Balance or Feral?Follow

I have a low level druid (only 5), and I'm wondering if I should level it with balance or feral. I've always thought feral would be best for leveling, but I read the balance thread and started thinking that balance would be much better to go since feral got nerfed. I'll probably have moderately good gear the whole time and pvp for new gear every 10 levels, so which would be better?

Or you do the smart thing and when you run out of mana go to cat/bear and fight for a while.

First druid in a long time that I've seen to realize this. Rate up.

Bottom line is feral is alot faster 1-42. But once balance gets Moonkin and Dreamstate its pretty even.

Are you calling him a welp, or is that supposed to be some form of dialect....? And if you have moonkin and you're /oom'd, you might be better of switching out into cat form, because you can prowl and get a Pounce or something off. kind of like a starfire, just not as good. Also, Moonkin isn't until 40, so until then you can only choose bear/cat.

But I myself prefer -gasp- Restoration spec! It's definitely not the fastest, but you get +survivability for when you're trying to not get ganked, and nature's swiftness and Omen of Clarity, but you trade it for a LOT less damage. It's also a lot easier to get in a group when you mention you're a Resto-spec druid.
But Quor is right. Feral is faster, and you spend a decent time drinking (even when you get moonkin).


And I always thought shifting when you got low on mana was one of those common sense things that nobody talks about. Like you know, not sticking your hand in the fire, or keeping the pointy end of the butcher knife away from you.

lets put it this way:

as feral, youll shift out, youll heal, and youll be back at it in the time span of a regrowth cast + rejuv. rinse and repeat until you run outta mana (depending on your personal grinding speed and the rate of damage in vs damage out, this may be never). point being: your killing power is derived from something NOT reliant on your mana, leaving your mana for healing.

as a balance, youll nuke till your empty (or near empty) shift into cat or bear, finish off a fight or two, and then youre oom and low on life. so now you sit and drink. your primary form (and best/fastest as well) of killing involves expenditure of mana. youve got feral forms to use, but youre not geared for them, youre not talented for them, and youre likely low on mana by the time you shift into them (to take advantage of the way mana regens). youre also likely a bit low on life at this point, but youre oom (or near enough) and maybe shifted into a feral form. you could try to kill another one or two, and you might stretch your mana regen a bit, but youre still going to go into the next fight with less than max mana, even if you bandage....unless you sit down and eat.

so for the sake of grinding, i dont care about dreamstate or moonkin regen....feral will be quicker, and as balance, you will eat and drink more. stick a feral next to a balance, give em identical gear tailored for their specs and the feral will outperform the balance all other factors being equal. why? because the feral draws its killing power from a source NOT shared with its healing.

but hey, if you want to carry around 2-3 sets of gear before youre even 40 by all means, dont let me stop you. its your game, play it like you will. but if you want facts, then feral is hands down better for leveling until at least the mid 50's, probably until post-60.

Edited, Apr 16th 2007 1:01am by Quor

I think it was intended. My guildies use that a lot instead of saying "Well, [...]".

[Guild]Bob: welp
[Guild]Bob: its getting late i better go
[Guild]Bob: gonna have to finish this chain later

I suppose it's one of those typos that became popular like "pwn" ;)

Threads old, but im going to post anyways.

Bonus to Feral is not only the faster grinding, but by Lv21 you can have 130% run speed out doors while in cat form (which will be your new bread-n-butter for solo). Increased run speed makes a huge difference for faster leveling, catching runners, PvP, gathering skills, /flee...

Id suggest going Feral until Lv40, then consider Balanced. It'll change you game play by quite abit & help keep things interesting.


Kz

As many other posters have said, there's pre-40 and post-40.

Pre-40 it's clear that feral is the best, by a wide wide margin. There's simply no discussion if we limit this to the scope of the OP's question which was for fast leveling.

Post-40 the discussion starts, even though I'm still convinced that feral is the best choice. Of course Moonkin is also very good, but I think feral still offers more suvivability, more sustainability, more dps and especially more useful skills. +30% speed in cat form is useful no matter which way you look at it. +3 level on prowl is great to do all these dungeon quests where you'd otherwise have to clean the whole 3 times because the questgiver wasn't smart enough to give you the full assignment the first time around. Honestly stealth just makes life so much easier it's barely believable. Then with Mangle, ILotP and later Maim and OoC, the control on a fight improves, less damage is taken because of limited stunlock. And even better, it works in all situations, whereas e.g. a Moonkin can't root indoors. But I'd agree it's also a question of taste, some ppl like the spellcaster more, some like the melee fighter more.

As for resto, no need to do that (unless you like to suffer) before end-game. The survivability aspect doesn't count because it's almost impossible to kill a feral druid in "normal" situations anyway. Same lvl elites at 60+ (or even +2 lvl elites at lvl 40-50) aren't usually a problem.