the Armor value of mobs you’re killing. If you’re only killing high Armor targets, you may want to switch to kill enemies like the critters in this video
Your videos inspired me to comeback into Classic as a druid! I would love to see a guide from you, where you are covering useful and useless spells as a druid (feral, like you did in your leveling guide) Love your videos!!!!
Wrath is garbage. Use Starfire to pull then root and rank 1 Starfire which wont break the root and costs nothing. Rank 1 Starfire gets full benefit from spell dam gear and is incredibly mana efficient
The problem with this is energy, when you switch into cat you have no energy unless you have furor which even then its only 40. If you move to a new mob with 100 energy and you can dump that into combo points you end up actually doing more front loaded damage and you have more combo points faster. If you switched into cat with 100 energy pulling with a few spells would be the way to go!
I actually am currently doing this and had the time to test things out properly when farming different beasts from 34 to 40 in order to get a mount and self made wolfshead at 40. I was running feral talents with furor but with 50/50 agi and spirit gear and weapon swapping. If you keep your Moonfire up to date, it will basically do around the same damage as a 3-4 combo point Rip. The routine is as follows: begin in Cat with all resources (almost) full and try to end the fight near the second mob. Heal with regrowth and cast Moonfire if you are near or use first Moonfire if you are far, hop into Cat as soon as you can and start from the beginning. It is really efficient and I only had to stop when I run out of bag space. They key trick is to sometime cast a downranked Regrowth as you get closer to 40. If you still find your self starting to go OOM you have to use a healing touch for the greater value per mana then. If you have to do this all the time then you will start to go dangerously low with HP after fights and it may be hard to recover from accidental 1v2s. Be sure to start the cat melee as soon as possible after the Regrowth so that you will not loose auto attack dps. Some over healing is ok but too much will cause you to spend more mana than what you gain. When you get closer to 40 the Moonfire starts to make a lesser impact but then at 40 you get the Wolfshead so you can basically cast the Moonfire for 20 energy (60 + first tick is 80) so it is almost free damage. Past lvl 40 I cannot say as I just hit the 40 today with a Kodo and the self made Helm :) If I remember correctly, Rejuvenation is a bit more mana efficient than Regrowth but the problem is that the HoT of Rejuvenation either lasts for too short time or over heals too much.
Man, I wish there was a warrior in the beta who took this as seriously as you do for druid. I couldn't even find one that earnestly attempted to hamstring kite and reliably bothered to apply rend pre 30. Unless you count the one guy who demonstrated hamstring kiting in a 90 second clip during a stress test.
Feral is just 100000000000000000000% better, you don't use mana for pulls, you regen while fighting, so you can pop out toss a heal, go back into cat kill about 3-4 mobs before u have to heal again. It's way more efficient and does more damage.
I've seen a video where the moonkin is pulling 4 to 5 mobs at a time popping hurricane drinking once after that then repeating, I would be interested to know what the AOE leveling is like vs cat form. Also what is it like switching from caster to cat form? E.g wait for mana to build up swap over to moonkin? I'm a cat player for speed leveling but interested in the possibilities
I don’t even have hurricane yet. I just maintain moon fire dot on all of the targets and use improved thorns to dps multiple mobs at the same time. And then I just heal through the damage. I don’t use wrath unless pulling with no mobs on me. People are way too close-minded about pushing the limits or play style of each class. As soon as you have thorns and moon fire you can aoe as a Druid (so level 6 or something), but everyone is too much of a copycat cookie cutter to figure it out.
Starfire(34) = 253 top dmg with 180 mana Starfire(42) = 348 top dmg at 230 mana. Wrath(38) = 167 nature top dmg at 125 mana Moonfire(40) = 137 arcane dmg + 212 arcane damage over time for 235 mana U hit moonfire + wrath = 355 mana consumption for 304 dmg output with a dot that lasts 12 seconds. In short starfire is always better at any moment in time, also nature resistance is real in the overworld on mobs which reduces your dmg drastically. Another thing with wrath is that it is a faster cast skill = less effected by spellpower. U tested it wrong. What u do is starfire > starfire > low rank starfire if its almost dead and loot on to the next. U cast nothing else then starfire.
I love your videos! I'm playing Druid if God ever gets me into the right space. I haven't played in 10 years or so. But to me, leveling is so rich and fun. If Balance appeals to your casting more instead of using forms, well at least you can! I can't imagine losing to a warrior once I got good at playing. One question. Can you just get people to join your clan and then quit? That way you get a giant extra bank account for your bank alt.
you didnt staff bash enough esp for having omen a nice 2hand mace or staff and use the 5 sec rule and thorns to kill mobs vs wasting mana and drinking lol
Chance on hit effects on weapons do not work as you are not technically "using" your weapon while in cat/bear form. Weapon effects that you manually click to use, like the Manual Crowd Pummeler that Jussi mentioned do work however. Essentially, the only thing weapons do for us is give the stats and potentially some click to use effect, weapon damage, speed and chance to hit effects make no difference whatsoever. For trinkets, I believe you can use them while in form and their chance on hit effects work as normally.
@@vikidivik5427 everything works except weapon on hit effects aka crusader or other "on hit" enchants. agility enchants work as it's just a stat boost but crusader and fiery don't as it's a chance on hit and you don't hit with the weapon you hit with your claws.
When are people going to realize that druid specs arnt full specs, they’re a mix. A “balance” Druid in vanilla would use cat and bear form, druids are utility
great video , thinking of lvling with a friends hunter , originaly was thinking going feral , but then his pet is faster at pulls now thinking to be a poket healer , kinda boring but i think it will b faster cose i wont spend to much mana for heals and dots and we can just grind/ quests our way to 60
Thoughts on a leveling build where you're rushing imp wrath into omen of clarity, then dumping the rest into feral? Premise would be pull and cast a couple of wraths then finishing in cat. (feral gear)
Any idea how much mana you had in Feral and Oomkin forms? Now my brain is doing back of the envelop math. ;) Also, any idea the average HP of the mobs?
So I think you have some things wrong with balance... 1) you clearly have Omen of clarity but don't melee at all. Either use it or don't but having those 6 talents while hardly using it is a waste 2) Starfire is the most Mana effecient in most scenarios I would at least pull + 1 Starfire then wrath when the mob is hitting you. Another option is using roots rank 1 and all star fire. 3) grinding isn't really the experience most of the time right, there's travel time and random other down time. 4) why not use innervate, it's clearly a huge deal for boomkins... I'd also be curious if in the hybrid you went bear instead of cat to Regen while taking less but killing slower. Anyway I think feral will always be faster but I think they're closer than this represents. Not trying to be a dick, I really enjoy the content I just think balance is super misunderstood at max, and leveling has basically no theorycrafting around it.
Alright one last thing, I'd be curious to see gear and talents because at this point we're just taking your word. Is it mostly int Stam, int spirit? It also looks like there was a sample size of one run but I could be wrong there.
Had Omen of Clarity for killing in cat form, which is why I showed that technique but for raw dps I wasn't missing any points, I could have picked up reduced pushback on roots and points into imp starfire but since I didn't use those for the test I just opted out of it. Using starfire/roots wouldn't have a different outcome, I tested it and it was much slower - which is why I didn't include it :( Grinding in Classic is a huge part of the leveling experience, even when questing you are essentially grinding so that's how I chose to do the test, Ideally you would run a 10 level span of questing on both a feral and then a balance druid but that is a huge time investment. Innervate would have saved me one drinking session, so roughly 30 seconds saved every 6 minutes, or about 1 additional kill for my 10 minute test. If I went bear instead of cat it would just result in slower leveling pace overall. I'll never take constructive criticism as someone being a dick!! Thanks so much for the feedback, I think balance is a very unique talent tree and I plan to play with it a lot at 60.
@ebbnflow what about AOE grinding, something you cant do as kitty but can in boomer and tank, regr+juv keep up thorns moonfire multi targets and tabb through them, bear same with preheal pull 3-4 mobs demo roar and maul spam
Druids become good aoe grinders with Hurricane at level 40, Moonfire+IS on a few mobs, Rejuvenation, Barkskin+Hurricane and finish mobs off with bear form, Moonkin form is not needed for it
seems unfair to me how you didnt use roots and innervate like thats how you level as balance basically. i dont care what anyone say i leveled my classic on balance completely alone from till lvl 60 in around 28 days and i had no problems at all. use innervate on CD and make sure to drink whenever is possible. also use roots A LOT they are your best friend. for me anyone saying how bad balance is its because they tried it for barely a couple minutes and thats it. i enjoyed every minute while leveling and i never felt slower than others only real issue i must say is that you really need to have a mage friend to give you waters on higher levels when morning glory starts to be less than the actual ammount of mana you have.
Sorry, I kind of skipped quickly through your last video, I assume this is on a PServer, right? One of the big issues on the Classic Druid discord is that the beta showed that Feral was weaker than it was on PServers by a decent amount at lower levels. I believe they used some of your beta videos to calculate the data and got someone from Beta to post it in the bug forums. I'm not sure how that will impact your Feral numbers if it turns out Feral is only 80% as effective as it is on private servers during the leveling process. Also, and I'm not defending balance here, but wouldn't Wrath -> Moonfire -> Wrath -> smack with 2H be better rather then all that casting with pushback your getting when the mob is on you? You'd save 125 or 250 mana a pull (based on Wrath rank 7's 125 mana per cast). It'd slow down your TTK, but might give you more kills per 10 minute window. Edit: Forgot Moonglow, so 125 mana per Wrath becomes ~114
Yeah druid values are slightly different, I would have liked to get the footage on the beta but as it shut down I used an emulation server. In all honesty I don't feel a difference playing on the beta vs. the emulation server but as you said there is some difference. It won't change the outcome of the video, just maybe change the kill count by 1-2 mobs.
@@Ebbnflow Ebbnflow so I've been testing on a lights hope repack and I'm able to get an average of 22/23 kills in the same area with balance using innervate ofc. Played around with a few specs but they all stay around there. I don't know how much of a difference it is but if it's 1-2 kills when the difference is only 5 is a big deal. Then we're talking 3 - 4 difference. Basically 12 - 16% difference which is certainly nothing to scoff at. If you take an average of say 5 days played (pulled that number out of no where) til 60, it's about 14 hours - 19 hours.
What professions do you recommend while leveling as a feral druid? What professions do you recommend for a pvp hybrid boomkin? edit: Nvm I found your video about professions
Ebn im asking here, coz u play druid. Why do we need to gear at lvl 60 in raids? Gear from raids is better than pvp gear ? I started to play wow from Lich king and was always gearing into pvp set from BGs and arenas. Which gear is better for world pvp ?
Ebbn did a video on this topic here ( watch?v=o7KXRMv0iZw ) You won't have access to honor pvp gear until late into phase 2. Even if you grind 5-10 hours a day, you won't hit Rank 9-13 for a month. This gives you about 4-5 months to get raid gear. Even if you're only motivated to PvP; someone who has been raiding since week 3-4 after launch will have more pieces of gear to mix and match with. You could start Phase 2 with a nearly full raid gear set if you start raiding hardcore early and have a massive item level advantage over those who don't or are using "pre-bis" set ups. This will definitely ease your progression into a honor set if you want to change later in Phase 2. Raid gear in general has much higher item-level than PvP gear even though it is tuned towards healers. In Cat form (as demonstrated in the video) a full str/agi R13 set does marginally higher DPS than a full Tier 2 set in PVP. However, the Tier 2 set has 4k more mana, more HP, much higher sustain, more armor etc; just better stats over-all. My plan is to PvP with as close to a full Tier 1 set as I can get as soon as Phase 2 launches as I'll be hardcore raiding early. I'll also prioritize armor and mana as I believe Druid is a very strong attrition class with tons of answers. I'll be looking into running 2 different sets of 2pc 1 tier dungeon items (wildheart + shadowcraft) for the +400 armor. I'm sure Ebbn could give a much much better explanation and advice though.
you dont play balance efficiently. but i do agree its not the best grind spec but just play better and you may have a very slight difference, pve balance is just a less efficient healer; resto; you gotta be good at the game and you will have way more fun.. aside being a 2nd tier in no matter what you do aside from warsong gulch. but pvp youls just have fun, which imo was the reason i play
not using innervate while balance and calling it "fair" - lmao. thats just gimping yourself for no reason other than you dont want balance to have any chance, what so ever.
Was thinking the same thing. Innervate only has a 3 minute cooldown, so in his 10 minute timer he could have used Innervate 3 separate times. Smh to the max
When leveling as feral what 2 gear stats do you want as main stats ? I heard someone say int/sta so you can heal and rank in one gear set + world pvp without going on, but I guess low dmg then as well since no agi or str ?
i have a druid i leveled to 52 as HOTW and i loved it; you want to prioritize Stam/Int but its pretty easy to do, Stam comes with Str/Agi gear, and with some +int +stam stuff you will be fine, you get really hard to kill and are very flexible (even if you dont have a ton of int on your gear, HOTW goes a long way, and so does having a bit of spirit on your gear for regenerating mana)
Hello your balance rotation is off, 1. You said the dps is fine or possibly better than feral. Watching the video, its your mana issue, if you agree with me. Aka you run out and have to drink. A better rotation is to 1a. Open with starfire (starfire is a long cast and isn't good with the npc cat beating on you, so starfire is only good at ranged.) You are having mana issues and aka starfire is more mana efficient than pure wrath spam. 1b. Open with 1 wrath, and the cast finishes and its traveling mid air, cast your 2nd spell as Starfire. Starfire is a long cast and will already by 1 second to 2 seconds minimum done as the opening wrath casts and is travelling.
I do find Cat dps tedious sometimes. I have a tendancy to spam my buttons with cat, but energy is always low. So, it find it a bit exhausting compaired to other classes.
WTF why didnt you show like Furor shapeshifting build ? at lvl 40 you have wolfshead helm... -_- 11/17/5 is the way dude, way more better for leveling, pvp, tanking and healing in general than just goin overrated feral, the 10% damage from balance is op, 60 energy regain is op, omen of clarity is op and you can tank spamming swipes ... what more do u need :D feral isnt doin any damage in the endgame anyway
Hiding from consistent enemy faction griefing to a point where you feel like the Russians are rolling through Berlin and Poland at the end of WW2, will make you damned thankful for improved stealth talents in feral.
I've learned from kargoz that balence is great for duo lvling with a warlock it's high speed tier 1or2 so just get a friend then ya lvl just as fast as feral if people are desperate going balence :) it really pares well with warlock trust me ya won't hold back you will speed up real quick
Feral is hands down the best, no other spec is faster even when group leveling. That being said if you want to level as balance for fun with a lock seems like a fun duo and great in pvp.
For anyone who sees my comment it's been proven by kargoz with actual practice that it works fast enough it's no paly/warlock but it pushes pretty fast times and I've heard how good it is indirectly by him feral warlock is bad that's why balence works well I'm not doing it myself but it's good
It revolves around dotting moonfire and slapping mobs on the VW with staff to fish OOC procs and use the procs as a regrowth on lock so he can tap more aggressively, plus gives you time to regen mana, if I'm not mistaken and you go full laser chicken dont you gain mana when u hit with wep shifted?!?!? If that's the case you can regen quicker and keep better uptime on dots plus more heals on lock maybe a juv on VW to keep up aggression with both lock and pet...
But that isn't anything to do with balance really, more of aiding another player with a class that has heals. You could make this argument for just about anything. I suppose it is a fair point in the sense that "if you really, really want to do the balance thing, find a buddy to level with as that can cover its weaknesses".
A lot of people have asked about STARFIRE. I tested starfire and had poor results - the last Sarfire upgrade was at level 34 but we had a wrath upgrade at 38 at level 40 wrath spam resulted in faster kills and better time. Hope that makes sense.
what about downranking abillities?
What's the mana to damage efficiency difference of starfire to wrath. Kinda think its weird that u said having 2 sets as resto is fine but with balance it's tedious. I'm gonna play feral just wanted my say.
Starfire is 10x more efficient then Wrath
It has been a year since the video, what I noticed is to go as balance with improved thorns and using moonfire before every pull before going cat as a boomkin helps speed up the kill because thorn hits almost as hard as cat white hits with improved thorns. Now being boomie is better at pvp due to shapeshifting cost as feral
@@Whoputthatonthestove
Rank 3 Starfire (lvl 34): 1.29dmg/mana spent on avg
Rank 6 Wrath (lvl 38): 1.26dmg/mana spent on avg
Therefore, Starfire is 2.38% more efficient than wrath, which of course is not nearly enough to compete with feral if it was done in the test here.
Im just going to level in aquatic form........THE WHOLE WAY!!!
Be Aquaman in wow ^^
Yo if u do this u will be a legend
please do it.
@@jmoney7984 I think you actually come out of the form when you attack
@@Jake-cy7to Nope :)
Cat also has 30% movement speed from level 21. Balance would be moving normal speed until travel form.
Not relevant when you find a dense cluster of mobs though.
@@HallyVeewell it is insanely releveant because you travel around the world anyways and even in bvig mob clusters the speed adds up
@@Edgelord007-hn3fxWe're comparing killing speed. So all druid specs would get travel form, what matters is within combat bonuses. Moving mob to mob won't be relevant with many places.
As someone who likes to play resto/balance I look at it this way:
I play healer when in groups but I'm a caster (and hate melee) at heart.
I like to just have one set of gear (being my healer set) unless I encounter something along the road that is better for leveling.
If I'm only using balance skills, I'd be using auto attack when I OOM anyway so I might aswell shift when almost OOM to use kitty instead of AAing while getting mana back.
To me, I'm playing the class as a whole without only focusing on one aspect (moonkin or feral) of the class. So from a lore standpoint, I can justify starting moonkin and swapping feral when needed for the regen.
Balance talents are just bad compared to resto whilst levelling. Resto is more balanced than balance.
Ironic?
The first half of the Balance tree is just Feral's 2nd tree
Erika Emileah Healer has feral buffing talents aswell.
I always thought balance would be the most fun if you play like a feral but all more hybrid talents.
Playing caster is trash more 10% more damage and clarity procs will help.
I like leveling balance with natural shapeshifter to cast down mobs and finish them in bear form, and I rarely drink. The slower bear form leads to big maul crits and I restore mana while in bear. Though u didn’t give that sample your information was very valuable and I appreciate you taking the time to make this video. Long live HC classic wow!
That was a good comparison video !
It also confirms that some people are clueless about 'unconventional' stuff, even on specialized discord and such. I am sure I am not the only one who heard "never level in resto, it's by far the worst", while at the same time discussing leveling balance.
It's good you insisted on "play how you like". It's important, especially for druid for whom the discrepancy between specs isn't that big of a deal.
Idk how many people have actually tried this but, I leveled a balance druid 1-52. Specifically to see what leveling was like. Balance damage is HARDLY any better than feral casting spells. The real damage output in balance lies in spll crit which there's nearly none of in leveling gear. Balance is really only awesome in group settings.
Basically your rotation is either spam Starfire or wrath and keep moonfire up till about 40% then melee it down and hope omen of clarity procs often and then bandage often after fights to conserve Mana. Yeah you can also blow your Mana and cat form while mana Regen but if you're gonna cat AT ALL you might as well be feral tbh
I started this project trying to redeem moonkins but it's anything but convenient. It is fun I'll say and a bit of a challenge so if you're looking for something fresh in classic try balance druid for sure. Just be aware of gear phases cuz moonkins suck till like ZG. But yeah if you're a veteran leveler go doomkin
I'm surprised you made it to level 52. I struggle to make it to 20 on a druid, I couldn't imagine going to 52 or even 60.
No spirit tap, no life tap. Mages aren't much better, but at least they get stacks of water to keep a consistent, cheap option to nuke/drink/nuke/drink or mix things up with AoE farming.
A talent to regain some mana would've made balance really cool i reckon, and a bit more fun. Maybe a talent like the holy paladins illumination that gives 100% mana back, but on offensive spell crits would've been cool!
Hey man thanks fofr this video, i was trying balance myself out , got to 25 and 26 respectively in HC and died twice, but not because the spec was preforming terribly, just made some bad choices and got punihsed for them.
Personally i tried to rush Clarity my first time thinking it would some how magically make hybrid work better, but i got the same results as u, 2/3 sitting in cat, spending a lot of mana to heal back up, get like one mob down with wrath and moonfire, back to cat, repeat.
How ever, second play through, i skipped Clarity, really useless 6 talents to be honest, I was a considerable amount of time faster, i could check my streams to see, but i think like 6-7 hours faster , and i also knew the quest zones better and had better routes ( my first time alliance )
Anyways cool video and test :) i think balance is not as bad as people think it is lol, its definitely a sub par mage, but it has its own swag for being sub par and functionable.
I chatted for a while with someone that leveled as a balance druid and he used this rotation: Starfire->2 or 3x Wrath->Moonfire->Auto Attack. 3x Wrath if your target is a higher lvl or is a monster with increased hp like bears for example.
If you finish off your kill with melee attacks you have a chance to proc Omen of Clarity + your mana regen starts after 5sec of not casting so you can regen a fair amount of mana before you start with your next kill. Its even better if your Omen of Clarity procs cause you get a free Starfire cast and even if it didnt proc you get 1 or 2 mana ticks off because Starfire has a 3sec cast time.
Great info, the video clearly demonstrates that feral is the best leveling spec in terms of kill speed. It doesn't the further bonus of feral by getting Feline Swiftness. Not only will your kill speed be ~25% faster in feral, you'll also be running 30% faster after level 20. At 30 you get cheetah so things might seem to even up, but at 32 you get track humanoids. Going through STV in cat form with track humanoids up is substantially safer than running around in cheetah slightly faster.
The only way I could rationalize putting any real amount of points into balance while leveling would be if you're a night elf and you want 5/5 Nature's Grasp for pvp so you continue onward to grab Omen of Clarity, but you wouldn't put points in that until after Feline Swiftness and Feral Charge.
Yeah, I agree!
No innervate? No Roots? No Starfire pulls? That's most of Balance leveling.....
wrath starfire dots melee
Way back when I leveled my druid, I leveled as Resto/Balance. I mainly healed in dungeons with guildies and I picked up some balance talents to boost my damage and mana efficiency in between heals... I loved it, good healer and a nice dps boost to the party... :) Ended up being something like 26 Resto/25 Balance or something... :)
30/0/21 balance/resto build is better.
the way i am doing is lvling mostly with balance talents, first get reflection and insect swarm, then dump everything else to get moonglow, getting omen of clarity as soon as possible
first use starfire moonfire faerie fire and insects on a mob, turn into cat, kill it, turn back into a cow, cast a heal and aggro another mob the same way
only moments i need to stop for mana is when i need rebuffs, and i solved that by getting sagefish while leveling fishing, so it takes a while before i go oom
when i end up aggroing more than two mobs i turn back caster, use nature graps to root at least one, and when there is only two attacking i use stomp and immidiatly use regrouth, usually it is enough
i don't think balance was meant to be only a caster build while leveling, but a build for the true hybrid that uses all branches together, with omen i get a lot free cat attacks and healing for when the battle is over, sparing some 400 to 500 mana or some precious 3 to 7 seconds in combat as a cat
my set is mostly strengh, agility and spirit, so it is a fight without end, i don't even leveled wrath since it is a spell that would need to be casted twice to hit more than starfire, a spell i only use to aggro targets
i am absolute shit on pvp tho, mostly just kite, dot, more kiting and just being a very annoying thing to kill in general, not that i care, as a druid on grobbulus i am very much a pacifist druid that helps everyone in need, unless they attack me
How did this work out for you while leveling? I just hit 30 and I am thinking about re-speccing to this exact spec but I want to know if it will work without making leveling TOO tedious
@@scottgeraci5751 it is great, i am just coming back from a hiatus (run away from the beginning of the pvp patch)
i am lvl 50 and rarely go out of mana, and have to play smart to avoid too many mobs and watch out for for ally that can gank you
the amount of keybinds i have is somewhat absurd sometimes, because you need to turn into cat, back to cow, back to cat, use elixirs change weapons and so on
i absolutely love it, now that i am lvl 50 i barely even need sagefish to recover my mana anymore, have high spirit enough to keep going without much pause
I'm liking what im reading here, my big gripe with playing a druid is that I'm not fond of playing feral, and I actually like to heal so that's what i want to ideally jump into dungeons as. I somewhat toyed with the thought of using Omen of Clarity so this only encourages me.
@@zennim125 I know it's an old ass post, but just in case a miracle happens and you still read this and you didn't abandon wow. I'm kind of skeptical about going strength and agility as main stats, isn't that just a feral build but with balance talents and spell casting? Wouldn't focusing on intellect/spirit give better results seeing as you're casting so many spells there and just using the cat to accelerate the death of the enemy? Maybe i'm just getting the wrong idea, i'm new to wow.
well done man. i did the same test with Shaman and questing as full resto was great for the mana sustain. i don't mind killing a bit slower as long as i don't have to drink.
I love the video but no way a balance build was properly tested. Starfire spam is the most efficient with chance of stun too if do believe feral is the optimal way and I levelled to 40 as resto so definitely would say it's comparable to other specs in fact insect swarm is suck a cheap cast with moonfire then drop into cat and the dps is very very similar to feral on single mpbs I dpsd dungeons as resto finished 2nd twice in SM and RFD...so this vid is awesome explore your class and love druids
when i first started playing i leveled resto in kitty form haha. I went resto because my mage cousin kept running out of mana. Back when innervate was a talent.
But what if you took improved thorns and spread moonfires and healed through the damage and killed multiple mobs at the same time. Seeing comments claiming people are “clueless if they think balance can be good”, But nobody is willing to think out of the box and push the boundaries of your class, and so they resign themself to cookie cutter builds with cookie cutter play styles. My balance pulls multiple mobs at once and creates value and damage/mana efficiency with thorns and maintaining moon fire and autoing. Currently I can kill multiple mobs at once and never drink so....
I just leveled as resto/balance pvp build in wow classic era Firemaw. Most fun leveling a char in a looooooong time! Fucking loved it.
Awesome videos. Almost makes me want to roll druid for Classic, but already picked rogue for my guild.
Level 38 as balance and enjoying, I make sure to heal when doing dungeons. PvP so far has been great and I win most fights when fighting the filthy alliance
Horde is filthy outside while the alliance is filthy inside
Awesome data man. Def puts some ease at the leveling of resto a little bit.
You could argue for a balance/resto talentbuild with omen of clarity when duo leveling with a warlock.
I was wondering what synergies a druid/warlock would have while leveling since I'm actually going to be doing that myself
What is the synergy here?
Thanks for taking the time to test these things, great video. Classic is almost here too !
Classic hypeee!! :)
I understand that cat is the way to go, and the video is just showing the difference between specs, but how is not using innervate or starfire fair? You would be pressing that button every time it's off CD when leveling as balance. It's not a consumable or a fringe talent, when leveling, avoiding drinking is its primary purpose.
Also, mage water is not such a big problem. Even if you tip, and no mage ever got mad if I didn't, especially since you want higher-lvl mages who'll have more money, it will be cheaper than buying. There are disadvantages, like having to resort to buying from vendors if you got too little water, or losing it when you log off, but "you'll lose too much gold and will have to buy all the water" is not really accurate.
I am talking about water at the start of the game while everyone is leveling, wouldn't be as much of an issue down the road. I tested starfire it resulted in slower times, as well as using roots and I also tested a resto build using moonfire and insect swarm. Innervate in a 10 minute test saves you 30 seconds, which equals 1 mob kill. Hope that answers your questions :)
RUclips deleted half of my comment before I could send it, so I hope more generalized "yeah, thanks" will do.
I imagine that the front loading strategy that all casters use would be best for balance as well. Starfire then a couple of wraths, insect and moonfire dots then use your staff until it dies.
I understand in the test you are going for speed, but front loading damage and regening while meleeing and then using innervate off cooldown if you go oom might save you some drinking time.
Just FYI, cant use insect swarm in moonkin form (changed in TBC though). and also yes he should be front loading. from this video he knows NOTHING on how to play as moonkin, horrible rotation....
27 mobs in 10 minutes?
*chuckles in mage
Yeah and then no drinking pause after that and faster running to new mobs. Just going and going and going.
agreed, as feral you have no downtime besides the odd pop out heal and grind again while your mana regen kicks in
As of now... WOTLK prepatch leveling a balance druid is pretty good. Also being able to collect 1 set for healing and dps for dungeons is nice. Soon as hurricane and barkskin is trained you can tag mobs with a insect swarm and a.o.e. them down. It's killer. Also learning the mounts earlier help too. People should not sleep on balance druids for leveling in wotlk era.
Thanks for another amazing video EB, I look forward to every one.
How come you aren't wearing any of the dreamweave pieces as the balance druid? They're pretty standard pick-ups for level 40 casters.
Balance needs a good fast weapon for melee for the moonkin free cast proc. you also cast starfire for efficiency
Bro you should make the video instead
I think a balance Druid is designed to be played mixing it up. Casting and in animal forms. There’s a talent that reduces the transformation mana cost and one to increase physical damage to encourage you to get a free cast proc as well. So it’s in the name “balance” and also to be able to heal since you’ll have int gear already. It’s a well rounded spec. Fun. But it’s all a matter of play style and preference. It’s your toon ;)
Not sure if you tried this with your hybrid leveling run. But have you tried using full feral gear in a balance spec and leveling with a full feral playstyle (I.e. no casting besides heals).
If it was even more comparable to feral it would be an option for those who want the ability to world PvP in a balance spec.
it should be close to the resto/feral gear attempt. but with natural weapons and omen it would be a bit better! It would be you next best option to full feral I think.
Power shifting in resto/cat? It's really good.
as far as talents go restoration is much better for caster dps early on than balance is, 5%crit chance and 10% more moonfire dmg doesnt really affect you without late game.
where as the early healing talents from restoration are all very good and you can also heal/dps dungeons with spell dmg gear with restoration talents.
*late game gear
Why would you spec Omen of Clarity when you spam wrath? it cant proc from spells.
No real surprises here, one would be the higher than expected effectiveness of resto with feral gear as you also pointed out. Someone else here also pointed it out, but the 30% run speed in cat form is also a real benefit when questing and also to a smaller degree when grinding mobs in large areas. I am really looking forward to the dungeon leveling video, I have been curious about that ever since I watched your 30-40 race in SM. I am quite interested in learning if it still has potential when the participants are not as pimped out in terms of gear, consumables and professions as you guys were when doing the runs.
Yeah the dungeon leveling video is going to be a surprise to many people I think!
If you want to be most mana efficient with moonkin you should just spam starfire, moonfire and wrath are both pretty mana inefficient. Though obviously even then, feral is better, especially for leveling, because balance needs spellpower and especially spell crit, which there is very little of in the leveling gear.
I would add two things - feral is likely better for someone who wants to have a gathering profession as you’ll have less downtime between collecting nodes or skins. Also, feral being better is partially dependent on the Armor value of mobs you’re killing. If you’re only killing high Armor targets, you may want to switch to kill enemies like the critters in this video
Your videos inspired me to comeback into Classic as a druid! I would love to see a guide from you, where you are covering useful and useless spells as a druid (feral, like you did in your leveling guide) Love your videos!!!!
Wrath is garbage. Use Starfire to pull then root and rank 1 Starfire which wont break the root and costs nothing. Rank 1 Starfire gets full benefit from spell dam gear and is incredibly mana efficient
You will have literally 0 spell damage for the majority of your leveling.
3 years old and we are here again reviewing for classic era re rolls 😂
Hey Ebn great video as always. Curious if you tried an even more hybrid playstyle, pulling with a wrath & Moonfire from ranged then switching to cat?
The problem with this is energy, when you switch into cat you have no energy unless you have furor which even then its only 40. If you move to a new mob with 100 energy and you can dump that into combo points you end up actually doing more front loaded damage and you have more combo points faster. If you switched into cat with 100 energy pulling with a few spells would be the way to go!
@@Ebbnflow ok thanks. Perhaps after 40 with Wolfshead helm & Furor that playstyle makes more sense?
@@cameronlevitt1895 could work! Never tried it personally
I actually am currently doing this and had the time to test things out properly when farming different beasts from 34 to 40 in order to get a mount and self made wolfshead at 40.
I was running feral talents with furor but with 50/50 agi and spirit gear and weapon swapping.
If you keep your Moonfire up to date, it will basically do around the same damage as a 3-4 combo point Rip.
The routine is as follows: begin in Cat with all resources (almost) full and try to end the fight near the second mob. Heal with regrowth and cast Moonfire if you are near or use first Moonfire if you are far, hop into Cat as soon as you can and start from the beginning.
It is really efficient and I only had to stop when I run out of bag space. They key trick is to sometime cast a downranked Regrowth as you get closer to 40. If you still find your self starting to go OOM you have to use a healing touch for the greater value per mana then. If you have to do this all the time then you will start to go dangerously low with HP after fights and it may be hard to recover from accidental 1v2s.
Be sure to start the cat melee as soon as possible after the Regrowth so that you will not loose auto attack dps. Some over healing is ok but too much will cause you to spend more mana than what you gain.
When you get closer to 40 the Moonfire starts to make a lesser impact but then at 40 you get the Wolfshead so you can basically cast the Moonfire for 20 energy (60 + first tick is 80) so it is almost free damage. Past lvl 40 I cannot say as I just hit the 40 today with a Kodo and the self made Helm :)
If I remember correctly, Rejuvenation is a bit more mana efficient than Regrowth but the problem is that the HoT of Rejuvenation either lasts for too short time or over heals too much.
Man, I wish there was a warrior in the beta who took this as seriously as you do for druid. I couldn't even find one that earnestly attempted to hamstring kite and reliably bothered to apply rend pre 30. Unless you count the one guy who demonstrated hamstring kiting in a 90 second clip during a stress test.
Feral is just 100000000000000000000% better, you don't use mana for pulls, you regen while fighting, so you can pop out toss a heal, go back into cat kill about 3-4 mobs before u have to heal again. It's way more efficient and does more damage.
I've seen a video where the moonkin is pulling 4 to 5 mobs at a time popping hurricane drinking once after that then repeating, I would be interested to know what the AOE leveling is like vs cat form. Also what is it like switching from caster to cat form? E.g wait for mana to build up swap over to moonkin? I'm a cat player for speed leveling but interested in the possibilities
Hurricane is a 1 minute cooldown so it's still shit.
I don’t even have hurricane yet. I just maintain moon fire dot on all of the targets and use improved thorns to dps multiple mobs at the same time. And then I just heal through the damage. I don’t use wrath unless pulling with no mobs on me. People are way too close-minded about pushing the limits or play style of each class. As soon as you have thorns and moon fire you can aoe as a Druid (so level 6 or something), but everyone is too much of a copycat cookie cutter to figure it out.
Starfire(34) = 253 top dmg with 180 mana
Starfire(42) = 348 top dmg at 230 mana.
Wrath(38) = 167 nature top dmg at 125 mana
Moonfire(40) = 137 arcane dmg + 212 arcane damage over time for 235 mana
U hit moonfire + wrath = 355 mana consumption for 304 dmg output with a dot that lasts 12 seconds.
In short starfire is always better at any moment in time, also nature resistance is real in the overworld on mobs which reduces your dmg drastically.
Another thing with wrath is that it is a faster cast skill = less effected by spellpower.
U tested it wrong.
What u do is starfire > starfire > low rank starfire if its almost dead and loot on to the next. U cast nothing else then starfire.
Playing feral with resto gear to both lvl quickly and find dungeons easily
druids/shamans/paladins usually save some int gear in their banks and swap it before going to a dungeon.
I got an important question i cant find an answer to. can druids use skinning when shape shifted?
yes
Then u should stop using this thing called “internet”
I love your videos! I'm playing Druid if God ever gets me into the right space. I haven't played in 10 years or so. But to me, leveling is so rich and fun. If Balance appeals to your casting more instead of using forms, well at least you can! I can't imagine losing to a warrior once I got good at playing.
One question. Can you just get people to join your clan and then quit? That way you get a giant extra bank account for your bank alt.
you didnt staff bash enough esp for having omen a nice 2hand mace or staff and use the 5 sec rule and thorns to kill mobs vs wasting mana and drinking lol
i'm interested in whether druids in classic can have weapon procs and whether trinkets can trigger.
IIRC Manual Crowd Pummeler with the attack speed proc was real good for feral even in end game, but I'm not sure, I might have been dreaming
Chance on hit effects on weapons do not work as you are not technically "using" your weapon while in cat/bear form. Weapon effects that you manually click to use, like the Manual Crowd Pummeler that Jussi mentioned do work however. Essentially, the only thing weapons do for us is give the stats and potentially some click to use effect, weapon damage, speed and chance to hit effects make no difference whatsoever. For trinkets, I believe you can use them while in form and their chance on hit effects work as normally.
@@Rottnikken what about enchants like crusader, trinkets und food procs?
@@vikidivik5427 everything works except weapon on hit effects aka crusader or other "on hit" enchants. agility enchants work as it's just a stat boost but crusader and fiery don't as it's a chance on hit and you don't hit with the weapon you hit with your claws.
@@vikidivik5427 trinket on hits work too
Fun>speed though. Guys play whatever you think is most fun. Don't care about the rest, it's a game, isn't it supposed to be fun?
Yeah, but some people find fun in speed leveling!
I'm going balance just because I can afford the water from main and I want to heal dungeons easier.
Could you do a video on pre-20 feral vs pre-20 Natural Weapons for grinding speed?
Natural weapon?
When are people going to realize that druid specs arnt full specs, they’re a mix. A “balance” Druid in vanilla would use cat and bear form, druids are utility
great video , thinking of lvling with a friends hunter , originaly was thinking going feral , but then his pet is faster at pulls now thinking to be a poket healer , kinda boring but i think it will b faster cose i wont spend to much mana for heals and dots and we can just grind/ quests our way to 60
Thoughts on a leveling build where you're rushing imp wrath into omen of clarity, then dumping the rest into feral? Premise would be pull and cast a couple of wraths then finishing in cat. (feral gear)
Any idea how much mana you had in Feral and Oomkin forms? Now my brain is doing back of the envelop math. ;)
Also, any idea the average HP of the mobs?
So I think you have some things wrong with balance...
1) you clearly have Omen of clarity but don't melee at all. Either use it or don't but having those 6 talents while hardly using it is a waste
2) Starfire is the most Mana effecient in most scenarios I would at least pull + 1 Starfire then wrath when the mob is hitting you. Another option is using roots rank 1 and all star fire.
3) grinding isn't really the experience most of the time right, there's travel time and random other down time.
4) why not use innervate, it's clearly a huge deal for boomkins...
I'd also be curious if in the hybrid you went bear instead of cat to Regen while taking less but killing slower.
Anyway I think feral will always be faster but I think they're closer than this represents.
Not trying to be a dick, I really enjoy the content I just think balance is super misunderstood at max, and leveling has basically no theorycrafting around it.
Alright one last thing, I'd be curious to see gear and talents because at this point we're just taking your word. Is it mostly int Stam, int spirit?
It also looks like there was a sample size of one run but I could be wrong there.
10 minutes of grinding would be two innervates if you start after the first pull moving onto the second
Had Omen of Clarity for killing in cat form, which is why I showed that technique but for raw dps I wasn't missing any points, I could have picked up reduced pushback on roots and points into imp starfire but since I didn't use those for the test I just opted out of it. Using starfire/roots wouldn't have a different outcome, I tested it and it was much slower - which is why I didn't include it :( Grinding in Classic is a huge part of the leveling experience, even when questing you are essentially grinding so that's how I chose to do the test, Ideally you would run a 10 level span of questing on both a feral and then a balance druid but that is a huge time investment. Innervate would have saved me one drinking session, so roughly 30 seconds saved every 6 minutes, or about 1 additional kill for my 10 minute test. If I went bear instead of cat it would just result in slower leveling pace overall. I'll never take constructive criticism as someone being a dick!! Thanks so much for the feedback, I think balance is a very unique talent tree and I plan to play with it a lot at 60.
Why i have seen some guys in feral form with ARMOR? I mean a cat with armor? How they do it? Or is not for wow Classic?
@ebbnflow what about AOE grinding, something you cant do as kitty but can in boomer and tank, regr+juv keep up thorns moonfire multi targets and tabb through them, bear same with preheal pull 3-4 mobs demo roar and maul spam
He talks about this in the cat vs bear video. The kill speed is much faster with cat and you end up taking more damage w/bear
Druids become good aoe grinders with Hurricane at level 40, Moonfire+IS on a few mobs, Rejuvenation, Barkskin+Hurricane and finish mobs off with bear form, Moonkin form is not needed for it
seems unfair to me how you didnt use roots and innervate like thats how you level as balance basically. i dont care what anyone say i leveled my classic on balance completely alone from till lvl 60 in around 28 days and i had no problems at all. use innervate on CD and make sure to drink whenever is possible. also use roots A LOT they are your best friend. for me anyone saying how bad balance is its because they tried it for barely a couple minutes and thats it. i enjoyed every minute while leveling and i never felt slower than others only real issue i must say is that you really need to have a mage friend to give you waters on higher levels when morning glory starts to be less than the actual ammount of mana you have.
Sorry, I kind of skipped quickly through your last video, I assume this is on a PServer, right? One of the big issues on the Classic Druid discord is that the beta showed that Feral was weaker than it was on PServers by a decent amount at lower levels. I believe they used some of your beta videos to calculate the data and got someone from Beta to post it in the bug forums. I'm not sure how that will impact your Feral numbers if it turns out Feral is only 80% as effective as it is on private servers during the leveling process.
Also, and I'm not defending balance here, but wouldn't Wrath -> Moonfire -> Wrath -> smack with 2H be better rather then all that casting with pushback your getting when the mob is on you? You'd save 125 or 250 mana a pull (based on Wrath rank 7's 125 mana per cast). It'd slow down your TTK, but might give you more kills per 10 minute window.
Edit: Forgot Moonglow, so 125 mana per Wrath becomes ~114
Yeah druid values are slightly different, I would have liked to get the footage on the beta but as it shut down I used an emulation server. In all honesty I don't feel a difference playing on the beta vs. the emulation server but as you said there is some difference. It won't change the outcome of the video, just maybe change the kill count by 1-2 mobs.
@@Ebbnflow Ebbnflow so I've been testing on a lights hope repack and I'm able to get an average of 22/23 kills in the same area with balance using innervate ofc. Played around with a few specs but they all stay around there.
I don't know how much of a difference it is but if it's 1-2 kills when the difference is only 5 is a big deal. Then we're talking 3 - 4 difference.
Basically 12 - 16% difference which is certainly nothing to scoff at.
If you take an average of say 5 days played (pulled that number out of no where) til 60, it's about 14 hours - 19 hours.
>classic moonkin
>spam wrath
you tested this on mobs your level, wb farming green mobs which is the strat for like warriors etc?
ebb any tips for leveling as hybrid pvp feral/resto build? the talent order pick maybe?! =D
I would say just level as feral, but if you really want to level I would do HoTW/NS build but put all points into feral first.
@@Ebbnflow ohh ebb tks for answer
What professions do you recommend while leveling as a feral druid?
What professions do you recommend for a pvp hybrid boomkin?
edit: Nvm I found your video about professions
Ebn im asking here, coz u play druid. Why do we need to gear at lvl 60 in raids? Gear from raids is better than pvp gear ? I started to play wow from Lich king and was always gearing into pvp set from BGs and arenas. Which gear is better for world pvp ?
Ebbn did a video on this topic here ( watch?v=o7KXRMv0iZw )
You won't have access to honor pvp gear until late into phase 2. Even if you grind 5-10 hours a day, you won't hit Rank 9-13 for a month. This gives you about 4-5 months to get raid gear. Even if you're only motivated to PvP; someone who has been raiding since week 3-4 after launch will have more pieces of gear to mix and match with. You could start Phase 2 with a nearly full raid gear set if you start raiding hardcore early and have a massive item level advantage over those who don't or are using "pre-bis" set ups. This will definitely ease your progression into a honor set if you want to change later in Phase 2.
Raid gear in general has much higher item-level than PvP gear even though it is tuned towards healers. In Cat form (as demonstrated in the video) a full str/agi R13 set does marginally higher DPS than a full Tier 2 set in PVP. However, the Tier 2 set has 4k more mana, more HP, much higher sustain, more armor etc; just better stats over-all.
My plan is to PvP with as close to a full Tier 1 set as I can get as soon as Phase 2 launches as I'll be hardcore raiding early. I'll also prioritize armor and mana as I believe Druid is a very strong attrition class with tons of answers. I'll be looking into running 2 different sets of 2pc 1 tier dungeon items (wildheart + shadowcraft) for the +400 armor.
I'm sure Ebbn could give a much much better explanation and advice though.
Where's the wrath into starfire + moonfire pull
Have you tried wearing int gear, but in feral talents with cat form playstyle in case someone wants to play balance/resto end game?
I have healed all the dungeons in full feral spec with a intellect Gear set.
you dont play balance efficiently. but i do agree its not the best grind spec but just play better and you may have a very slight difference, pve balance is just a less efficient healer; resto; you gotta be good at the game and you will have way more fun.. aside being a 2nd tier in no matter what you do aside from warsong gulch. but pvp youls just have fun, which imo was the reason i play
Hope your dogs doin better, cheers bro
Thanks!
I always have to drink as cat spec.. maybe im doing something wrong (drinking from healing myself)
need to have some points in spirit, regen that mana while in cat form
an improved mark of the wild is already a great boost
Hey Ebbnflow, is the t0,5 set good for balance druid or feral or healer? Can we farm it later on and have a lot of fun with it? : )
I think everyone knows the outcome going into this.... or they should
probably true!
not using innervate while balance and calling it "fair" - lmao. thats just gimping yourself for no reason other than you dont want balance to have any chance, what so ever.
Was thinking the same thing. Innervate only has a 3 minute cooldown, so in his 10 minute timer he could have used Innervate 3 separate times. Smh to the max
@@ModMaceSF6 Innervate has a 6 min cd
When leveling as feral what 2 gear stats do you want as main stats ? I heard someone say int/sta so you can heal and rank in one gear set + world pvp without going on, but I guess low dmg then as well since no agi or str ?
i have a druid i leveled to 52 as HOTW and i loved it; you want to prioritize Stam/Int but its pretty easy to do, Stam comes with Str/Agi gear, and with some +int +stam stuff you will be fine, you get really hard to kill and are very flexible (even if you dont have a ton of int on your gear, HOTW goes a long way, and so does having a bit of spirit on your gear for regenerating mana)
If you are the type of person that wants to level as balance (like me) consider playing on a private server with another expansion.
These are all tested on pservers with the increased feral damage though right?
Reggie Ledeux what are the p server increases? I played vanilla but I never played p servers
@@tetrisgoatferal forms on pservers have a base damage increase equivalent to 10 damage per second compared to classic
Hello your balance rotation is off, 1. You said the dps is fine or possibly better than feral. Watching the video, its your mana issue, if you agree with me. Aka you run out and have to drink. A better rotation is to 1a. Open with starfire (starfire is a long cast and isn't good with the npc cat beating on you, so starfire is only good at ranged.) You are having mana issues and aka starfire is more mana efficient than pure wrath spam. 1b. Open with 1 wrath, and the cast finishes and its traveling mid air, cast your 2nd spell as Starfire. Starfire is a long cast and will already by 1 second to 2 seconds minimum done as the opening wrath casts and is travelling.
Did you decide if you're going male or female Tauren, yet?
If I remember right in his previous video he said female. Best hitboxes.
Yeah I think its going to be female for the slightly better hitboxes. It's a hard choice though!
He's going Nelf ;)
I do find Cat dps tedious sometimes. I have a tendancy to spam my buttons with cat, but energy is always low. So, it find it a bit exhausting compaired to other classes.
Yeah, some people make macros for leveling to make things easier.
@@Ebbnflow rreally? like what?
WTF why didnt you show like Furor shapeshifting build ? at lvl 40 you have wolfshead helm... -_- 11/17/5 is the way dude, way more better for leveling, pvp, tanking and healing in general than just goin overrated feral, the 10% damage from balance is op, 60 energy regain is op, omen of clarity is op and you can tank spamming swipes ... what more do u need :D feral isnt doin any damage in the endgame anyway
Hiding from consistent enemy faction griefing to a point where you feel like the Russians are rolling through Berlin and Poland at the end of WW2, will make you damned thankful for improved stealth talents in feral.
Praise the lord for pve servers then.
thanks
I've learned from kargoz that balence is great for duo lvling with a warlock it's high speed tier 1or2 so just get a friend then ya lvl just as fast as feral if people are desperate going balence :) it really pares well with warlock trust me ya won't hold back you will speed up real quick
Feral is hands down the best, no other spec is faster even when group leveling. That being said if you want to level as balance for fun with a lock seems like a fun duo and great in pvp.
For anyone who sees my comment it's been proven by kargoz with actual practice that it works fast enough it's no paly/warlock but it pushes pretty fast times and I've heard how good it is indirectly by him feral warlock is bad that's why balence works well I'm not doing it myself but it's good
It revolves around dotting moonfire and slapping mobs on the VW with staff to fish OOC procs and use the procs as a regrowth on lock so he can tap more aggressively, plus gives you time to regen mana, if I'm not mistaken and you go full laser chicken dont you gain mana when u hit with wep shifted?!?!? If that's the case you can regen quicker and keep better uptime on dots plus more heals on lock maybe a juv on VW to keep up aggression with both lock and pet...
But that isn't anything to do with balance really, more of aiding another player with a class that has heals. You could make this argument for just about anything.
I suppose it is a fair point in the sense that "if you really, really want to do the balance thing, find a buddy to level with as that can cover its weaknesses".
@@joshuaboatwright2876 no moonkins didn't get mana on hit untill The burning crusade expansion.
i hate this " rogue style " for feral ...
Me too
wrath is not efficient at all. starfire is the efficient spell.
balance need spell power gear.
Hmmm..?
1$t
shaman
UMM... UMM... dear God, love the content man, but work on this Haha.
Your surposed to melee and Mana regen smh
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
ehhhh
use starfire lul
wrath is so bad lmao
I tested both, wrath method at 40 resulted in better time
Dude no offense but druid is just not your class, try again lmao