Druid 6.0 Transition Guide

[Krazyito 521]

Based on the most recent build, we will attempt to explain everything you need to know to update your playstyle when 6.0 hits.
 
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All druids

• Use Glyph of Travel. So good.
• Symbiosis is GONE

BALANCE

 
Taken everything you know about the spec already, ball it up, set it on fire, and throw it out the window at an unsuspecting passerby.
Changes to Rotation
Eclipse Energy Change

• Your Eclipse Energy cycles automatically now. The closer to 0 you are, the faster it goes, slowing down as it approaches 100 Lunar or Solar energy and pausing at a 100 for a few seconds.
• It takes 20 seconds to go from 0 to 100 of Lunar/Solar energy and back to 0, and the entire cycle takes a total of 40 seconds.
• Your Mastery bonus for Eclipse damage (base 30%), is given based on how much energy you have. At 0 energy, you have half of your Eclipse bonus (15% base) added to both Lunar and Solar spells. At 100 Lunar, you have full bonus to Moonfire and Starfire and no bonus to Sunfire and Wrath, and vice versa.

Basics

• You now cast Starfire while you're on the Lunar half of your Eclipse bar, and Wrath while you're on the Solar half. There's no more worrying about which direction your energy is going and using your spells to push it along.
• Starsurge now gives you a buff based on the energy you have when its cast finishes. If you're in Lunar, it buffs your next two Starfire casts. If you're in Solar, it buffs your next three Wrath casts. Either buff is by 30% (45% with a talent). Starsurge works on a charge system, and you rebuild one charge every 30 seconds or as often as you proc Shooting Stars. You should use Starsurge once per Lunar and Solar cycle. Try to begin casting around 75-80 energy so that your empowered spells are casting right around 100 energy.
• DoTs still need to be maintained. Moonfire has a 40 second duration, so you only need to refresh it once per cycle, either as soon as you've passed 0 going into Lunar or right before you hit 0 leaving Lunar. Sunfire lasts 24 seconds, so you need to refresh it twice per cycle, as soon as you pass 0 going into Solar and right before you hit 0 leaving Solar.
• Celestial Alignment now freezes your Eclipse energy where it is, gives you maximum Eclipse bonus to both Lunar and Solar spells, and increases all of your DPS by 20% for 15 seconds. You should avoid using CA during Solar, because you want to use it to cast Starsurge and empowered Starfires

Advanced Bits

• You need to switch your Wrath/Starfire casts before you reach 0 energy. If you begin a Wrath at 10 Solar energy, you'll be at least at 30 Lunar energy when it goes off. In Solar, if your next cast would begin at or after 35 energy, you should switch to Starfire. In Lunar, if your next cast would begin at or after 45 energy, you should switch to Wrath. It's better to cast a Wrath that finishes shortly before reaching 0 and starting another than to cast a Starfire that finishes after 0.
• Reaching 100 energy of either type gives you a buff for 5 seconds that doubles the initial damage of the corresponding DoT. This buff lasts about one second longer than your time spent at 100 energy does, so you can get your empwoered Starfire/Wrath casts off at 100 energy and then refresh, but you should avoid gimping a Starfire's damage just to get the extra initial hit on Moonfire unless it's about to expire. With the new "Pandemic" effect, you can refresh your DoTs early to avoid disrupting your nukes at full power.
• Don't let yourself cap on Starsurge charges. Rather than limiting yourself to one per cycle, make sure you spend them enough to avoid reaching 3. Try to hover around 2 charges, and only go up to 3 in anticipation of Celestial Alignment.
• If you end up capping on Starsurge charges, because you can proc Shooting Stars twice during one spell's cast, finish your current cast and use Starsurge. Even if you're getting close to 0, the empowerment buffs last 30 seconds and will still be usable when you cycle back around.
• Use extra Starsurge charges when trinkets proc and CA is not about to come off of cooldown.
• For fights at least 4:30 in length but shorter than 6 minutes, you should employ the same practice as in 5.4 Siege of delaying your second Celestial Alignment until your Purified Bindings of Immerseus procs.

Changes to AoE (Yes, you can AoE now!)

• Starfall now hits all targets per wave, instead of only two. It shares charge with Starsurge, so you have to choose between empowering single-target spells or using AoE.
• Hurricane no longer shuts down everything about the spec to use and can be used to legitimately contribute to AoE.
• Sunfire applies its DoT to all enemies within 5 yards of your main target.
• Glyph of the Solstice turns Starfall into Sunfall and Hurricane into Astral Storm. This does not change their DPS; it simply switches which energy type each spell corresponds to.

Changes to Utility

• Level 90 talents (tier 6) no longer affect DPS in any way and simply offer a means of off-healing. Heart of the Wild simply gives you 45 seconds of being able to heal more-or-less like a healer, while Nature's Vigil copies part of your single target spells into healing to nearby raid members. Dream of Cenarius gives you weak, constant healing and should not be taken.
• With the removal of Tranquility from non-resto specs, Heart of the Wild should be taken to apply Rejuvenation across the raid or spot-heal with Healing Touch. This results in a general stop of DPS for a lot of healing roughly once per fight (6min CD), while Nature's Vigil is no loss of DPS for weaker healing, every 90 seconds.
• We can no longer be assigned Faerie Fire Bitch Duty, because we no longer have that as boomkins.
• Instead of being a negligible amount of damage used only to force trinket procs, mushrooms are now simply one mushroom that does no damage and provides a snare to nearby enemies.

Talents and Glyphs

• Tier 6 talents (level 90) no longer affect our DPS in any way. That said, it's generally going to be better to taken Nature's Vigil unless there's a single part of the fight where you need enough extra healing to merit stopping all DPS to use Heart of the Wild and throwing out Rejuvenation/Healing Touch to raid memebers.
• Tier 4 talents (level 60) still affect your DPS, as will the new talents in WoD. Since this is just for the 6.0 transition, we're only going to worry about the Tier 4 talents.
• Force of Nature is still Force of Nature. Your Treants benefit from your strongest Eclipse bonus, so their Wrath never has less than half your Eclipse charge. However, if used during Celestial Alignment they do not benefit from the 20% damage increase - only the frozen maximum Eclipse bonus. If you use Force of Nature, only use them when trinkets Proc or to avoid capping at 3 charges.
• Soul of the Forest now increases the strength of the Lunar Empowerment and Solar Empowerment buffs to 45% from 30%.
• Incarnation now increases all damage done by 15% for 30 seconds, regardless of Eclipse state.
• At level 90, there is almost no difference between the Tier 4 talents in terms of outright DPS. Fights with heavy movement will devalue Soul of the Forest, and inflate the value of Force of Nature, though the difference will still be almost minimal.

Useful Tools

• Here are our WeakAuras (working in current beta) for tracking Eclipse Energy while addon developers catch up. Please note that any WeakAura involving our energy will need to be a custom WeakAura, as the default Eclipse Energy triggers do not update often enough to work.

-- Contributed by Kazistrasz
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FERAL

Key Notes:

• Trinket snapshotting is no more
• Reforging is no more
• Try to pick up as much crit/mastery or crit/haste gear as possible now

• Rune of Re-Origination is not nearly as viable
• Crit>Haste>Mastery (single target)
• Crit>Mastery=Haste (multi target)
• Level 90 is only utility
• Tiger's Fury and Savage Roar will still snapshot
• Use the glyph that gives a 5-cp SR when leaving stealth
• Your buffs and bleeds are affected by the new pandemic effect that warlocks have. You can refresh your dots / buffs with less than 30% remaining and still gain the full effect. 
• Opener changes to:

Prowl - Potion - Rake - Shred (to 5 cp) - TF - Rip - Rake
*This will change @100 when perks are available
--Contributed by Paloro.
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GUARDIAN

• No more short cooldowns on most of your abilities (this includes Thrash(swipe), lacerate, and FFF (with perk, so at 100))
• Lacerate is the only spell that will proc mangle - you want to maintain bleeds and spam this spell for procs.
• The GCD for bears is now affected by haste, in place of Bear Form increasing your haste/crit from gear.
• Thrash and Swipe have been merged, now it is only called Thrash
• Multistrike is now a potentially useful stat for bears, your auto attack, mangle, and lacerate periodic multistrikes will grant you Ursa Major, a max health buff.
• Primal Tenacity is a new mastery that grants you an absorb shield after being hit with a physical attack. You gain an absorption shield for a % of the damage taken based on your mastery.
• Tooth and Claw 2 charges baseline and has 3 charges at 100
• Vengence has been removed, replaced with Resolve. Resolve increases your self healing and absorptions
• Might of Ursoc has been removed.
• Barkskin has a 1 min cooldown
• Survival Instincts now has 2 charges.
• Savage Defense now has 2 charges (down from 3) and a recharge of 12 seconds (up from 9). This means you can only chain 18 seconds of SD in a row instead of 42 on live. (Thanks, Davecasa and Xunae)
• Frenzied Regeneration has not changed.
• Tier 90 talents do not have any damage boost any more (save heart of the wild for 45s only). They are all meant for healing or utility

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RESTORATION

• Haste and Mastery are very close in value. You can prefer one or the other (it really is up to you). They will both perform well regardless of what you pick.  In the long run you want test both stats and decide which one is best for you. Which one benefits more from your style of play? Are you more rejuv heavy? Are you more Healing Touch / Regrowth heavy? This all matters when choosing the stat.  Maybe you want somewhere in between and keep the two values close together.
• PERSONAL OPINION: I have changed my stance, Mastery far out weights haste right now in SoO 6.0. Once we level to 100 and have different types of raid, haste is going to come much closer in value.
• For Haste Vs Mastery, I'm going to try to outline what spells benefit from which stat
  • Rejuv: Benefits from both stats almost equally, leaning more towards haste.
  • Wild Growth: Same as rejuv, but leans more towards mastery since the healing is front loaded. Mastery is more true with SotF use
  • Lifebloom: Haste
  • Regrowth: Mastery
  • Healing Touch: Mastery
  • Efflorescence: Both (If raid is close to 100%, mastery better, if not close to 100%, haste is better)
  • Swiftmend: Mastery (Rampart Growth really only time this would be high)
  • Tranquility: Mastery. Since there is not HoT component any more, I think haste only reduces the channel time (please correct me if I'm wrong)
• Nourish is gone (lol did you even use that anymore?)
• Healing touch is going to be our filler spell. Use it often especially with Glyph of rejuvenation (reduces cast time of Healing touch with 3 rejuvs out). 
• The passive from Hearth of the wild is gone now. It now only gives the previous 'not resto' effects and a 35% healing buff when used for 45s on a 6m CD.
• Nature's vigil did not change much, there is no direct healing increase, only proc healing.
• Wild Growth costs SIGNIFICANTLY more mana. Use with caution, use only when needed
• Healing Touch is going to be your filler spell. Use it often with rejuv weaving.
• Currently, Treants are doing A LOT of healing. I don't expect it to go live, but I'm unsure if it will change.
• Wild Mushroom will only last for 30s and has a decent mana cost. Try to not replace the mushroom before it runs out, it does significant healing but will drain your mana. Place it, let it do its duration and find another spot of damage to use it again.
• Genesis creates a new hot on your targets with Rejuv so you can see the actual healing it does now.
• Clear casting will ONLY consume a regrowth.
• Tranquility does not have a HoT component any more, although it still does a lot of healing. Note from Kaz: You can no longer use Soul of the Forest for Tranquility.
• Glyph of Healing Touch and Glyph of Rejuvenation are going to be very useful.

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[gonlaz 6]

Awesome, thank you for the time and posting this

[Kazistrasz 216]

I'm working on testing Boomkin heavily right now. I'm going to start posting a sort of "follow my train of thought"/"testing notes" thread of everything I'm working on tonight.

I will b writing out a full guide for boomkins in our forums, similar to my resto guide. Speaking of, I will also be updating my resto guide as well now that things are finalizing. Boomkin is way too much to just put in a partial post.

[Paloro 39]

Added my thoughts.  Some stuff is still up in the air, so I'll edit as needed.

[Krazyito 521]

When you say TF and SR will still snapshot, do you mean your bleeds will snapshot the damage?

[Paloro 39]

Indeed.  Additionally, at lvl100, the Blood Talons talent (current DoC) will also snapshot bleeds.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Added a lot of Boomkin stuff (sort of rewrote/moved a lot of what you had around there). Also, boomkin testing thread is posted now.

[marek 0]

I found only that haste now reduces GCD in bear form. http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4314-Patch-6-0-2-Preview-User-Interface

[Krazyito 521]

I found only that haste now reduces GCD in bear form. http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/4314-Patch-6-0-2-Preview-User-Interface

 

Its in those patch notes, but not in any tooltip.

 

There has to be something reducing it as well since it shows mangle on a 5.88s CD and maul at a 2.94s CD

[Paloro 39]

If there is another thread open with finer details of the new eclipse mechanics, we should just link to that thread instead of having redundant information (just a thought).

[Kazistrasz 216]

Any other thread has since become out of date. They recently changed the formula it follows, rules of snapshotting, etc.

[Kazistrasz 216]

By the way, is there really a point in recommending Glyph of Travel since it does absolutely nothing in combat?

[Krazyito 521]

Does combat matter? That glyph is pretty fun, instant mount speed.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Updated and re-worked the boomkin part with some testing at 90 and in preparation of the full WoD guide.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Added anchors so people can quickly find their spec.

[Krazyito 521]

@Paloro: We posted this on reddit and it seems there are a couple people that want to know what the damage differnece between the two SR glyphs are (the one that gives you a 5CP one from stealth and the one that makes it passive but at 30% instead of 40%)

 

If we're using the passive glyph how much of a damage loss is it really if you replace SR with FB in your rotation?

[BreaKerNZ 1]

Nice guide for balance, will the teir 16 4 set still be useful?

[Krazyito 521]

Nice guide for balance, will the teir 16 4 set still be useful?

 

For 6.0 (pre-expanision launch) I don't see a reason why it wouldn't, 

[Paloro 39]

@Paloro: We posted this on reddit and it seems there are a couple people that want to know what the damage differnece between the two SR glyphs are (the one that gives you a 5CP one from stealth and the one that makes it passive but at 30% instead of 40%)

 

If we're using the passive glyph how much of a damage loss is it really if you replace SR with FB in your rotation?

The 2 glyphs aren't exclusive to each other, so you can use both at the same time if you choose to do so.  Therefore, I'm not going to even try to calculate a difference in damage.

 

Right now, the passive glyph will be around a 4% loss when replacing FB in the rotation.  It seems more viable when taking the Lunar Inspiration talent on multi-target sustained fights, but even still, final tuning passes have yet to be done and Blizzard WILL NOT allow a passive option to be better or even close than the more difficult counterpart.

[Lappe 0]

Nice guide for balance, will the teir 16 4 set still be useful?

Its pretty useless guide since bunch of the information is straight out wrong and some of its is misleading / not informative enough.

 

As for T16 4-set, we've not heard anything official from it but from tests i've seen/heard it doesnt seem to work at all.

[Krazyito 521]

Its pretty useless guide since bunch of the information is straight out wrong and some of its is misleading / not informative enough.

 

As for T16 4-set, we've not heard anything official from it but from tests i've seen/heard it doesnt seem to work at all.

 

Again, as I told you on reddit, being more informative about specific details is much more constructive and helps in general. Same goes for Kaz. EXPLAIN why you dont agree and what you have done or seen to claim as such.

[Lappe 0]

Again, as I told you on reddit, being more informative about specific details is much more constructive and helps in general. Same goes for Kaz. EXPLAIN why you dont agree and what you have done or seen to claim as such.

I did show and explain one of the mistakes on reddit. All I got as an answer was basically "Hey, I dont care and dont need your facts".

 

Others that have shown similar findings have just been told that they're trolls. 

[Kazistrasz 216]

No, the response was to say that what you were calling oversimplified was simply part of the basics section. If you'd kept reading, you'd have seen what you were saying was already written further down. 

 

"Others" - one person replied and provided the faultiest numbers and math in all of Reddit.

[Lappe 0]

No, the response was to say that what you were calling oversimplified was simply part of the basics section. If you'd kept reading, you'd have seen what you were saying was already written further down. 

 

"Others" - one person replied and provided the faultiest numbers and math in all of Reddit.

First, the "Basic" section has it wrong

Second, the "advanced" section has it wrong.

 

Neither of the two are saying what I said in reddit.

 

I did not check any math provided by the guy, however his points were correct where you said just that hes not right and that hes a troll.

 

I've yet to see math of any kind to back up any of your points yet you're just telling everyone is a troll who doesnt agree with you. Atleast I know what kind of a page this has become.

[Zoomx 0]

Other guy here, my numbers are taken from from the latest wrathcalcs and altered with the numbers since the nerfs, if you find that so inaccurate and faulty then i don't know what to tell you. I'm not sure why you think noone has an idea what they are talking about.

 

You can say its wrong all you want but they are discussed heavily within our own community, along with anything else i mentioned. I didn't think there would be such a hostile reaction for pointing out that things are wrong, perhaps i could have provided the numbers in the first post, since after looking again it came across slightly hostile, but clearly that didn't matter either way. 

 

Make your guides however you want and with as much lacking information as you want, as the point is apparently to have something - instead of something good.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Zoomx