Saturday 28 March 2009

Restokin?

This is my new pet project. PvE spec is so blatantly obvious for Tree's at the moment it's boring (14/0/57 seems pretty much universal for most decent trees, the 57 goes in different optionals but it's all the same spec really). However Blizzard has presented us PvE trees with an awesome challenge. Playing a spell based drood at the mo I would argue is difficult to balance your spec relatively against most classes. For instance if I go to arena or a BG with a 14/0/57 with no natural perfection, yeah I can pump the healing but ultimately I get killed alot when against more than one opponent, but if you go 0/40/31 for universal survivability you have your arena m8's dying, then ultimately dying your self.

With 3/3 natural perfection, and imp tree form (for the armour (reduces an extra 20-30% physical damage I think)) you get the imba healing with a tanking form for those nasty warriors and rogues. unfortunately as far as I'm concerned if there is no one else around you might hold out for 30secs-1min against maybe 1-3 opponents before you inevitably run out of mana and/or cooldowns and eventually die. In terms of arena with this spec I found I was either eventually getting beat by the silly burst damage + stuns + silences or (normally against healer-dps teams (2v2)) running out of mana. Mages ='d death

So I went grass roots and went for feral charge + leader of the pack + nurturing instinct , mixed some feral gear with some resto at roughly 0/40/30. quickly abandoned that spec due to Seaver whining about dying or something in 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 (healing output was balls, dmg was minimal and frankly just got confused with what I was doing).

This then lead me to drood- aff lock and I went 30/0/41 (dreamstate with tree form), losing GOTEM was a shock that I hated with the feral spec and it continued with dreamstate. Being used to casting 3 LB in the same time that I was able to cast one and wait for the CD was to say the least pretty fucking annoying. one thing that I loved though was insect swarm and balance of power combo to reduce a targets hit rating by 7% effective (about 3% over required yellows for most straight dps and way over for hybrids). I have seen a mage do a dual arcane barrage against me and having all but one miss me... awesome... sodding mages.

anyway this allowed me to pick off 1v1 rogues, mages, warriors, and warriors (maybe). Against healers it was a dead heat and eventually against a full healer I would oom first, against hunters, DK's, shammys, shadow priests (or holy priests (stupid mana burn (NERF NERF NERF most OP spell in the game as far as I'm concerned))), I was fucked unless I was able to LoS or run very far away.

Recently I thought sod it and went for boomkin over tree form (you get the choice with 3x/0/4x), basically just for the silly numbers of armours to get away from warriors, rogues etc. also quite nice to scare the crap out of DK's.

anyway what I think I'm happiest with at the moment is 31/0/40, still a bit lost with celestrial focus/vengeance trash (gone 2/3 1/5 respectively) and yet to try it with my cali (2v2 partner affi lock) but also been thinking about a caster/cc'er like ele shammy or frost mage. spec details here

heres a screeny of some fun I was having today:


anyway for anyone not messing around with hybridising a drood for pvp this might not be that relevant and in a few weeks it's all going to change again, but if your having similar problems to me give 31/0/40 ago cos it's awesome. just remember if they can't hit you (with daggers, axes, swords etc) you have the edge (provided you out last the first 10secs or so)

1 comment:

  1. thank you so much for this post.
    i was talking with a warlock friend of mine and he was thinking of me going restokin for next season. we wanted to give this a shot but i was aware that restokin disappeared from the arena comps when lich king hit the stores.
    didn't know how good they were or what to spec in. (i did came up with 31-0-40 before reading the post, so i was glad to see im not bad at this)
    im currently a moonkin and pvp is terrible. restokin might just be my next Dual Spec!

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