Boom!

I’ve been busy levelling Ravenwynd for the last few days. Some friends have alts at around the same level and we decided to do some rep runs of The Ramparts and Blood Furnace before we started questing in earnest. Having healed these quite comfortably on my priest, even when shadow spec’d I had expected that, with a healing set, I would be able to do the same with a feral druid. How wrong I was!

We had a feral druid tanking, a rogue and 2 shaman plus me healing. As with the shadow priest I walked a fine line with regards to mana, I’d expected that. Without talents in healing you don’t get nearly as much bang for your buck, heals cost more mana and you have to cast them more often. The big problem was aggro. Like a shadow priest I had no talents reducing my threat when casting healing spells; unlike a shadow priest I didn’t have Fade. It’s a long time since I had to use fade on my priest, I’d forgotten how much I’d hammered it when healing as a shadow priest, especially when things got hairy. On our first Ramparts run aggro was a huge problem and I died a lot. Thankfully with two shammies they were able to pick up the healing when I died, usually towards the end of a fight.

After that first run I re-spec’d and went Resto and we had another Ramparts run. What a difference! I didn’t pull aggro once and healed comfortably. Of course, when I got outside and tried to kill anything I was fairly hopeless. I was feeling a bit frustrated, I’d really like to heal on my way to 70 and get used to druid healing however I also need to be able to do quests and kill things along the way. What to do? I hit the Druid forum and asked for advice. A couple of people suggested a Balance/Resto spec, something I hadn’t thought of at all. The little I’d heard about Balance druids has been very negative but I decided to give it a shot. I’ve gone just far enough into the Resto tree to get the threat reduction and put all the rest in Balance.

After the respec we hit the Blood Furnace. Again, aggro wasn’t a problem and with mana regen talents I was able to heal quite comfortably with the occasional pot on big fights. The acid test was when we finished and I went off to kill stuff on my own. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not uber dps but it’s not bad either. I can chug my way around Hellfire Peninsula and kill what I need to kill. If I’m patient and let my dots do their work I don’t have to drink too often and if I’m in a hurry, well mana juice is cheap! I have some crowd control, yes it’s situational but then a mage can’t sheep everything, a priest can’t shackle it all and there are some situations where to use fear is more than your life is worth…literally. I think the the biggest “caster” ability that I miss on my Balance druid is some sort of spell interrupt like Counterspell or Silence.

I need to work on my gear. At the moment most of my “caster” gear is weighted towards healing rather than DPS but even so I’m happy with the damage I can do. Finally, there’s Moonkin form…that dance is brilliant! Really, what’s not to like about Boomkins?!