You are right you don’t have to use leather and that was ok in classic, enchanting tailoring is fine for a druid planning on using its means and so it herb alchemy night elf starting area.
True enchanting can cost a lot of money which is why tailoring is useful because you can’t disenchant items if you don’t have high enough skill in enchanting.
Druid should be capable of soloing mobs for certain recipes or mats in low levels with stealth.
Like crusader enchant recipe from scarlet arcanist in eastern plague lands.
Plus bags from tailoring and caster friendly gear.
Tauren does have advantage of herbalism because you can out level a zone without gathering enough herbs to progress to next area +5 is actually meaningful unlike the +5 blacksmithing allied races got.
Rare item enchants have always felt useless to me green enchanting essences and dusts have always had more use to rare small shards except the one for fire enchant and brilliant shards.
I have leveled enchanting on many toons in later expansions and I always have surplus blue shards.
Engineering and mining is also one to consider I played with a fellow engineer who was a boomy its a fun professions especially fooling around in gnomer.
I have always considered leatherworking a crappy profession but I never experienced its full potential in classic.
But if you want to use it you can.
Stealth is useful for enchanting in some ways but not always, create a stealth group kill fiery enchant guy or go solo scarlet arcanist in eastern plague lands for recipe of crusader.
Well I appreciate the feedback. Idk though, the more I think about it I may eventually want to make several characters in classic, and my mage would most certainly have the honors of learning enchanting and tailoring.
I think people on here have really convinced me that herbalism and alchemy is the way to go, so I’ll stick to the original plan. I’ve really gotta invest time into it so I can have a lot of mana potions on hand.
That’s a good point. I realize I’m not a super-competitive player, but I will do this right and make my druid the best balance druid it can possibly be. The mana issue is one I am going to be focused in on like a hawk - people have been pointing this problem out to me like crazy, and I realize it’s my biggest hurdle in making this work.
I messed around on a talent calculator and found that it takes 31 talent points to learn Moonkin form. I think I will probably still want to spend most of my points on Balance though, since there are talents that bolster healing spells, spell range, and lower the cost of mana for shapeshifting.
Is that ‘Reflection’? “Allow 5% of mana regen to continue while casting.” It could be useful. Maybe I’ll pump some points into resto. Would be nice to bulk up my mark of the wild anyway, I always liked that buff.
EDIT: So I took a look at it. I end up with a 38-0-13 spread. I maxed improved mark of the wild and healing touch in resto, then maxed the reflection. Will make me a little more useful for buffs and heals.
On the balance side, I have everything maxed except for improved wrath, entangling roots, thorns and natural shapeshifter. Taking a hit to some of my offensive spell usefulness sucks, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. Losing natural shapeshifter kinda sucks since it takes away from my utility a bit, but at least I will be a slightly more capable moonkin.
I’ll just watch my back a little more before using entangling roots,and not rely too much on thorns for extra damage I guess.
Yes it’s reflection.
And while omen of clarity may seem good, it only works on melee attacks and you will not want to be in melee range so you won’t even want natural weapons outside of anything pvp/solo related. Nature’s grasp is only good for pvp and solo as well as nothing counts as indoors outside of the troll instances.
Thorns may not sound good but it provides a little extra threat for tanks and it’s a better choice than natural weapons.
I keep going back and forth on how to distribute those points. I am thinking in resto maybe it’s better to give points to Nature’s Focus than Improved Healing Touch, since it can reduce the chance of my casts being broken.
I still see some value in Omen of Clarity and Nature’s Grasp. I mean, OoC lasts for 10 minutes, and occasionally by doing some melee you have a chance to cast a spell for free. For a build that is supposed to have mana problems, that seems like a huge help. Nature’s Grasp seems great for everything outside of instances at least, since at max it has a 100% chance to root targets that attack me.
I realize it might not be worth it to spend 5 points on Natural Weapons, but I like that physical damage is increased in all forms. So I could stay Moonkin and get a boost from it, switch to bear or cat and get a boost from it, wherever it might be most useful at the time.
You’re probably right about Improved Thorns. Idk, maybe I can take another look at things and fit that into the mix somehow.
I’ll admit, I’m not sure how much benefit Improved Wrath really gives anyone, which is why I keep avoiding that in my build. I mean, it just decreases cast time, very slightly. But I wonder what your thoughts are on that - I mean at any rate it’s a spell I would be using quite a bit.
38/0/13 is the correct build improved wrath is mandatory, you dont need natural weapons or OOC, reflection is mandatory, improved thorns is amazing for your tanks threat so I would say its pretty much mandatory to. Also herb / alchemy is probably your best bet until the ZG patch launches then you drop herb and pick up tailoring for the Bloodvine set (set bonus only works if you have tailoring) which will last you well into AQ40 and most likely naxx.
Also I hope you’re ready to be called every name you can think of and have one hell of a time getting a group even just in 5 mans. If you do eventually make it into a raid group you will only actually be playing balance druid 40% of the time the other 40% will be healing and the final 20% will be spamming decurse and off healing. You will have to farm more then any other class minus retribution paladins, just to do 30-50% less DPS then everyone else. I did it until the end of AQ 40 and I finally decided I couldn’t invest the time I needed to stay competitive. I was spending 6+ hours a day just to get the consumables I needed to keep my raid spot, wizard oils, every world buff possible, I went through about 40 dark runes a raid night and 40+ mana potions literally every raid.
I loved my balance druid but the time commitment for the results I got just wasnt worth it.
The only time you should be casting a heal as a moonkin is when you’re in pvp or there’s a considerable amount of damage in a group that a healer can’t keep up.
At that point, getting hit will increase your cast time more than imp HT reduces the cast time. This makes the pushback resistance on Nature’s Focus EXTREMELY valuable, not just for the pushback on HT but also tranquility. Tranq makes a great “oh heck” group heal and getting hit reduces the amount of ticks it heals.
As for improved wrath, you have to decide whether you will be even using wrath. Wrath is more dps but is FAR more mana intensive than starfire. In long fights you will be spamming starfire only. Wrath is only useful when you want to burst something down in short fights and pvp where mana is far less of an issue. There are ways to abuse spell rankings to get higher mana efficiency and dps out of wrath but it takes a lot of spell power gear to reach that point. Imp Wrath also doesn’t work with Nature’s grace. Imp Wrath drops wrath’s cast time down to the same time as the GCD so using wrath during a nature’s grace proc drops it below the GCD and you can’t do anything to make up for the time. The first tier really comes down to your playstyle.
OoC/Natural weapons I can tell you will not help you like you think it will. If you are DPSing at range, you can surpass tank threat by up to 130% before the npc will try to attack you. If you are in melee range that threat ceiling is instead at 110%. Moonkins have no inherent way to reduce threat like other classes. If you are dpsing at range and move into melee range, the npc will likely turn to hit you because you will have gone past the tank threat. Ultimately it’s your choice but you are putting too much thought into the idea that you will be in melee at all.
You mean Feline Swiftness? That made catform get a 30% speed boost. It did zip for cheetah form, because even though it was a cat, it was defined as travel form, not “other catform.”
Useful for PvP, grabbing the flag in Warsong Gulch, though.
Edited to add: Talent calculator here: h ttp://classicdb.ch/?talent#0 should anyone want to check what the talents we’re going to have do (or mess around with planning builds).
OoC is great if you want to be more of a hybrid, especially in dungeons.
If you’re the main healer, then you can melee in between heals. The extra threat isn’t a huge deal, but a free regrowth, max rank HT or tranquility is.
If you’re DPS, you can blow through most of your mana, then switch to cat form and keep doing damage. When OoC procs and you’ve regained enough mana, pop out and go back to casting. You’ll almost certainly be outperformed by a pure feral, but once you get some +SP gear and resto talents, you at least make a better emergency healer.
If you wanna beeline for boomkin, that’s fine (better be an alchemist or make friends with one), but I enjoyed going balance until OoC, then resto for meditation + insect swarm (not usable in boomkin form), then back to balance.
Off-topic… I once played on a private server where quick offensive spells didn’t reset the swing timer, so to fish for OoC procs I would cast wrath and instantly swing my staff. You could also use a certain item to hide beast forms, which was particularly fun for cat form (swinging a 2h mace or staff at 1.0 speed = priceless). Gonna miss all the wonderful jank.
This is kind of how I was thinking. I like the idea of being a little more hybrid-y, and able to jump in and do a little melee, tanking or heals as needed. I am probably going to go with herbalism and alchemy, I think people have done a good job of convincing me of that.
I apologize, I didn’t realize the travel form used to be a cheetah. Well, that’s still pretty cool! But yeah, I still won’t have to invest in a mount really.
I’m not expecting to do a tremendous amount of healing, but I figure I could at least assist the healer now and then, or at the very least heal myself and take some of the pressure off of the healer.
I guess I can’t really predict what my play style will be like in Classic until I’m playing. I feel like I might focus more on the arcane spells than wrath if they’ll conserve me some precious mana, and I mean I can still use wrath even if I don’t improve it. So idk, maybe that answers my own question, lol.
I guess the OoC and natural weapons is something I’ll continue to think about.