Monday, February 4, 2008

Learning your Roots: Balance Tree Part 3




Okay I’m feeling a little better today. I’ve got twelve stitches in my back from a biopsy that they did this last week. I’m a bit of pain because it’s in my upper right shoulder and the skin has been pulled taunt to try and make it heal together. However, I owe you guys that are reading this latest Tree so here I am.

Moonfury is a talent that you can only get if you fed Nature’s Grace. It increases the percentage of damage done from Starfire, Moonfire and Wrath spells up to 10% if you feed five points. That’s an amazing little bit of explosive-ness. It’s a talent that you would be remiss in not taking if you’re building a Balance Druid.

Balance of Power also feeds into just blasting away your opponents. It raises the chance to hit your opponent and reduces the chance of an opponent hitting you! Come on, how awesome is that? Not only do you get a higher chance of hitting him and avoiding a smacking from either a mob in PVE or a player in PVP. Yes I understand that the chance is slim only 4% maximum but still, we all know that those percentages add up.

Usually I go left to right but in this instance I’m going to start in the middle of the next three because by now you should be 40 or 41. For one point, you get Moonkin form. In Moonkin form you become pretty much unstoppable if you play your toon correctly. Usually you would get Dire Bear Form if you were Feral or Tree Form if you’re a Resto. For Balance it’s Moonkin. If you’ve ever had to deal with an Owlbeast, that’s what you’re becoming. You get a 400% increase in Armor, which I don’t have to tell you is ridiculous. This means that a mob can’t just come up and three swat you, they REALLY have to work at getting you down. Already, this is enough for any caster to just jump for joy, but the form has additional added benefits. Your attack power is increased by 150% and you get Moonkin Aura. Moonkin Aura gives a higher chance to get a critical strike, by 5%. Also added to this, if you do run out of mana and go Melee there’s a chance on hit that you will regain the amount of mana that you have in attack power. So there are SEVERAL reasons to take this and run with it.

Let me point out something just so you know how much damage Moonkin Form can do. When I’m in BGs, which I find myself in at least once a day, I usually have three or four attackers on me at once because they know that amount of hurt I can do to them if I set my mind to it. I’ve been one of the top ten damage makers in AB and AV consistently, so I can put out some serious hurt in this form. The ONLY drawback in it is that I can’t HEAL in Moonkin form, you’ll be bounced out to caster form when you do that, which makes you an easier target for those gunning for ya, so be warned.

Dreamstate is a caster must. You feed it three points and it will regenerate mana equal to 10% of your intellect every five seconds, casting or non. So this means that you already have mana regenerating from your gear and Spirit and then you have this on top of that. If done right, you could very well never go without mana. Of course, as a Moonkin I don’t think that not running out of mana is an option.

Improved Faerie Fire is the next talent and while it’s great for when you’re in a group, it’s a talent that you will not find yourself using much when you are in solo mode. I didn’t put the three into this talent and honestly haven’t ever thought “Man I should’ve!” However this is a choice thing since some players love to just be in a BG all the time, having Improved Faerie Fire would be great for those players you’re in with to take advantage of. Personally, I skipped this but like I said, it’s up to the player as far as importance goes.

Wrath of Cenarius is a five point talent that adds even more damage to your Starfire and Wrath. Max it out and you get an extra 20% dmg on Starfire and an extra 10% on Wrath. If you’ve been reading about this tree you know it’s all about quick damage, fasting casting and great critical strikes. You can’t pass up this five pointer and shell out the type of damage that other Moonkins are doing.

Force of Nature is a choice, again. This is the pinnacle of the tree. It gives you minions to summon and assist you for thirty seconds. The minions in question are Treants. I would have loved to have owlbeasts, personally but Treants work just as well. Two drawbacks are that it takes up 12% of your Base Mana pool, so it’s not like there’s a set amount, say 600 Mana for every time you call on them but instead the price of calling them rises as the amount of mana at your disposal rises. The other downfall is that there is a three minute cool down on the summoning. The up side is that the three Treants do damage to any target you send them on. So if you have three mobs on you, the Treants can easily deal with one while you work on the other two or root one and finish another. It’s a great tactic really. Like I said though, to each his own.

That concludes the Balance Tree. Next we will tackle the Feral Tree and show you the tree that every druid I know feels will get you leveled the fastest to 70.

Bosque is 64.

1 comment:

J~ said...

Wow - what a great post all around. I've got a 54 Feral Druid on Alleria, and I have really been thinking about going Moonkin. My two buddies that I run around with are Feral and Resto, and they are DYING to have an arena team of 3 druids, with me as balance. This is all fantastic info, thanks so much!

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