Sigh, I simply can't bring myself to spec out of swiftmend... my healing gear makes it a staple for healing. So, if I go the balance/resto hybrid, it will have swiftmend, which means I can only get as deep as Nature's Grace and Lunar Guidance. Lunar Guidance is wicked good (basically +116 spell damage / healing), and Nature's Grace is awesome for those Regrowth crit into Starfire at 2.5 second cast combos.

Let's face it, critical strike specs are dead inside of PvP play, so spec'ing into Vengeance simply isn't worth it anymore, so I am free to pick up the 70% ignore knockback on wrath and 15% chance to stun with starfire talent in its place, and take that +10% crit and damage on moonfire talent. The only thing is that I don't foresee this working well with the warrior.

Most the of the matches we play, they start attacking the warrior, then move over to me. So, I will be able to get off a starfire at the beginning of the match, and maybe a wrath, but basically they will be damaging the warrior too much for me to dps the entire time, so I would have to switch over to healing.

However, pairing with the spriest might make this spec work out better. Essentially, if they are after me the entire match, then I can run and heal myself while the spriest is just mana burning and dotting the entire time. Against most teams, this would be key. Additionally, if they focus on my spriest, then I can just spam wrath until the priest needs heals. Either way, that's a lot of damage output tied with the healing...

we shall see...

I love the points the Ooglar makes a lot of the time. Ooglar is written by a Gladiator feral druid, a Merciless Gladiator resto druid, and a soon to be Vengeful Gladiator feral druid.

What's wrong with feral? Lots. I've been over the list, you know what's wrong with feral. However, I don't think I put it as eloquently as the Ooglar's author does. My favorite quote is this:

- At the moment, shifting out to Rejuv / Lifebloom is retarded, because they heal for next to nothing; unless you've stacked +heal. If you're stacked +heal, shoot yourself in the groin.

I really miss being feral, but looking at it, I just don't have a good team mate to roll feral with. The Ooglar points out that feral can be an effective 2s team paired with an ice mage, which I can see because feral is comparable to a rogue, and rogue+mage is horrendously powerful right now. Currently, my 2s partners are limited to a shadow priest (which we tried feral with, and it's just not as good) or a warrior.

Warrior really is not a dps class, warrior is a damage+utility+melee-outlaster class. This makes my druid specs hard to play with. However, currently Deep is playing a balance/resto hybrid spec in resto gear that is reasonably hilarious and surprisingly good. I was actually considering spec'ing that and rolling around with my shadow priest again for fun. It would certainly be hilarious if nothing else.

I don't know if balance/resto hybrid will work with warrior as a team-mate, but it doesn't really matter. I'm seeing that team winding down, I'm tired of the same contrived play style, so we're going to focus on 5s more. The 5s brackets allows for more hybrid-like specs for druids, since we are off healers at best, and usually just there for nature's swiftness healing touching whomever has been targeted while the pally was cc'd. After the cc-train on the pally has ended, and the opposing team's target is still alive (while one of their team-mates is dead, hopefully) I can start the cc-train on them, and dps/lifebloom during cyclone's duration.

I don't know... it might be funny, we'll see. I'll post later with something that I'll try out... but it's hard to walk away from feral charge and/or swiftmend, considering how much utility they each bring to the table.

I was sick yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to post. Additionally, I was furious from our PvP exploits from the night before. Needless to say, I have shunned my druid since then...

I'm just unclear on how people can complain about resto druids in the 2s bracket. Sure, my druid+warrior team can beat a slew of odd combinations (mage+healer, rogue+d/h-priest, damned-near-anything+shamang), but there are just some teams we can not beat. We can't beat a soul-linked lock with almost any healer unless it's a priest... and he has to be pretty dumb. We can't beat any rogue+mage team... ever... in fact my spriest+warlock team can't either... mage+rogue is insane...

We can't beat:
soul-link + pally
soul-link + druid
soul-link + shamang
soul-link + rogue
soul-link + mage
soul-link + spriest

We went up against a team that had a ret-pally and a soul-linked warlock, BOTH were wearing the season 3 shoulders, and we couldn't beat them... the ret pally hit me for 1200... straight away did more damage than my warrior... I just don't know what to make of it...

Oh... right, I was writing one of these blog entry things... sorry, my back started one of its painful omg-my-painfully-amazing-pain bouts. Anyway... we're reasonably convinced, at this point, that the druid+warrior team is bonex'd (which just means in a world of hurt) now that new and better FotM 2s squads are becoming popular. Mage+Rogue is my favorite. Although, soul link will never go out of fashion, so long as it remains where it is in the tree (should be switched with felguard imo, felguard+siphon life isn't as op as soul-link siphon life is).

Anyway, the brutal whamping of our "good" team made us grind even harder; I did up 2 levels on my rogue yesterday between bouts of vomiting to hit 60. Let me tell you, for those of you who haven't rolled up an alt lately, that going from the budget land mount to the epic land mount is something amazing. It makes EVERYTHING easier.

So, the plan now is to get my rogue to 70, get him some arena gear via honor, and to pair him with the shadow priest for some quick arena points and, hopefully, and 1850 rating to get the main season's weapons. Also, we're going to pair his paladin (when he hits 70, currently 40) with my warlock, and will have respec'd him to soul-link and siphon life (unless insane nerfs have flowed down the pipe that makes that a bad spec... unlikely).

Oh well, if nothing else, my rogue is my farming toon. 20-stacks of thorium are still selling for ~20g (and quickly), as are large brilliant shards, though I cannot imagine why. So, the idea is to gear him enough where he can do my druid's old DM-East runs, in which you down the satyr boss, the water boss, the belf and her imp, and (newly added for the rogue) the satyr boss in front of the exit cave with the 2-3 Rich Thorium Veins. I never used to do the last satyr boss because he was a waste of farming time, but since the rogue has mining, it will make more money to do it, than to skip it.

I can hardly wait... the only bummer now is breaking the news to my g/f that my rogue is now 4 levels higher than hers... I wish she would play more, but I really want to hit 70 and start the real farming... oh well, maybe I'll play my 58 shamang with her rogue... I don't particularly care if the shamang ever gets an epic mount... or even to 70... so at least that way I can play that with her without fear of running away with it.