Hoooooleeeeeeeeee poop. Did I mention that I liked my new spec? If not: I like my new spec. So, we played some 2s last night on warrior+druid and went 10-0 for the first time ever... it was nice. We even beat some teams that we have lost to numerous times in the past: disc+sl/sl, druid+sl/sl, druid+warrior, paladin+rogue (though we don't usually lost to this one anyway, but the rogue got the jump on me, so it was a surprising win), rogue+sl/sl (which we also beat on the spriest+warlock team), and spriest+rogue.

What's different this week? Well, I tried out the new spec 25/0/36, and it lends some surprising front-end dps that seemed to knock every team we faced back onto their heels a bit. For instance, our very first matchup was against warrior+druid mirror. Well, not exactly mirrored, my guess was that the druid was some variation of 8+/11/36+, and I guessed right. They saw exactly what we saw, a warrior with MotW, and thought "here we go..."

Little did they know our tactics. So, right off the bat the warriors charge each other. At that very moment, I popped out of cat form and started lobbing wraths at the warrior. I must have gotten off 5-6 before the druid decided I should be cycloned. At this point, their warrior was down to ~30% whereas my warrior was at about 75-80%. Whilst I was cycloned, their druid use his ns-ht to keep their warrior up, and as soon as cyclone ended, I threw lifebloomX3 and rejuv up on my warrior, cycloned their druid, and started casting starfire on their warrior. Long story short, I did ~25% of the damage in the match, and we ghosted their warrior during the first cyclone of the druid.

I think that this added utility damage is what my spec brings to the table. I give up feral charge (an admittedly good spell interrupt and root ability that costs 580 mana >_< and has a minimum range) for faster wrath, Nature's Grace (which is awesome, and I'll get to it in a moment), and 116 damage and healing from Lunar Guidance. So, I'll give it a try for a while and see if our luck continues, I may need feral charge eventually (we didn't face a single paladin+warrior team last night, and paladins almost always mean JoJ, which almost always necessitates a feral charge escape from his warrior).

Another thing about our team: it's very susceptible to double dps teams. Shadow priest + warlock, for instance, is one of our banes, but we did very well in dropping that team like a bad habit last night. We saw that the lock wasn't Soul Link, which means that we could kill it quickly. So, my warrior rides in, charges, and starts laying the beat down, and I pop and start pummeling him with wraths. We get the lock to about 50% before my warrior needed healing, so I get a 3x lifebloom and rejuv on him, then I get silenced... fine, I'll just take the pet far away and root him, done, came back and refreshed the 3x lifebloom, swiftmended, rejuved, feared. Trinket, lock dead, easy mode.

We also faced rogue+shadow priest, which is a really strong team if played well. These guys needed to work on their timing a bit. So the rogue opens with garrote on my warrior, which is suppose is a good plan, but now my warrior can fight back instead of dealing with cheapshot. So, I pop again and start the wrath spam with the spriest equidistant from the fray and me...

spriest-------------warrior+rogue-------------me

We get the rogue to about 50% before he realized I wasn't healing the warrior (now at 75%), so he blinds me and my warrior switches targets over to the spriest, I trinket and by this point, the priest had mindblasted and sw:d the warrior to ~50%, but as a good druid, I had Abolish Poison up the whole time, so after I trinket out of blind, I bust ns-ht on him to ~85-90% and immediately get silenced. They ALMOST timed it right. So, the priest fears me before he dies, and my warrior is at like 30% with the rogue at 50% and my warrior isn't doing too well. This is where Nature's Grace becomes my favorite ability. As soon as fear ends, I see he has like 1 tick left on rejuv, so I bust swiftmend on him, then just start mashing '3' (which is my regrowth). Crit, crit, crit, crit, full health. It was like spamming an 880 mana FoL that heals for more. I was amazed (and oom, but it didn't matter).

OKAY, I can't take all the credit, while my spec is good, imo, it's not the only key to our success from last night. My warrior finally got a better weapon that Thunder (lawl), and replaced it with the arena sword. There were a number of times I would be watching the arena live frames while wrath spamming and see my wraths do 1/10 the life of our target, then I'd see my warrior swing and do 40% of their hp. After those matches he'd say something like "lawl, did you see my swing, sword-proc, ms combo do half his health?"

How can I deny that I love that!?

Just as a follow up... the reason I think this spec is working so well with this team is because a lot of teams will expect that druid+warrior means that the druid will be healing exclusively and only providing cc utility. I believe that our opponents will expect that I will try and stay hidden for as long as possible, and only pop out when my warrior needs help. So, I use this thought of theirs to my advantage. I start casting offensive spells when other druids (on druid+warrior teams) would remain stealthed hoping their warrior does something amazing. So, I'm not wasting time, really I'm using the time in which druids usually hide. It throws off a lot of rogues to see themselves taking 1k wrath hits 3-4 times on their way over to me, especially with my warrior still beating on them. A couple times, the rogue CloS'd in a confused fashion while still beating on my warrior, which simply means that the rogue was going to die soon, OR if he had a healer, that my warrior would intercept the healer and commence the beat down while I rooted/cycloned the rogue.

Against rogue+pally, by the time the rogue decided that he better be beating on me, he had 10% hp and followed me around a pillar while my warrior was beating his pally down. I just ended up moonfire spamming the rogue down to zero before he got back into LoS for the pally. Sure, at this point myself and the warrior were at 50% hp, but NOW I become a healer in the match, and without a solid dps on the opposing team, I can get my warrior and me back to 100% with ~660 mana (because it doesn't take a 3x stack to do it if you've got time and they've got a lack of dps). Not to mention the fact that I've got innervate should I need it.

I can't wait to try this 'new' team out some more.