Druid PvP Tips [part 1]
Entangling Roots
-Roots is a great crowd control ability to use on melee characters, though it is useful on every class.
-Entangling roots is a great way to slow down anyone, even if they can dispel it. Most players will focus on their primary objective (healing, attacking, running, etc) before they dispel themselves, leading to a small delay in their reaction time.
-Root druids frequently. If they expend the mana to shift out of roots they have both wasted mana and lost 1.5 seconds of attacking you.
-Entangling roots works very well with cat form. When your enemy is rooted, you have the complete advantage in mobility against your opponent. Use your speed to move around them and stay behind them as much as possible, avoiding melee contact unless you have enough energy to attack.
-Nature's grasp is a useful way to escape from someone or enter any of the above root tactics.
Barkskin
-Great way to heal yourself mid fight against someone without an interupt, especially with regrowth.
-Can be used before shifting to bear for a "bear-wall" like ability granting immense physical damage reduction.
-Can be used before shifting to cat to give cat the damage reduction of a lightly armored bear. It will only slow your autoattack, not your energy gains to do special attacks.
Healing Touch
-It is a tremendous heal in pvp if you can time it to let it finish casting. If you have nature's swiftness, the impact of an instant 3 to 7k (depending on +healing) heal can be devastating.
-PvP isn't so much about healing efficiency, it is often better to heal less often for more than more often for less because of spell interupts.
-Keeping yourself alive is your top priority in most situations.
Rejuvenation
-Use it to heal against any enemy lacking a dispel. If they do have a dispel mechanism and are not actively using it, go for it.
-Cast it proactively, it takes three seconds for it to hit its first 'tick' of healing.
Lifebloom
-It can be used safely against classes with a form of dispel.
-Do not rely on it alone to keep your health up, it is a relatively weak heal unless stacked that should be used to discourage enemies from dispelling you or as an additional hot.
Moonfire
-Moonfire is a great way to inflict extra damage on someone. Use it as a dot, not as a direct damage move. It will do more damage if allowed to run its course. It prevents bandaging due to the dot portion, as well as restealthing.
-It is an instant cast spell, so try to cast it whenever your enemy puts too much room in between the two of you.
-It will do damage through a mage's mana shield, as will all other spells.
-In some situations, it may be beneficial to "moonfire-execute," or "moonfire spam." If your opponent is running and has very little health, it may be easier to cast moonfire a few times to kill them than to charge or root them. This burns your mana and makes you look stupid, so avoid it if possible.
Insect Swarm
-Treat it like moonfire if you have it. Use it as a dot to build damage and to lower your opponents chance of hitting you.
Starfire
-Like all magic spells, it ignores armor, so it is great against high mitigation targets.
-No class has an ability to negate arcane damage (like fire ward, shadow ward, etc), though they have ways of lessening it (dampen magic), or negating it (power word shield, ice block, etc).
-It is a very slow casting spell, even talented, so always either have distance when using it or use it after bashing someone.
-When using it to finish someone off, cast moonfire as soon as starfire finishes for a better ending.
Wrath
-It is a very fast casting spell, especially talented. Use it to bolt out damage to enemies if you have the spell damage. If your +spell is lacking, it is still useful against runners or in situations where shifting would not be a viable long term solution (lots of snares).
Hurricane
-Try to use it from the maximum distance with barkskin up, and position it so that it hits the most targets possible.
-It does very little damage unless allowed to run the full duration on many targets.
Cyclone
-Use it to incapacitate any target; cyclone cannot be gotten out of by the target by any means, including divine protection, though it can be trinketed out of with the level 70 pvp trinket (as of 2.1.2).
-It is a nature spell, so having it interupted will prevent you from healing for a long time (don't let this happen).
-When using cyclone, have some idea of what you will do when it wears off (six seconds). Use that time to heal, or to possibly drop combat and re-stealth in cat form, or to gain distance or some other advantage over your opponent.
Hibernate
-Hibernate can be used to sleep both hunter pets and shapeshifted druids and shaman.
-A good strategy for fighting hunters is to root the hunter from their deadzone and then immediately sleep their pet.
-Hibernate breaks on any damage, so remember that when trying to sleep another player.
-When sleeping other druids try to do it when they are focused on doing something else (such as positioning themselves behind you to shred). It is usually obvious if you go for a bash to hibernate combo, though against slower reacting enemies this will work. Do not attempt to use it without barkskin against a cat.
Thorns, MOTW, Omen of Clarity
-Keep them up all the time (assuming you have all three!).
-Against felhunters, cancel all of your magic buffs if you are planning on killing them.
Faerie Fire
-Always cast this spell on your opponent if they cannot dispel it. If they can dispel it, only cast it while shapeshifted (where you pay nothing but a global cooldown for it).
-It prevents rogues from stealthing but does not prevent them from using vanish to break roots.
-It increases your damage on everyone.
-Use it on rogues as they approach you before they can stealth. Most rogues stealth at the very last second to gain as much distance as possible.
-Use it on warriors that are approaching you to put them in combat and prevent them from charging. It does no damage so it will not give them rage to intercept unless they waste a cooldown to gain rage (and if they do, you have time to root them, and should).
Druid PvP Tips [part 2]
Shifting
-Time your shifts so that you shift right before an event actually happens. If you are going to bash someone in bear, shift out of bear before bash officially lands. The only way to learn this is through learning the animation and noise of bash. When someone uses concussive shot or some other snare on you, shift so that as soon as it hits you are shifting out of it. Reactive shifting is too slow.
-Do things in between shifts when you have time. Drink potions, drop bannners, use instant spells.
-Always consider the implications of shifting on your mana pool. Is getting out of that snare worth losing the ability to use a spell or shift later Is the damage you will take less if you shift out now
Bear Form
-Great way to mitigate damage quickly.
-Always remember to use enrage when it is not on cooldown. Rage is power.
-If you have enough rage, use both maul and swipe. Swipe is instant and will hit up to three people, and can add a respectable amount of damage.
-Frenzied Regeneration will not keep you alive very long, use it to stall for cooldowns or time to come up with an escape route. When using regen you will have little to no rage to attack with special abilities.
Feral Charge
-It is one of our few ways to interupt a spell. In many cases you will start a fight out of cat form and take either stun your opponent with pounce or take them to low health. Their next move will be a defensive one if they cannot get distance, which will usually be fear (if a warlock does not have deathcoil up), or healing (if a priest does not have scream up). If you have predicted this move and are already shifting into bear form and moving back, you can interupt this spell and shift back to cat form while it is counterspelled, or bash them at the end of its duration for an even longer silence.
-Use feral charge to get distance from opponents. It immobilizes your target for 4 seconds, so use that time to get distance (do not shift out of bear until you are safely away), and root them and/or heal.
-Feral charge can prevent you from taking fall damage if you charge someone before you hit the ground.
-Feral charge is a good way to gain distance quickly. If you are facing many opponents, it is often a good idea to charge the furthest one away and then quickly shift into travel form as you are charging them for a quick escape.
Demoralizing Roar
-Use it on any opponent that deals physical damage.
-Use it to break stealth of rogues and druids. If you think a rogue may be nearby, it is often worth it to powershift/demo roar a few times to break their stealth. Wasting the mana here is justified, because a rogue or druid getting the first hit heavily favors the fight for them.
Bash
-It is a great way to slow someone down by completely stunning them for up to 5 seconds.
-It shares diminishing returns with pounce and warstomp (if you are a tauren).
-Always have a plan when using bash. It is too valuable of an ability to use unless you will take advantage of it. Use it to powershift catform and shred, or to heal. It lasts long enough to cast a full 3.5 second healing touch, or alternatively cast entangling roots and regrowth.
-If you will be shifting to do something else, shift before bash is displayed on your screen.
-Always try to bash someone from behind so they cannot parry or dodge.
Cat Form
-Shred deals higher burst damage than claw/mangle, but claw/mangle leads to faster combo point generation. Choose which will be more important as you begin your fight.
-Against heavily armored classes or classes with the ability to incapacitate you, bleeds are better than direct damage. Rake may seem like it does little damage, but it ignores armor and continues to do damage even if you are stunned. The "dot tactic" works well against paladins, warriors, rogues, and other druids. Build to 5 cp as fast as possible, using rake to get your 5th cp and then use rip. After landing rip, shift out and use moonfire.
-Against lightly armored classes, try to use shred as much as possible. The bulk of your damage will come from normal attacks and not finishers. Use ferocious bite as your finisher unless you are fighting a warlock, in which case it may be safer to rip them.
-For high health targets, use rip until they are lower on health, than use ferocious bite.
-Use pounce to stop moving targets. To stop someone running past on a mount, start using pounce before they get to you. The same goes for using ravage on a moving target.
Maim
-Maim will not break on any damage over time spell, including spells cast by other classes.
-It is a great way to buy time to heal or reposition yourself, but it comes at a great cost. Using maim forfeits a lot of damage and all of your combo points.
-As with bash, have a plan when you use maim. Learn to execute your plan before maim has officially hit, learning the animation, sound, and energy return of hitting/missing.
-Always try to maim someone from behind so they cannot parry or dodge. |