Contents

1. Introduction
2. Playstyle
3. Damage
4. Healing
5. Crowd control
6. Gear and spec
7. Strategies

Death knight
Druid
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior

8. Limitations and weaknesses
9. Upcoming changes
10. Final notes


1. Introduction

Hello there. Firstly, I'd just like to point out that this guide is aimed more at people who are interested in taking up the mookin cause or are struggling with it slightly, as opposed to pro's. Secondly I still stick by my beliefs that moonkins are vastly inferior in PvP in comparison to most others, I sincerely believe it is one of the weakest PvP specs in the game, but as with all it is has the potential to do well in the right hands! Despite my beliefs I'll refrain from stating how underpowered we are throughout this guide, instead I'll reserve a special section for weaknesses and limitations. In addition, this is mostly aimed at moonkins intending to: Duel, world-pvp, or 2v2 [although a lot of elements of this will apply to other areas of PvP as well, including higher brackets] With that out of the way, let's get on with it!

So what makes moonkins what they are? Moonkins are supposed to be a) Durable [That is to say, they can withstand a lot of damage compared with other casters, i.e moonkin form armor and barkskin] b) Mobile [aside from being able to withstand damage when we do get hit, we are designed with the intention of not being hit or hit as often, i.e. travel form, polymorph immunity, shapeshifting removing snares] and finally c) Flexible [being able to dish out a mix of damage, healing and control] All of these elements should make the moonkin a formidable (albeit unfortunately daft looking) opponent.


2. Playstyle

So what is our playstyle? Well, previously in vanilla, druids as a whole played in a much more hybrid-esque style, utilizing all aspects of our capacity. Through TBC and into wotlk, the evolution of
talent tree's has prevented such a style of hybrid playing, as the important talents in other trees are too deep down, and the talents that we cannot afford to lose-out on are too far rooted in the balance tree these days we are forced into a particular role and have to play in a style that reflects our talent choice and desired role. Below are the styles most commonly adapted by moonkins in arena, duels and world pvp.

* Offensive style: This style tends to emphasize the potential burst capability of a chubby lazerowl. This style tends to ignore (or rather, to a greater extent) a defensive style, as such those who've mastered this style are generally quite comfortable with their team-mate(s) sitting at 40% hp with a DPSer on them, because they are probably aware that with their style and the circumstances they are capable of getting the opponent down before the opponent downs them. The calculated use of cooldowns such as trinkets, force of nature, starfall, and an adorable Wrath of Elune proc during a lunar eclipse can provide a substantial amount of burst, particularly when you have a teammate who is also attacking your current target while the second enemy is controlled. The potential weakness of this style, is that as it plays far more wrecklessly by allowing itself and it's teammate to drop reasonably low in order to get off that extra dps, is that if something unforseen occurs whereby you didn't get the intended target down, you could be in for a world of hurt (Picture you in a 2v2 where you both are at 50%hp because you sacrificed healing time to nuke down the enemy healer, thinking you'd have it while his warrior buddy was CC'd, but he somehow survived, and now you have a warrior bladestorming you both 50% -> 0.)

* Defensive style: This style is far more hybridized than the offensive style, it tends to emphasize the utilisation of your damage, control and healing capability to overwhelm the opponent. When utilizing this style you tend to spend a lot of time healing and CCing, generally more so than DPSing. The intention here is to wear down your opponents, using calculated and well-timed target switches to shock your opponents, particularly when facing a healer team, healers are generally unprepared for a fast switch or an unexpected CC, this can be fatal.. The biggest weakness of this style however, is that you are neither a great healer nor a great aid to your damage-dealing buddy, you are defenseless while healing, and you will not outlast another healing team's mana pool, particularly if it's a resto druid or disc priest (especially a disc priest, dispel innervate and mana burn is not a fun experience)

Choosing a playstyle is dependent on many different factors, including your partner; (e.g. if you roll with a healer [always a bad decision in 2's as boomkin] or another hybrid, you'd go all out offensive, whereas if you went with a squishy partner, say a warlock or a rogue, you'd play more defensively) your own personal preferences etc. Choose what you feel right, in fact you may even find sometimes that you switch playstyles mid-fight, or play differently depending on what you come up against.. For example, when I come up against a ret / dpser, or dk / healer, i play very defensively because I cannot afford to allow my teammate to go below a certain health threshold because it's possible they could die very quickly during a silence / stun.. but on teams where healing is not exactly optimal, say bm hunter / ret teams, facerolling all your CD's tends to be the only way because CCing is not particularly possible, MS effects destroy our healing capability, and in that case it comes down to who can kill who first. And potentially a moonkin has a greater shot at burst damage than a BM hunter.


3. Damage

So lets take a look at our damaging capabilities.

Wrath, moonfire, insect swarm, faerie fire(it helps for trees + melee partner), starfire, starfall, Force of nature, typhoon.

Wrath will be your primary nuke here, against a target with high resilience it'll do very little damage, it's a rather poor nuke and with the changes in 3.2 it might become less so, but it's quick and allows for activating lunar eclipse

Moonfire is very mana costly, it is much better to hit and allow for the dot to tick to make use of the mana you paid for it (never glyph MF) however, if your target is at range and running away, it can be pretty useful to spam to finish a target off if it is around the 10-15% mark, if it is a healer however it's better to conserve your mana for when they are closer and you are capable of doing actual damage.

Insect swarm is very good for it's mana, especially if you glyph it (I personally don't) it assists with the DPS, it's cheap, and against a dispeller it's another GCD and load of mana they tend to spend dispelling it (and against poorly played teams, you'll be surprised how many sit there spamming dispel which is far more costly than insect swarm)

Faerie fire is just an all around good ability, it prevents any stealth action from a rogue or druid (exception CloS -> vanish) Next patch however it won't prevent mages going invis.. It does also decrease the opponents armor by 5% (which also affects arpen) thereby increasing any melee dps done to it, very handy if you roll with a melee DPS, and still pretty handy for use with trees.

Starfire is a situational ability really, it is a long cast and so leaves you very vulnerable to interrupts and silence effects, it's best to be used when your opponent is at long range, or your opponents are ignoring you. Also is great for some burst potential if you have lunar eclipse active and you get the 4-piece balance PVP proc "Wrath of elune". Another use for this will be discussed further on.

Starfall is a tricky spell, it's a great cast and forget spell with reasonable damage (particularly if both your targets are stacked) however the problem occurs that it is costly, vulnerable to be locked down, and unless glyphed a lengthy cd. Another big problem with it is that it breaks CC's, if a target is rooted it will break, if target is sapped, blinded, polymorphed or seduced, it will break. It's much better to coordinate with your teammember on when to use this, and make sure that such CD's and CC's are used seperately to avoid wastage and a potentially nasty situation.

Force of Nature is a nice tool for damaging, particularly on casters as not only does it have spell pushback, it does fairly decent dps (they hit for about 600 each when I tested them on my rogue buddy, excl. crits) however it is a lengthy cooldown and they are easily killed. These also can also give a psychological advantage. It sounds odd I know, but many casters have a very anti-melee sentiment, and to suddenly have 3 rather large trees chasing and hitting you, it can put you off your game. It's also an advantage mechanic-wise, I've seen numerous people accidentally target the treants instead of me or my teammate, for example in a game just last week, an elemental shaman was in a position to burst me down quite quickly after his rogue partner had just died, but he must have accidentally targeted a tree and cast hex on the tree instead of me as I was just casting a heal. Strategies for using these effectively will be discussed later.

Typhoon is a mixed blessing, there have been many games where it has saved us, on a few particular maps it can give us an amazing advantage, it can be used to interupt heals or casts if your close enough etc

4. Healing

We can certainly be considered a rather mobile healer, we have the capability to effectively heal on the move with our hots, and this can be advantageous against those who seek to lock us down, or when we are being pursued by a melee. It's also handy to be able to effectively heal yourself and your team mate at the same time. The thing to keep in mind however (and I have seen a lot of new or inexperienced druids do this) is that refreshing hots long before they fall off is a huge waste of mana and a big loss of healing. If your rejuvenation has 8 seconds remaining on it, casting another one is a waste, there are of course a few exceptions to this; for example if you need to get back in to boomkin form quickly, you can pop another rejuvenation to extend it a while until you can get back, but under normal situations it's best to leave these hots to come close to fall-off point (Although, if it's a healing-intensive encounter, never let them fall off, because that could be disasterous if you become spell locked, or CC'd just as they fade)

It's also wise to remember that you cannot realistically spend the entire fight healing, you are not [presumably if you are reading this] a resto druid, therefore not only is it mana-inefficient, they are also far weaker than our resto counterparts, and therefore healing should generally only supplement your role and not dominate it.


5. Crowd Control

The biggest strength of a balance druid does not come from it's capability to throw out a little bit of damage or a little bit of healing, but from our ability to control. Now, while our CC's can be very strong, there are some issues and weaknesses with them that I'll discuss at the end of this guide. We have the following CC's:

Entangling roots
Cyclone
Hibernate

You can technically incorporate typhoon here as a peel, or nature's grasp as an anti-melee capability, but in both situations they are peels / defenses and not CC's.

Entangling roots is admiteddly not as powerful as it used to be, it's damage output was reduced drastically when the max-duration of PvP CC's became 10 seconds, entangling roots dot duration however deals its damage over it's PVE duration of 27 seconds, therefore it's quite minimal in PvP. Additionally as a snare it means you cannot deal much damage to the target before it breaks, you need to keep this in mind when using entangling roots. Generally it should be used defensively against a melee, rather than offensively, however this has exceptions (for example rooting a warlock and going to maximum range to out-range fears, same with a shaman to outrange shocks)

Cyclone is a very very powerful utility, some argue it's one of (if not the) best crowd control in game, it provides complete immunity to the target for it's duration to absolutely every effect whether beneficial or detrimental, this includes health or energy gains from buffs / totems / heals / hots / innervate / sfiend, as well as making them immune to damage. It has a harsh diminishing returns however, 6 -> 3 -> 1 -> immune, it's almost never useful to use cyclone until DR, it's generally better to go cyclone -> cyclone -> wait for DR reset. the exception can be with a feral druid, where chain CCing may be more effective, and using the entire duration of cyclones DR will lessen the wait time to be able to use hibernate.
Cyclone is great for shielding a target from incoming heals, as well as controlling them by preventing them from healing / damaging.. It's biggest strength comes from it being undispellable, so far the only thing that can remove it is trinket and human racial, which as you know is a 2 minute cooldown.

Hibernate is pretty situational, it's rare you will get to use this ability, however when you do get to use it, it's generally a lifesaver. Clearly it comes into use against teams with a hunter or feral druid in it, a large chunk of a hunters dps and control comes from it's pet, being able to lock it out is a treat. Same with a feral druid, they tend to waste a lot of mana trying to shift out to avoid a hibernate, and when it does land that's a 10 second duration of nothingness, you should in almost all situations be able to keep a feral locked out with timed roots -> cyclone -> hibernate, or at least dry their mana pool.

6. Gear and spec

Firstly let's talk about spec, because gearing is generally done by how you spec.

http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bladefist&n=Dreamwarden that is my present gear and spec (if it shows) for some odd reason it doesnt under armory count the chest as part of the set. In case that doesn't work, here is a list of my talents and glyphs: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#0xRfuicocdhAuRuZf0fdb:jTiVm0

Here are the armories of a couple of other succesful pvp boomkins for you to check out

http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bladefist&n=Druidus

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackrock&cn=Xattie&gn=Undercover+Orcs

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Tarren+Mill&cn=Dragma&gn=Surge

The spec you choose should reflect what kind of playstyle you wish. Those who play a more defensive style will probably opt for more mana regen through dreamstate, intensity and moonglow
while those who seek a more aggressive style will probably skip these in place of talents such as celestial focus. In almost all PvP specs there a few essentials, for example Natures focus in the restoration tree to provide puskback resistance. Thorns is quite subjective now considering the recent nerf because of restoration druids. However I'd advise it to still be taken, many fights where melee run without a healer you will see yourself being focused a lot, in these situations you'll spend a lot more time playing defensively and in such a case it's nice to have that extra bit of damage done (which can actually amount to quite a lot when that melee is a rogue) the daze effect from trees while barkskin up shouldn't be scoffed at either really, it may only be 15% chance, but that's effectively 3 x 15 = 45% chance per swing timer to daze them for the duration great in combination with a typhoon or entangling roots / natures grasp to get a bit of range on a melee.

Now, most who are familiar with moonkins and PvP know that moonkins have serious survivability issues, we are easily locked down, our amour tends not to count for much when the melee who destroy us the most use magical damage, and barkskin is easily removed. For this reason, until you are at a level in which you feel comfortable with your ability to survive for a reasonable time, as well as comfortable with your teammate's ability to peel things off of you or assist you when you are being focused, it's probably best for you to gem defensively. By this I mean stamina and resilience. You have a few choices:

For blue sockets, you can pick either

Glowing twilight opal (9 spellpower, 12 stamina) or
Steady forest emerald (8 resi, 12 stamina) or finally
Solid sky sapphire (24 stamina)

EDIT: If you are below the soft pen cap for PvP (80 I believe it was) you can also use the following:
Mysterious Twilight Opal (9 spell power, 10 spell penetration)

ty to Lucjuh of Quel'Thalas


For yellow or red sockets you should simply pick

Durable monarch topaz (9 spellpower, 8 resilience)

When you get to a level in which you can comfortable survive (this is generally around 21-22k hp, and 850+ resilience) you should begin gemming more offensively, taking 19 spellpower, 9spell power / 8 crit gems.

Assuming you have no professions that grant item enchantments (e.g. tailoring, insc, engi, lw, ench) the following (I believe) are the best enchants:

• Helmet: 29 spellpower + 29 resilience
  Shoulder: 23 spellpower + 15 resilience
  Cloak: 35 spell penetration
  Chest: 20 resilience
  Bracers: 30 spellpower
  Gloves: 28 spellpower
  Legs: 50 spellpower + 30 stamina
  Boots: 15 stamina, run speed increase (tuskarr's vitality)
  Weapon: 63 spellpower MH, 81 spellpower staff.

As a tailor, I use lightweave embroidery on my cloak (even though I could probably do with some more spell pen / hit) and although I'm an inscriber and can theoretically go for the 61 spellpower - 15 crit on shoulders I prefer the resilience rating, however when I upgrade my shoulders next, I'll likely swap to inscription enchant as the resilience gain will probably even out with the loss =)

7. Strategies

Strategy time. Remember, these strategies are likely biased and a result of my own experience with my own playstyle, gear, spec, and opponents I have encountered. They may not even be the best or most efficient strategies. As I mentioned at the top however, it'd be nice if this thread was updated by the PvP community too, and for that reason if you have suggestions or more efficient methods of doing things, please do post them [constructively of course, not simply 'lol nab, l2p; this how it done'] and they will be mentioned here with credit.

a.) Death Knight

Now this depends on the spec of the death knight really.. It's very rare to come up against a frost DK in PvP and for that reason I don't really have much advice to give, it is far more common to come up against Unholy and to a lesser extent for blood.

Blood: For blood death knights, it's worth noting that they have some formidable self-healing capability with rune tap and death strike. In most situations here your opponent will not have a ghoul with them, and in light of this you need only worry about being silenced at inappropriate times. You should never let yourself get below 60% health against a blood DK, they are capable of quick damage, and if you allow yourself to get this low, it is quite possible for them to pull off a surprise strangulate when they have DG and frost runes up, and kill you before the silence wears off as well as preventing you from escaping. The solution to beating a blood death knight is to keep them at range, their sources of healing come from death strike and rune tap, rune tap has a lengthy cooldown, and therefore by limiting their ability to hit you with deathstrike you limit their ability to heal. In a 1 v 1 situation with a blood, it is best to save defensive and offensive cooldowns for when your opponent has used theirs, if you leave LoS and place a few hots on yourself, you can afford to go into travel form and 'bait them', that is to say, force them to use deathgrip. When deathgrip is on cooldown, here is where you can use natures grasp to get them rooted, place a few hots on yourself, get a bit of range and begin nuking. Do not let them get to you before you decide to escape again, use typhoon before they get to you and get off another root. Since natures grasp will be on CD and you likely will not kill them before the next deathgrip is up, using cyclone following the next deathgrip will be extremely useful for getting back to range. Their biggest mitigation against us comes from anti-magic shell, do not use any cooldowns (FoN, Starfall, etc) until they have used and depleted this. When deathgrip and AMS are down is the perfect opportunity to unleash hell.

Unholy: Personally, I'm afraid I'm at a loss against unholy, in almost all situations they tend to defeat me quite easily, they are able to lock us down easily, force us to waste mana quickly, and are capable of outdamaging our heals, in addition to that they also have extended immunity to our damage and have the added benefit of bone shield. If anybody has any constructive tips for dealing with an unholy death knight, please feel free to leave them and I'll place it in here =).
In terms of 2v2 strategy, it can be accomplished. In almost all situations an unholy DK will run with a healer, in these situations it's almost always the better option to train the deathknight and try and lock down the healer. For example, if it's a disc priest, we tend to open with a sap on the priest and begin nuking down the deathknight, as the sap reaches 2 seconds remaining I will cast a cyclone on the priest and put my FoN on the deathknight, the priest is almost guaranteed to trinket here (and if it doesn't then I get an extra cyclone anyway) at which point my rogue partner will blind the priest and we will continue on the death knight... In most situations, an unholy DK will not be able to survive a potential 30 seconds without healing capacity.. Usually the death knight focuses on the rogue because of it's squishiness, however if the deathknight turns its attention to me while the healer is controlled, we have a high loss ratio because of the sheer damage and control they will have over me.

b) Druid

Druids come in many varieties. As a great druid once said "SUM DURIDS IS MOON KIN Them 1s is look all funny liek maybe form MOON! LOL!" ... "OK now sum durid is cat Cat uis for fite" and as a not so great druid(me) once said(just this moment) Some druids are horribly terrifying, as they are in fact walking trees.. Druid vs Druid fights are almost always interesting (except resto vs resto of course) here are a few strats for the specs as boomkin

Feral: Feral is always a lockdown fight, generally the diminishing returns on your CC's are going to be harsh, but with 3 sets of crowdcontrol that are all effective against them, you can either drain them or slowly take them down. Rooting a feral will almost always force them to shift, and if it is at the beggining of the fight, they will generally shift to bear form -> charge -> bash -> kitteh -> mangle -> maim.. It's best to save natures grasp for their first attempt at this, as it's vital you do not let them damage you too much as they can really take you down pretty quickly.. Hibernating a feral can also be effective, if they do not trinket them, this can effectively give you 3 free attacks... Hibernate -> 10s sleep, -> starfire -> hibernate (5s sleep) -> starfire -> hibernate -> wrath (now immune to hibernate) But the good news comes in the form of your ability to chain lock them almost constantly. When the diminishing returns on hibernate force immunity, you can move onto cyclone: -> cyclone, regrowth -> moonkin -> starfire, -> cyclone -> starfire.. if they are against all the odds still not dead, you can move on to entangling roots, and by the time DR on that has kicked in (if they havn't oomed themselves from attempting to shift out of all the hibernates, or actually have shifted out of roots) then you can move on to hibernate again. The goal here is just to keep them locked for as much as the fight as you can while weaving heals and damage inbetween the lockdown. Always save defensive cooldowns (barkskin, natures grasp, trinket) for their attempt to burst you down with berserk in kitty form.. The time to blow offensive cooldowns is when they turtle themself in bear, when you have FoN + starfall up, you want to be able to cast wraths too.. but if they are beating on you in cat form you cannot do that, so you need to force them into bear form, they will generally do this at around the 50% health mark and attempt to frenzied regen up [protip: you can cyclone them during frenzied regen to waste it], this is the time to blow damaging trinkets if you have them, starfall, trees, typhoon + wrath spams.

Boomkin: I don't believe I've ever lost a 2v2 against a team with another boomkin in it.. Generally they will roll either with a warlock or a rogue, if it's rogue / boomkin mirror team, it typically depends on who gets the opener and who is the better balance druid. in 1v1 it's almost always who gets the typhoon off first, most balance duels will tend to start off with them both in kitty form and after getting bored trying to find eachother, one will be adventurous and attempt to typhoon in a random direction. In this situation it's all about who has the better damage, and who knows when to use typhoon and cyclone more effectively. Getting off a cyclone -> regrowth, and then calculating to use starfire at the right time can be a big burst, but make sure you don't have natures grace or wrath of elune proc, because a missed starfire because of immunity (too quick) or a missed starfire because of interrupt from typhoon (too slow) can be disasterous. Never use trees against another boomkin until they've blown starfall, always use your starfall when they blow trees, an effective strategy is to cyclone them, pop a regrowth on yourself, and then activate starfall, the trees will generally be dead / very close to death as the cyclone is ending, at which point you can typhoon to finish them off and knock back the druid to give you an extra second to get off perhaps another cyclone or a wrath.

Resto: Immortal, give up... just leave, /forfeit, if they have access to some form of environmental LoS, they will win. You cannot do enough damage to them to kill them, your dots will be outhealed by a rejuvenation, and they can simply run around a pillar, ocassionally come out to dot you, and slowly they will drain you down.. They also will not let you drink (though it wouldnt matter, even with full mana they'll eventually drain you) the only possible hope owuld be to force them to come back into LoS.. For example by trying to res your teammate, or blatantly drinking, at which point (if your unsuccessful with the res) you can activate all your cd's, and get off a cyclone before they can go back out of LoS and hope the starfire after the cyclone ends will kill them... but generally you will not win

c) Hunter

The choice of tactic depends on the spec of the hunter, although in most cases it can be attributed to both the common specs you find in PvP

Beast mastery: BM is difficult to control because of beastial wrath, in almost all situations you cannot deal with a bm hunter while they have this activated, you simply must survive long enough for BW to end, find any object or other aspect of the environment to remain out of LoS for the duration (18s) or at least attempt to mitigate as much of the damage as possible, of course you can throw a couple of dots on them in the meantime, setup a moonfire and insect swarm, and hush out of LoS of the hunter and hug that pillar until the duration ends. It should be easy enough to remain LoS of the hunter until its over. When it ends, the best option is to hibernate the pet, with the pet hibernated activate a natures grasp, rush out and cyclone the hunter. This will almost always force the hunter to use trinket (which is what you want, although if they dont you can still do the cyclone -> starfire method) at this point, if they have not trinketed, throw up another cyclone to force them to trinket as soon as they have trinketed, root them in place, put a faerie fire on them, activate trinkets, drop trees, and get into melee range of the hunter (deadrange) and begin your nuke, just stay on that hunter and save trinket for the freezing trap, their damage output will be lowered significantly while you are hugging them and they will spend the majority of the time trying to get away, if the pet is not a hinderance you could use natures grasp here as they are likely to melee you and thus proc it, if they disengage immediately go into travel form and run right after them. The strat is just to stop them from damaging you, hug them, slowly bring them down (or if you feel confident, burst them down)

Survival: It's effectively the same strategy, in fact even easier as you do not need to wait for the BW or worry about the pets intimidation(stun). DoT em up, force trinket, root, hug, blow CD's and ahnihilate them.

With both specs, if somehow things don't go to plan, and they manage to get out of range and you don't feel you can make it in range before they deal significant enough damage to you, retreat behind the pillar and heal up, remain LoS until DR's on roots and cyclone have reset, (if you are chasing the hunter, always break off the pursuit at about 60% or you risk being stunned or trapped and taking a heavy nuke) save barkskin for situations where you cannot get out of LoS, or while your running to get out of LoS.


d) Mage

Mages are an interesting variety, you generally tend not to see any fire mages in arena (or pvp in general) as they really lack both the damage capability and the survivability as well as mana conservation that the others have (or a combination of the 3) and for that reason you will likely come up against frost or arcane. (Admittedly though, I lost to a very skilled mage yesterday when he was fire and when he was frost, so never underestimate them)

Arcane: They really still do live up to the name of the 3 minute mage, the trick is simply surviving the initial zerg, do not get me wrong they are still capable of extreme output even with PoM + ArcPow blown. But you drastically increase your chances if you are able to cyclone them and get LoS to force the ArcPow to be wasted, another solution is to force them to blink and then use roots, they will either have to trinket (at which point you can cyclone) or iceblock in which case they are vulnerable.. They will probably try and counterspell you when they get arcpow up so that you are not able to heal, additionally slow will be used to stop you from trying to escape, spam travel form to get out, if they keep spamming slow they are wasting precious time to dps you.. When CS'd always try to remain LoS'd or out of range, alternatively if you are feeling adventurous you can try for a bear form -> bash, although if they havn't used blink or FN it can be risky.

Frost: Frost will be a big challenge, they are capable of not only some serious damage output with shatter combo's, but they can stun and lock you down, always save your trinket for the deep freeze, and for heavens sake travel form out anytime you get frost nova'd, be it from pets, frostbite or frostnova itself, because getting hit by a shatter combo is not going to do your healthpool much good. As with arcane mages, travel form away from them when they CS you, if they blink at you they will frost nova you, at which point you need to go cat and dash away in the opposite direction immediately. Avoid using hots here, try and rely on nourish, it's expensive and can't keep you up during the fight but you can't afford for them to heal either. Always try and keep both IS and MF up on them, as it'll eat away at their frost barrier. If you can get them to use both blink and frost nova, that'd be a perfect time to FF them and place down your trees. As mentioned it's a very tough fight, but with a bit of perseverence and good timing, it is definately possible.

e) Paladin

There are only two types of paladins that I've encountered in arena at the moment, prot healers and ret. I havn't actually come across a purely specced holydin yet, although I hear they are far more prevalent at higher ratings and larger brackets.

Prot-healer: In terms of nuking them down, this really should not be a problem, their healing capability is strong but not as strong as the other healers, and therefore with some cooldowns blown, so long as they don't LoS you, you should be able to damage them down quite easily. The tricky thing with them is their short cooldown of HoJ, and their avengers shield (silence) combined with another DDer such as a DK or a ret pala, this can be very difficult for you, but 1v1 you should have no problem with a prot, so long as they don't LoS you (If they do, then do as suggested earlier with the resto, try and res your teammate and force them to come out into the open, worst-case scenario they camp your partners corpse, second-to-worst case scenario they also res their partner and the fight resets.

Retribution: Rets are tricky, and generally this all depends on timers. Ret paladins can be extremely bursty, and if you allow them to get in range and they beat on you while they have avenging wrath up, it's very likely you will die before you are capable of doing anything. The general trick here is to prevent them from using AW. In a 2v2 setting, regardless of what the ret runs with, we will almost always open up on the ret and force it to bubble (forbearance prevents AW) so that we aren't troubled with AW for a short time.. The alternative to avoiding AW is to save your lockdown diminishing returns and defensive cooldowns for when AW is up and do your best to stay at range, this means starting off with cyclone, they'll probably trinket the first cyclone and keep coming, throw up another cyclone, (remember, through both cyclones keep running back to gain more range) when the 2nd cyclone is over typhoon and root.. They will of course HoF ot dispell the root, but it will slow them down and that is your intention, to stop them from damaging as much as possible until AW is over, because once it is, it's much much easier to deal with their burst. All offensive cooldowns should be saved for when AW is over or Divine shield is over. They will not have any defense at this point, and you can unleash all your damage. In terms of defense, save barkskin for the repentence. They will use repentence as a gap closer, but you don't want to trinket it ever (unless they used HoJ before the repentence) as soon as they put up repentence, barkskin yourself and prepare to be hit, they will likely use HoJ straight after it which you should trinket. All in all ret paladins aren't too hard to defeat once you have a little bit of practice and get some survivability gear.. If you have low resilience or stamina, you will go down quite quickly and although the same strategy will apply, it'll be much harder to execute it.

f) Priest

You tend not to find shadowpriests in arena, although in 3.2 this may change a bit with a few of their buffs and the resilience change, it is very likely you encounter a lot of discipline priests though

Discipline: In a 1v1 situation give up and cry yourself to sleep, they will burn you down very easily, you cannot afford to let them drink and therefore you will not be able to drink yourself, equally you can't out-dps their heals.. the tactic they will likely use on you is to shield themselves up, pop a renew and spam mana burn on you... or simply dot you and weave heals / mana burns. It is extremely unlikely you can beat a disc priest.. I beat one in a duel the other day but that was likely because they became complacent and overconfident in the fact they could mana burn me.. I was able to get them to about 70% while they were manaburning me, at which point I cycloned and popped everything and tried to bursted them down while he tried to manaburn again.

Shadow: Admittedly I have not come up against many shadowpriests, I've come up against a couple in a 2v2 setting they mostly roll with a rogue, they may not be that great in PvP but an spriest and rogue vs rogue and boomkin can be quite tricky. The aim is to force them to disperse and keep them at range, never run into them for that nice warstomp[if tauren] because they will fear you, just keep them at range and nuke, try and stay at max range because this is where you can avoid being hit by mindflay and their damage output will drop significantly. After throwing a few nukes in, they will likely disperse and try and go and heal. Once dispersion is over, thats the best opportunity for you to unload everything. Another idea, is if you run into them and eat the first fear, hot up through it, run at them again to force the second fear and then throw down trees with a faerie fire up on them, trees will eat through them pretty quickly, especially combined with your own nukage.

g) Rogue

Rogues, they are one of the trickiest opponents, and I generally do not like encountering them =) I don't see a huge difference enough between specs to make strategies for each one, generally the same strategy applies for both muti or killingspree.

The trick is never to get caught out, often or not when we come up against rogue teams, if they are with a caster my rogue partner will stay stealth while I open up on the caster, at which point my rogue partner will open up on the rogue when the rogue opens up on me... When we come up against double stealther though, if we don't feel confident we can reach the shadowsight timer (believe me, the wait is nervewracking, if you get caught out in cat form your as good as dead) we will enter the enemies starting area, pre-hot myself and charge out like a madman and typhoon in a random direction hoping to get one or both out.
A lot of boomkins when fighting rogues generally trinket the wrong stun, I see many boomkins trinket a cheapshot only to be kidneyshotted half a second later and die very quickly..[including me until recently where I made my UI a little more obvious as to when the KS happens] in a 1v1 against a rogue or in a situation where your partner is held up, the following generally happens:

Rogue opens up on you with cheapshop, [You activate barkskin] rogue keeps dpsing, rogue uses kidneyshot [you spot kidneyshot and trinket] natures grasp if you didn't already use it, else put down your trees, the trees will make the rogue think twice about opening up on you again, at this point back yourself into a corner if you are near one and typhoon out into the distance, if it doesnt catch anyone out, you have enough time to pop a regrowth on yourself and quickly pop back into moonkin form, put an abolish poison on yourself and wait for the rogue to come again. The idea here is to utilize everything to stop them from damaging you. you likely wont get many casts out, so the idea is to let passive damage do it's thang, activate starfall, throw in an IS and MF, and let the damage from them with thorns combined help lower the rogue down.. If the rogue Cloaks, it's likely they are either going to come to you for the nuke, or vanish away, a good tip here is to go bear form -> enrage -> lacerate -> bash. The lacerate will prevent a vanish, and the bash will give you an opportunity to get out and root them again. All in all, with a bit of luck at keeping them at range, and some decent PvP gear, a rogue will be tough but still dooable.

h) Shaman

Shamans are a commodity at the moment and often arent seen in arenas, I have seen many resto shaman teams in the 1800 bracket, although to date have only seen a couple ele and enhancement shamans.

Elemental Elemental shamans are similar to moonkins in a lot of ways and in that respect the strategy for them is quite closely related to how to deal with other moonkins. The notable exceptions are that they are capable of quicker burst, and have two methods of preventing themself from being hit by spells; earth shock and grounding totem. The earthshock is something that can easily be avoided by fakecasting (Casting an ability then cancelling it, or using hearthstone and waiting for the interrupt) or by outranging their shock. Shock range gets increased in 3.2 but still only to 25 yards if I recall correctly, which means it's very possible to root them and remain at max range while damaging them, and therefore removing one method they have of stopping your casting.. The second issue is grounding totem, this can be a bit of a pain because it's not always recognizeable that they've placed one down. Short of using a macro to see it, it's probably better to just familiarize yourself with it's appearance. A screenshot can be found here; http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=8177 . If you see it, use an insect swarm on the shaman, it's cheap and will remove the grounding totem. Other then that, nourish and lifebloom are your best options for healing through their damage (they can purge lifebloom = nice health gain)

Enhancement Enhancement shamans are tough cookies, they have very high burst and are capable of quite a bit of self-healing.. They are similar to what arcane mages used to be in a way, they are capable of outputting some serious burst, but once their cooldowns are gone they are vulnerable.. The biggest thing to look out for here is spirit wolves, they are strong; they can stun, you cannot outrun them, and they will heal the shaman... The biggest mistake you can do when fighting an enhancement shaman is to try and either a) Heal yourself while wolves are up, or b) try and nuke the shaman while wolves are up... With tree's and starfall, I was unable to bring an enhancement shaman below 90% hp for the duration of his wolves because of their selfhealing and their ability to proc an instant LHW.. For that reason, in much the same way you deal with a ret paladin or bm hunter, you must survive long enough for their wolves to go. Not necessarily wait out the entire duration of the wolves, but say for example cycloning or rooting the shaman and killing the wolves. If they pop wolves, you should starfall + trees yourself and instruct them to attack the wolves. The trick is simply surviving ntil the wolves are dead or gone, save barkskin for the wolves, and save trinket for the wolf stun. Do not use natures grasp because it'll be wasted on a wolf.

Restoration a well-geared restoration shaman with earthshield up will be extremely difficult to defeat in a 1v1 situation. The easiest option in this situation is to try and outlast the shaman. If they have water shield on, you cannot do that but you will be able to nuke them alot easier, if they have earth shield on, the trick is just to keep the pressure up with starfire only (cheap, hard-hitting) if it procs lunar eclipse then of course move on to wrath. Eventually they will have to switch to water-shield or risk going oom [again, familarize yourself with the appearance of mana tide so you can destroy it when its up] this is the point where you will have to use all of your offensive cooldowns to nuke them. Save the typhoon for when they are casting a healingwave, and then get a cylone on them immediately before they have a chance to heal again.. this is your best chance here, get a starfire on them as the cyclone is coming to an end and hope you can kill them before they can heal up again.. If you are going oom, the best option is for you to get maximum range and root them, throw on a rejuvenation and lifebloom and then pop innervate, make sure to stay at max range and run away from them if/when roots breaks or they WILL purge it.

<reserved>

please do not post until finished.

8.) Limitations, weeknesses and final thoughts


So hopefully you've learned that balance druids do have some vestige of viability. We have the potential to do well - in world PvP we should be very formidable opponents, in the world environment, mobility favors all and we are great at mobility when we are not limited by a cage. However, below I'll list some the limitations and weaknesses of a moonkin in given PvP situations:

World PvP World PvP is a rarity these days, but when it occurs we have the homefield advantage if the fight is honorable and 1v1, as we have the option to use the environment to our advantage, and if things fail we have the ability to escape. However, world PvP is rarely fair and honorable, and you'll find the majority of times you are attacked when unprepared while fighting a mob, when you are at low health, or simply when you least expect it. Additionally a large proportion of people don't hunt alone, those specifically out for world PvP often or not go with a friend or two, or the ones that aren't out there specifically for PvP but attack you may be those headed to a raid or dungeon (particularly if your close to the instance point) and in this situation there are very few who could escape, notably paladins[bubble hearth] and rogues [evasion, clos, vanish]

Battlegrounds - Battlegrounds are interesting places, but certainly not somewhere you should look when considering the notion of 'class balance', groups are spuriously random and for that reason, the fate of many games can be decided simply by the opposing teams luck of the draw when it comes to team makeup. A group of all-dpsers for example would do little to fair against a team full of prot paladins and resto druids. But lets assume that the group-makeup isn't an issue. Like most casters really, we have the advantage of crowds, if we remain back in a crowd of people and range from a distance, we have the potential to do some serious damage and go unnoticed.. The problem comes with shifting to moonkin form, I believe it is the only PvP taunt in game at the moment... Maybe because they see us as free kills, or maybe because a moonkin simply sticks out a hell of a lot more than a bunch of small gnomes, dwarfs, undead or orcs. If you are in a really large crowd, say an AV at the chokepoint near stormpike GY. it'd probably be adviseable to stay out of moonkin form until you are attacked, because otherwise in a swarm of players, the opposing faction will just spot you and make a meal out of you. But if you are able to stand and do damage without being attacked, you can become very formidable

Arena

2v2 in 2v2 where control and burst matters more than anything, we have the option of rolling with other classes that are capable of either immense damage or immense control.. Mages are capable of both, and therefore a mage / moonkin team (while not fantastic) has the potential to do well.. Moonkin / ret paladin has also reputably been okay [I myself tried it with my current partners alt, it didn't go too well) It would seem that our strongest setup in the 2v2 bracket at the moment is Moonkin / rogue which combines elements of some serious lockdown with some good burst, but the limitations of that is weak defense and very few peels. We are not really capable of running with a healer in 2v2, while it may be possible to get some semi-average rating with it, it truly isn't that great especially if you come up against a healer-dps team. You can't put out enough damage or pressure on your own to crush someone down before your own mana is gone. Priest would be your best bet if you decided to go with a healer though, as they could manaburn the opposing teams mana.

3v3 Here we technically have the potential to run most compositions that mages are succesful in. For this reason, comps like Rogue / moonkin / priest should work well. It exorcises roughly the same control, but will be tougher against actual rmp teams where you lack the ability to silence or stun. Remember that you are kind of like a mage, but have less escapability, less offense, poorer mana conservation and the inability to stun or silence, but on the other hand you have heals to assist the team if for example your healer got CC'd, you also have an innervate (which you may need for yourself, but also can be very handy for your healer if they need it more)

5v5 I truly can't comment on this, I've never been in a 5v5 team and of what I've heard and seen this season, 5v5 is a dead bracket which is primarily a zerg fest. My guildleader is ranked 200 and getting a good title for practically losing 60% of the time up to 1300 rating for example.

*Rest coming in a few minutes*

Now to find a reason for picking a boomkin over any other caster :(

Nice writeup though.

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Q u o t e:
Now to find a reason for picking a boomkin over any other caster :(

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It has the best dance ever :D.

And hey, who don't want to play LAZER CHICKEN? xD

@OP
Nice, nice guide! My tactics are sometimes slightly other, but overall I agree. Good work.

Make this post sticky!!!!!

And please tell me why do you prefer imp moonkin over celestial focus? that ~54 spell power what you gain only in moonkin form is so important, and from the haste side celestial focus gives 3% haste all time imp moonkin give +3% of your haste only in moonkin.

And why do you pick eclipse for pvp (arena)? I know it's a big burst IF it proc but it does not proc becouse resilience and IF you have luck and crit with warth there is still the rng factor to proc lunar eclipse.

And why do you have 2 point's in intensity that 32mp/5 is that good? The other option is that you use it to bash a target but you need all 3 points if you want to do it instantly. ( If you put that 2 point for mana regen Dreamstate would give you 46mp/5 )

And why do you prefer staff over 1h+ oh. you don not have the 80 spell penetration which is useful in pvp.

I would like to add that tauren druid is better for pvp because of the + hp + warstomp. If someone have the will to level a balance druid for pvp, tauren is better than night elf.

At the and of my post i would like to say: it'S good to see an other balance druid over 1850.
( if you look at my talent i play very defensively i pref instant ht over starfall)

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And please tell me why do you prefer imp moonkin over celestial focus? that ~54 spell power what you gain only in moonkin form is so important, and from the haste side celestial focus gives 3% haste all time imp moonkin give +3% of your haste only in moonkin.

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Because the haste comes in addition to the spell power.. Often or not, when you get a target controlled, you do not have much time before that target is free and able to assist their teammate again (particularly in the case of healer - dps setups) therefore it is a better DPS talent than celestial focus for when it is needed.

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And why do you pick eclipse for pvp (arena)? I know it's a big burst IF it proc but it does not proc becouse resilience and IF you have luck and crit with warth there is still the rng factor to proc lunar eclipse.

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It procs regularly enough that it's worth the talent points, maybe it's only worth 2 depending on what else you would rather put the talent points in. But when spamming wrath, you have a pretty large chance of proccing wrath of elune, if you save that for a lunar eclipse it's insane burst, if it's fading out then you can just use it anyway and have a chance at proccing solar eclipse immediately after it.

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Q u o t e:
And why do you have 2 point's in intensity that 32mp/5 is that good? The other option is that you use it to bash a target but you need all 3 points if you want to do it instantly. ( If you put that 2 point for mana regen Dreamstate would give you 46mp/5 )

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32mp5 vs the mana cost of bear form and bash which you will use once every 45s? It's worth it. Besides, in 3.2 enrage will instantly generate rage and therefore provide an instant bash. But yes I do intend to change this to dreamstate, the reason I previously chose intensity, was because with my previous mainhand + offhand combination, the mp5 gained through intensity was greater than dreamstate, but after weapon switch thats no longer the case.

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Q u o t e:
And why do you prefer staff over 1h+ oh. you don not have the 80 spell penetration which is useful in pvp.

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Until i'm in a position gear-wise that surviability is not an issue, it is much better to gem gear and enchant in a way which increases your survivability rather than your damage. The staff gives a ridiculous amount of stamina, in addition to two extra gems. It gives less spellpower, but better stamina and resilience, which is far more greater for a defensive-style boomkin than spellpower. And yes I don't have 80 spellpen. My gear is not fantastic at the moment, but I'm finding in the 1850 bracket that the ability to survive is more of an issue than the ability to control or damage.

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I would like to add that tauren druid is better for pvp because of the + hp + warstomp. If someone have the will to level a balance druid for pvp, tauren is better than night elf.

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It's better for balance, but not as good for feral.

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Q u o t e:
At the and of my post i would like to say: it'S good to see an other balance druid over 1850.
( if you look at my talent i play very defensively i pref instant ht over starfall)

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I tried restokin builds, and other builds that ventured deep into restoration tree. But you come up against good geared and skilled healer / dps or double dps teams past 1700 bracket, and at this point you either need good dps or good healing capability, so once past that bracket it's pretty much an all-or-nothing thing in terms of spec, you either go resto or pure balance. Because if your DPS is too low, you will never down a healer team (and talents like starfall are excellent for dpsing, because it provides natures grace constantly in addition to its spell-pushback and damage) and if you cant dps well you need to be able to heal well, but at only 21 pts in resto you can't do that. That's my personal opinion.

Ty for the post though, taking a little break and I'll probably have the rest of this up in a short while.

EDIT: Here is an armory link to a moonkin who is in top 0.5% of all 3 brackets as boomkin: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Drak%27thul&cn=Winno&gn=NOTEVRYSPECISARENAVIABLE

Nice post I must say, though I would really put 9 spelldamage / 10 spellpenetration gems in blue slots. With the 35 spellpenetration enchant on cloak and your 4 blue slots you can reach 75 spellpenetration which is the perfect number for arena as balance druid imo.

I think our playstyles are a bit diffirent, but still think the hit and spellpenetration caps really are great for any playstyle.

Just started a new team btw, so rating is kinda low ^^ Normally playing ~2100

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Nice post I must say, though I would really put 9 spelldamage / 10 spellpenetration gems in blue slots. With the 35 spellpenetration enchant on cloak and your 4 blue slots you can reach 75 spellpenetration which is the perfect number for arena as balance druid imo.

I think our playstyles are a bit diffirent, but still think the hit and spellpenetration caps really are great for any playstyle.

Just started a new team btw, so rating is kinda low ^^ Normally playing ~2100

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Hello there, thanks for the tip =) I'll add that in.. In fact I completely forgot there even were spellpower + spellpen gems. I'm going to take a look at my gear and spec again in a little while and see what modifications I can make. I'm preparing for 3.2 at the moment, and after experimenting on the PTR a little, i'm beggining to see that we can survive a little more than we can on live (although the same goes for all, so it's relative) and therefore it'd be more viable to replace the stamina for spell pen.

Cheers again

PS: Currently saving up for furious belt (Took the titan one as I was saving up the honor for furious weapon) once I obtain my furious belt, hopefully I'll be able to pickup a deadly cloak within 3-4 days, I'll place spell pen on that. Likely not worth placing it on a cloak I'll replace within the week.

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I would like to add that tauren druid is better for pvp because of the + hp + warstomp. If someone have the will to level a balance druid for pvp, tauren is better than night elf.

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I wouldn't say that.

Endurance vs Quickness
350 bonus health (5% of base health) vs -2% chance to hit by melee & ranged attacks
Both are around same level I think. Endurance was hardly nerfed in WotLK. It used to give 5% of TOTAL health, not BASE health. So at 20 it would give +1k HP.

War Stomp vs Shadowmeld
0,5s cast 2s stun vs "vanish"
Tauren racial is better against melee, but it's !%@#ty against casters. You must run 2-3s to enemy to stun him for 2s. Against melee - war stomp + cyclone combination is good though. Shadowmeld is much better against casters. When you shadowmeld he loses target, so after you show again it takes him around 2s to notice that you're here and retarget you. And you have time for 1 free cast/heal.

Personally, I prefer Shadowmeld. It gives much more possibilities than War Stomp, because WS is short-range, and in most fights you don't have time to get near enemy caster.

But both class racial abilities are near same level IMO.

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I wouldn't say that.

Endurance vs Quickness
350 bonus health (5% of base health) vs -2% chance to hit by melee & ranged attacks
Both are around same level I think. Endurance was hardly nerfed in WotLK. It used to give 5% of TOTAL health, not BASE health. So at 20 it would give +1k HP.

War Stomp vs Shadowmeld
0,5s cast 2s stun vs "vanish"
Tauren racial is better against melee, but it's !%@#ty against casters. You must run 2-3s to enemy to stun him for 2s. Against melee - war stomp + cyclone combination is good though. Shadowmeld is much better against casters. When you shadowmeld he loses target, so after you show again it takes him around 2s to notice that you're here and retarget you. And you have time for 1 free cast/heal.

Personally, I prefer Shadowmeld. It gives much more possibilities than War Stomp, because WS is short-range, and in most fights you don't have time to get near enemy caster.

But both class racial abilities are near same level IMO.

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I would gladly trade warstomp for shadowmeld

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Frost: Frost will be a big challenge, they are capable of not only some serious damage output with shatter combo's, but they can stun and lock you down, always save your trinket for the deep freeze, and for heavens sake travel form out anytime you get frost nova'd (etc etc)]

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Since you asked for tips in the intro post, I will share a quick one I realised last xpac about frost mages. Shifting both into and *out of* forms cancels frost nova on you. Cancelling forms can also be done during a cast with no penalty! So a tactic I used frequently against frost mages is to shift into moonkin during a frost nova to cancel it, then charge up starfire while they charge frostbolt. At the end of the cast they will rather predictably use pet nova and ice lance, at which point you break frost nova by shifting to caster and they get a full starfire to the face. Key areas are exactly as you say, use dots to remove the shield and hots on yourself often, try to keep gcd's available for shifting and be really careful for counterspell to your resto tree and getting stuck in an icicle without your trinket. Play defensively with a pillar and chip away at their health.

Not to be taken lightly by any means, but you have a better chance again a mage of any sort than a warlock or retadin.

Yep, good tip! Forgot to mention that cancelling moonkin aura does not cancel spell casting.

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Since you asked for tips in the intro post, I will share a quick one I realised last xpac about frost mages. Shifting both into and *out of* forms cancels frost nova on you. Cancelling forms can also be done during a cast with no penalty! So a tactic I used frequently against frost mages is to shift into moonkin during a frost nova to cancel it, then charge up starfire while they charge frostbolt. At the end of the cast they will rather predictably use pet nova and ice lance, at which point you break frost nova by shifting to caster and they get a full starfire to the face. Key areas are exactly as you say, use dots to remove the shield and hots on yourself often, try to keep gcd's available for shifting and be really careful for counterspell to your resto tree and getting stuck in an icicle without your trinket. Play defensively with a pillar and chip away at their health.

Not to be taken lightly by any means, but you have a better chance again a mage of any sort than a warlock or retadin.

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One thing. HoTing yourself while fighting with mage really ISN'T good idea. Maybe lifebloom, but not regrowth & rejuvenation!

Good frost mage will just spellsteal your HoTs and heal himself with them. I prefer healing myself with nourish (when mage got counterspell on CD, when he got his counterspell ready I fake-cast nourish, turn into bear on silence and bash him).

And why lifeblooms? Because even if he spellsteals it, you still get heal from final bloom. And when he spellsteals your rejuvenation you get nothing, only he gets additional 5k life ;s.

Frost mages are one of the worst enemies, they just absorb 2/3 of my dmg and try to silence when I'm starting to heal. I prefer fighting with retradins, really. When he used his trinket I can "free" cyclone him everytime without worrying of interrupt (only stun and repentance, but on stun we have medallion). Mages often don't use counterspell unless you try to cyclone them. And then, PAF! 8s without healing/CCing/DPSing (yay MF SPAM GOGO).