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.

MotW

"We aren't using the Zeed word!"

This is a classic by all means of the word. When this came out in 2004 many people that are hardcore Zombie fans were put off but now years later they see the brillance in this bit of film.

An excellent movie to just loop in the background as it has enough laughs and enough action to keep you motivated.

I promised the last part of the Balance Tree but I've got some kind of stomach bug and not up to writing. Sorry to everyone who's been reading that latest examination.

Learning your Roots: Balance Druid Part 2

Bosque is about three bubbles away from 63, I’ve split time between doing PVP and leveling, hence the slower climb to 70. Still enjoying it though and I managed to hit 375 Herbalism and sitting pretty at 315 Alchemy. I’ve already got some of the high level plans for Alchemy that should garner me some money, hopefully enough for swift flight form.

Alright let’s get down to it. When last we spoke, I began to talk to you about the Balance Tree, today I aim to continue that conversation.

Brambles is the first talent that you’re going to see in the third row. This talent will affect the damage done to a target by both Thorns and Entangling Roots. Thorns is a self cast spell that gives out damage to anyone attacking you. I have Thorns on me all the time, its second nature to have the damage ticking off of a mob. While Nature’s Grasp is a totally wasted talent, this is one that serves two good purposes and shouldn’t go without some love.

Insect Swarm is a spell exclusive to Balance and one that is actually an instant cast spell and incredibly useful. While Farie Fire is great when you’re a melee beast or when you’re working with a group, Insect Swarm is the best when you’re soloing. Two reasons, first it does give a small chance that the target may miss when aiming for you but more importantly, it does some damage over time. So in theory, when you get this talent, you could do Entangling Roots, Moonfire, Insect Swarm and then Wrath. This would give the first spells time to work on the health of the mob while you spam Wrath.

Nature’s Reach is a gimme, you HAVE to have this talent. It increases the reach of your Balance spells. So any casting spell will basically have a longer reach. This is great for those range pulls. It gives you more time to take down a mob before it even reaches your front door. A great way to make sure that your caster loving self has enough time to bring that mob down to a manageable size before they make you caster worms.

Vengeance is the talent that you have access to if you put points into Focused Starlight (which you should have done). It’s a five point talent that increases the critical strike damage bonus of your three bread and butter spells as a caster. You drop the five points and it’s a 100% increase, which is absurdly wonderful for the Moonkin in all of us. I’ll tell you why it’s all sorts of goodness further down the tree.

Celestial Focus has two uses. The first it gives up to a 15% chance to stun a target when hit by Starfire. I know that’s not much but it’s the second thing that it does that you want to put points in here for; you can have up to a 70% chance to resist spell interruption when casting Wrath. So if you’re running around and a mob is hitting you, you can still get Wrath off and cause serious hurt to the target causing you grief.

Lunar Guidance is great. For three points you can increase your spell damage and healing by 25% of your total Intellect. As a caster you’re going to be looking for any type of gear that’s going to have intellect on it to begin with. So this is a nice bonus to reward you for making sure you have enough intellect to get a high mana pool.

Nature’s Grace. This is a one pointer that’s going to be feeding off your critical strikes as a caster. Your point will gain you an ability that will produce with each critical strike you achieve. It reduces the cast time of ANY spell by .5 seconds. That, that’s a GREAT little trick. As a Moonkin you’re going to have an aura that gives a 5% chance to crit. Your gear will be set up to give you a better chance to crit as well. Case in point Bosque currently sits just over 16% crit chance. I’ve already gotten 2k crit hits, I’m only level 62.

Moonglow is a mana reducer. It reduces the cost of just about all your spells by up to 9%. As a Balance Druid you’re ALREADY going to have issues making sure your mana pool doesn’t go dry after every fight, getting this will help making sure the pool stays somewhat steady.

::WHEW!:: Okay, I think that’s it for today. I wanted to try and crunch it all down to just two entries but you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for me to finish this bad boy out. I will say this though, aside from maybe one or two talents on this tree, I feel that all the talents on here are not only viable but essential for a Moonkin to be good at what he/she does.

So, there you go.