Moonkin PvP

[Monkey]

Short version: What talents do Lurkers recommend for a druid looking to spec 31 or 41 into Balance for PvP?

In advance of the 2.0.10 patch, it occurred to me that Balance might be a great non-healing PvP spec. About half of what I do in our Arena 5v5 is Balance and 2.0.10 raised Moonkin armor to be equal to bear. But I've always been a feral druid and looking over the Balance tree, there are many significant questions like:
1. Are Treants worth it?
2. When/How much to melee? (is the Naturalist talent in Restoration worth it?)
3. Major stats other than stamina and resilience?
4. 4/4 Improved Nature's Grasp was a staple of my flag-running build...do I need it here?

Not to mention the questions I'm not even smart enough to ask. Thanks!

[Brista]

1. Are Treants worth it?

Yes very much. Great damage, possible they get targetted instead of you and they also can make it hard to see past them (first time I encountered them was having them dropped in my face while pvping in cat form. I was trying to target the druid but all I could see was tree. By the time I found him I died)

2. When/How much to melee? (is the Naturalist talent in Restoration worth it?)

Never in PvP. Even if OOM you're best to run and drink rather than melee for mana (unless you're 1v1 with a Holy Priest or something). In PvE you should grind with a nuke nuke autoattack routine adding more nukes in as mana permits. Just make sure you nuke in bursts at the start of the fight to maximise your time outside the 5 second rule

3. Major stats other than stamina and resilience?

Spell damage, spell to hit, spell crit. When I was Moonkin I took cloth armour but if your focus is arenas you probably want the leather unless there's a ton more spell damage on the cloth option

4. 4/4 Improved Nature's Grasp was a staple of my flag-running build...do I need it here?

Roots are crucial. You can really disadvantage most classes by keeping your root on: melee classes are obvious but also priests can't fear unless they can get close, mages need to be fairly close for most of their instants etc. I think it's best to take both 4/4 Improved Nature's Grasp and Control of Nature.

Basic strategy is to control the opponent with roots then nuke them down. Roots tend to come in two flavours - breaks first time you cause additional damage or never breaks before opponent is dead. It's wonderful to trap some poor Warrior in roots of the second type and nuke him down while he watches helplessly

Kiting is another valuable technique. Either strafe away or run directly away firing nukes by jumping, spinning 360 degrees, firing the moonfire mid-spin (when you're facing them) and landing facing away from them and still running. That's mainly a Hunter technique, most veteran hunters can show you how to do it

Don't be embarassed to Moonfire spam people to death. A full Balance druid can kill someone pretty fast with just Moonfire and it's not worth trying to cast an interruptible nuke if you have a rogue warrior or shammy on you

Remember your healing options, very easy to cancel the Moonkin buff and become a pretty strong healer even with no points in Resto. It's damage and healing gear for a reason

[Watto44]

Short version: What talents do Lurkers recommend for a druid looking to spec 31 or 41 into Balance for PvP?

In advance of the 2.0.10 patch, it occurred to me that Balance might be a great non-healing PvP spec. About half of what I do in our Arena 5v5 is Balance and 2.0.10 raised Moonkin armor to be equal to bear. But I've always been a feral druid and looking over the Balance tree, there are many significant questions like:
1. Are Treants worth it?
2. When/How much to melee? (is the Naturalist talent in Restoration worth it?)
3. Major stats other than stamina and resilience?
4. 4/4 Improved Nature's Grasp was a staple of my flag-running build...do I need it here?

Not to mention the questions I'm not even smart enough to ask. Thanks!

Before I say anything, I should mention that my druid hasn't been specced balance for about six months, and even then it was a weird balance/feral hybrid build that didn't really work out.:)But here's my two cents anyway.

1.) It really depends where the point will be going if it's not in treants. Still, almost certainly worth grabbing since I'd assume you'll be going 40 points into balance anyway.

Some of the benefits of treats that I can see: they can break hunter freezing trap. (Although most hunters are using frost trap now, it'd still be nice.) They're a constant spell casting knockback nightmare. (The benefit of that can't really be overstates. Just ask a hunter.) They're a really nice DoT that can't be dispelled.

The downside: For giant walking trees, they go down very quickly.

2.) Not very much at all. I would probably skip that talent in favor of something else. The only times I can see you being in melee range are: potentially against hunters. You'll be trying to do a 5/8 kite against them, erring on the side of 5 rather than 8, so you might get an extra swing in. When you've been silenced: if you can't get out of range quick enough, you may as well run in a dance around the caster trying to cancel their spells with facing and causing a bit of spell knockback with your weapon.

Honestly, I can't see Naturalist helping much in either of those cases. If you're spending the points in resto, Nature's Focus or Natural Shifter are probably better options on that tier.

3.) Basically what Brista said, although if you have the Balance of Power talent, addition +hit won't help you in PvP. (Plus spell hit is basically capped at 3% for PvP.) It's also worth shopping around and trying to grab some spell penetration if you can. Not really sure how much this helps a balance druid, but it makes quite a lot of difference for my mage, especially when I'm fighting demo locks.

4.) What Brista said.:)

Depending on where you want to spend your other points, it might also be worth grabbing furor and feral charge. Absolutely brilliant kiting ability.

Not sure what else to say. GL and kick some butt.:)Gogo boomchicken.:D

edit.: Forgot to mention: don't ignore Imp. Wrath, even if you're going 4/4 Imp. Nature's Grasp. Wrath will probably end up being your primary damaging spell. Unless the target is snared or CCed, the cast time of starfire makes it prohibative.

[Brista]

3.) Basically what Brista said, although if you have the Balance of Power talent, addition +hit won't help you in PvP. (Plus spell hit is basically capped at 3% for PvP.) It's also worth shopping around and trying to grab some spell penetration if you can. Not really sure how much this helps a balance druid, but it makes quite a lot of difference for my mage, especially when I'm fighting demo locks.

Oh good point. Make it spell damage, spell crit and spell penetration then instead of what I wrote before

edit.: Forgot to mention: don't ignore Imp. Wrath, even if you're going 4/4 Imp. Nature's Grasp. Wrath will probably end up being your primary damaging spell. Unless the target is snared or CCed, the cast time of starfire makes it prohibative.

Agreed but note that this talent has been changed for the better and now improves Starfire as well. An absolute no brainer imo in its new form

Here's a possible build:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tjruiIsguqoZx

[Frag]

Here's a possible build:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tjruiIsguqoZx

I believe it's worth taking 3 points from Brambles and 1 point from Imp. FF and putting 4/5 points into Nature's Focus. You can find one more point from somewhere, Dreamstate maybe, to take it to 5/5. As Brista pointed out, the ability to heal as well as damage is one of your strongpoints and trying to cast even a regrowth w/o Focus is going to be very, very difficult.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Monkey]

Following the suggestions from this thread, I put together a trial build and have been running it for the past week in battlegrounds, instances, and arenas. Here are some observations from the first week:

1. I miss Primal Tenacity...a lot.
2. Moonkin is not as tough as Dire Bear.
3. Moonkin needs a better caster-counter than Treants.

Overall, I think I'm going to be some kind of Balance spec for the rest of the Arena season. My team tends to rely on me for a lot of CC and Balance is the best tree for that. As a bonus, treants appear to help save healers getting focus-fired by sowing confusion and chaos among the melee. Moonkin form isn't really useful because I need to go from healer->CC->healing->DPS very fast. But we did discover that some races can hide inside the moonkin--this is best used by gnome mages with short names.

The exception is when escaping melee, my tactics were Nature's Grasp->Dire Bear and they're now Moonkin->Nature's Grasp. Because of the mechanics of Dire Bear/Caster hit point conversion, I'm not convinced this is an overall improvement in solo PvP. It probably will show value in higher level Arena PvP.

This is what my trial build is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=MtjrzicoxuhoxMhoZV0h

But having experienced a great deal more resists than I anticipated, I am considering a move to:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=0tjrzicoguooxMhoZV0h

I have been going OOM quite a bit, but I'm running mostly feral PvP gear still, so I think that sidegrades with more Intellect will resolve that on the strength of Dreamstate.

Edit: The usual grammatic and spelling errors.

[Watto44]

Hehe, I was going to say not to bother with the Balance of Power talent, just pick-up some armor with +spell hit on it, and then I did a search for leather gear with spell hit on it....Ouch. Only one blue item with +spell hit, which drops in heroic Durnhold.

Still, there are enough weapons, trinkets and what-not around to make balance of power an iffy talent for PvP, particularly if you put the spell strike enchant on your gloves. (Remember, you only need 37.2 - man that 0.2 is annoying - spell hit to reach 3%.)

If you're with the Scryers you can pick up this at revered, and there are a couple of quests that reward trinkets with +spell hit on them as well. (Unfortunately, they both also reward decent feral items, which you've probably already picked up.) There's also the Auchenai Staff if you're Aldor, but I wouldn't recommend that for PvP for obvious reasons.