All time contributor
Coming soon
Latest articles & News
Article:
Druid tips of the day from Hafu
November 30th, 2007 by Ziss ·
The following is a compilation of useful Druid tips on our Forums, brought to you by Hafu.
Please note that these are strategies that I use - keep in mind that my gear and my partner’s gear is optimal.
Warlock & Paladin: Honestly, I haven’t faced this combo since the patch, but before we only had trouble if they used a Voidwalker. (If they use a Felhunter, kill it. If that proves difficult, sunder the pet twice and then kill it ;p) This is a mana fight more than anything. Do what you can to drink as much as you can by having your Warrior slow the pet. Usually when I try to interrupt heals, I make sure I’m above 70% mana. Before the patch, though, this combo was easy to outlast since they had no clear burst. However, now, Paladins will have ~3k burst =| So you’ll have to watch your Warrior’s health a bit more. Against a Voidwalker, remember that you can root it out of LoS, and cyclone it for the Warlock to take full damage. Oh, and you’ll probably want to keep 5 Sunders on the Warlock
Paladin & Warrior: Killing the Warrior is a much better idea, I feel. If he goes for you, you can drag him around LoS to cut off his heals. If he stays on your Warrior, not only does your Warrior have more Rage/Enrage, but you can freely CC the Paladin. We usually Sunder the Warrior as well.
Disc/Holy Priest & Rogue: Sunder the Priest, and he’ll drop a lot faster during your CCs on the Rogue. If you need time to drink, have your Warrior pop on a Shield and D-stance it. Your Warrior won’t be taking much damage from the Rogue unless he’s getting chain-dispelled. Even then, the Priest’s mana should drop a lot faster than yours.
Shadow Priest & Rogue: The Warrior’s job is to keep both targets slowed - especially since Blind is no longer a Poison! In most cases the opposing team will choose to focus the Warrior. However, when they do go after the Druid, my suggestion for is just keep away from the Priest. You should be able to tank a Rogue’s initial stunlock - especially if you have Barkskin. Sometimes, Feral Charging the Priest to get away from the Rogue works - but make sure you catch their shadow school! If not, you’ll get Feared, and that’ll make the situation much worse. Keep Abolish Poison on whoever the Rogue is on at all times, and keep your Warrior topped off as much as you can.
Some tips on Kiting: You get better at it as you play more, naturally. The more you play, the more you’ll have an idea of how much damage you can take - when to shift into Bear, and when it’s appropriate to run in Travel. A key factor that distinguishes players in Arena is not their ability to play their class - but their ability to adapt to their surroundings. This is why some people believe that 5v5 is the most skill based - watching 5 people and adapting to the situation is much harder than watching 2.
With Kanamii(my Warrior), defensively, I ask for help when I need it - and he’ll Fear or Intercept and Hamstring whatever is on me most of the time. Slowing a melee as I run by him is a given, but an Intercept stun should give me enough time to get away. Many warriors are extremely defensive of their Druids, and will always help them when they hit about 60% HP. Usually I only call for help if I’m out of cooldowns and approaching half life (to be safe!) It really depends on your gear.
What I found most helpful in learning how to kite melee is by dueling them. It helps you learn when to shift, when not to shift, when to use your trinket, how they use their cooldowns to kill you, etc. etc. Once you can beat a Warrior or a Rogue in a duel as Resto, kiting them in an Arena where you only have to worry about running seems 10 times easier.
Basic Kiting Strategy vs Melee
Warriors: After the Intercept, Travel Forming away is great. Be ready to shift quickly out and into Travel Form multiple times as most good Warriors will be ready to Hamstring and Piercing Howl. If the Warrior got out of combat, feel free to rank 1 moonfire them – and run. It’ll take them a second to switch back into Berserker stance – and that’s if they have Intercept up.
Rogues: Do what you can to eat the initial stunlock. If you are in Bear form, great. If you’re not - Barkskin - and perhaps trinket out of the Kidney Shot depending on the situation. From there, I usually try to Nature’s Grasp -> Travel Form. Make sure you watch your back so you see when they try to Deadly Throw you so you can shift out of it quickly. If they CloS and Sprint, then heh - I would go Bear as they get to you. Rogues are a lot more annoying to kite, but with Hamstring refreshed on them - they won’t be on you eventually.
When would CCing be more appropriate than healing?
In every situation - the main thing is to keep yourself and your Warrior up. Sometimes, a Cyclone or a Root would be a better thing to do than just straight heals - as in the case of a mirror match. If your Warrior is running low, often you can Cyclone or Root their Warrior and let the MS debuff fade. Your HoTs will tick for much more, and you’ll be conserving a lot of mana.
Dealing with 2 DPS teams:
After losing twice to a Rogue & Mage team, we found that what we had to do to win was to make sure the Rogue didn’t open on me. Since both of us can “aoe shout”, it really isn’t hard to prevent - as the Rogue will have to unstealth at some point to help his teammate.
These two losses ended up helping us in the long run, as we had no trouble with the Rogue/DPS teams that followed - including Neilyo and Gumbot. We faced them twice, and in both cases - were able to catch Neilyo out of stealth, and kill him before they could kill me.
Also, I bought the 88 healing, 1750 hp buff trinket thingy! It’s SO good against double DPS - and saved me in both games vs. Neilyo, and a couple of other matches.
Small Note on Regrowth:
I feel that Regrowth is important in some situations - as it’s a very long HoT. I don’t Regrowth as much in 2v2 unless I’m putting full HoTs on my Warrior so I can run off to drink.
Spec Choice:
I feel that 11/11/39 is the most powerful spec right now. From 8/11/42 - you give up 4% bonus healing, 10% imp regrowth, tree, and ooc (well from my old spec at least ;D) You gain 10% more crit and damage to moonfire, and a 1200 dot that costs 175 mana. It also reduces the chance to be hit by 2% which is somewhat good.
It’s your playstyle though =P
Latest forum posts
Featured video
3v3 Hunter Lock Drui...
PoV of Hazek (Hunter), nice analyze of a close game.
Watch it here
More videos
Nidi is back, 3vs3ar...
Priest/Warrior/Rogue Vs Diffe...
2100+ Elemental Sham...
Redknife from Zul'Jin (Spain)...
Vilden - Mage/Rogue ...
2v2 Arena Video, Mage's PoV
2v2 Arena: Warrior S...
2v2 Restro Shaman + Warrior m...
Advertising
December 1st, 2007 at 12:18 am
excellent
December 1st, 2007 at 12:48 am
Nice! Can you go into detail on what you guys do vs lock/spriest and mirror matches?
December 1st, 2007 at 1:02 am
Not to sound cynical, but is all of this druid-related advice only coming from a warrior-druid perspective? While it has some general useful elements I think it’d be more impressive if it wasn’t such a common and relatively overdone team.
I’m sure you could run druid-[Random DPS] pretty high regardless of class, but I’d love to see how you would do it with classes that aren’t necessarily so common.
December 1st, 2007 at 1:15 am
Druid + anything in 2v2 = instant win
December 1st, 2007 at 2:31 am
Eh. I’ve seen druid/rogue, druid/hunter, even druid/mage. I’d like to see Druid/shadow priest. You can find a challenge if you’re looking for one. These teams are hardly optimal, but there is something to be said for challenges.
December 1st, 2007 at 8:43 am
Very Detailed Topic…I really enjoyed reading this!
December 1st, 2007 at 9:42 am
11/11/39 is luxurious. Ended up having to solo a shadowpriest after both my warrior and his warlock went down simultaneously. Would’ve been impossible if not for Insect Swarm.
The only thing I would add is a How To use NS section. I’m still torn between instant CC (hibernate/cyclone/roots) and saving it for a rainy day of getting burst low for HT.
December 1st, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Great post hafu!
December 1st, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Thanks for the tips i’ll make sure my druid friends see this.
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Druid War is really hard for rogue lock imo, especially after the life drain nerf, thankfully my main comp of Spriest rogue is quite a bit stronger vs druid war and we got our rating back plus more :D, good games against both comps and nice articles.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Imo 13/11/37 > 11/11/39 but thats all up to the player. Other then that, nice read.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:38 am
Not sure if you forgot to add or just think it’s not a good thing to do but. Against rogues I usually put up Fearie Fire (rank 1) which sometimes makes them blow cloak and it stops them from using vanish. Also there are million of small tips, I recently read this post somewhere that summarized them well. Some of my favourites include a /sit macro to procc Natural Perfecion when you have a felhunter on you (to gain buffs for Innervate protection) and I bet there are more but can’t think of any right now!
December 4th, 2007 at 7:45 am
hafu sucks lol
December 4th, 2007 at 7:46 am
make that hafu & kanamii… i really hope you both were playing with your feet when you fought me and banecrusher… lol
December 10th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
[…] also adding Druid Tips of the Day, an article by well-known PvPer Hafu published by PvPSource, to the resources section of my […]
December 11th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I’m gonna nerd rage if you beat me again
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 am
WEll what to do agaienst warlock/dr00d they are really hard since they have drain and pets + the Fell armor Really helps the dr00d to heal the warlock can you give any tips please. thanks.
March 26th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
great tips i will use some of them
January 16th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Great tips! but outdated, it’s WotLK now, so can you add tips to fight a Death Knight? Because sometime I get mad to fight a Death Knight lol. Please update this guide. :):)
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Thanks for posting
June 5th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I have discovered your webpage from wikipedia and it is totally great. Thank you for giving such an amazing article!
August 30th, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Sweet, thx!
September 8th, 2011 at 7:09 am
Pozdrowienia z Bilgoraja