An Ode to Treants

Playing in BG’s has taught me alot.  I’m sure playing in arena will teach me even more.

Here’s a snippet of what I’ve learned:

Barkskin is extremely important and needs to be hotkeyed.  It’s both a massive damage reduction and a chance to avoid spell interruption.  Even with wrath’s 70% resistance to pushback from damage it is still nearly impossible to cast if a hunter and their pet are on you.

Stealth is your friend.  If you can get the jump on somone then your chances of winning go up dramatically.  If a rogue gets the jump on you, then it’s goodnight.  I had a level 60 rogue absolutely demolish me last night.  I didn’t die quickly, but the combination of sap, gouge, vanish, stunlock, blind, etc allowed someone 6 levels lower than me to win.  Granted, they blew all their cooldowns and I don’t have a trinket, but it was definitely a skilled PvPer playing that rogue.  On the other hand, due to casting where it’s difficult to find me, putting treants on my target, and DPSing the hell out of the alliance, I have killed many toons 5-6 levels higher than me.

Hunters are tough, but they are beatable.  Hunters have been killing me since level 20.  Rogues and hunters seem to be the two classes that I really struggle with.  However, I am learning how to beat hunters, slowly.  If it’s a BM hunter and they pop beastial wrath, then just LOS the hunter and out heal the pets damage.  I was surprised how strong my HOTS were.  A full stack of lifebloom and rejuv is more than enough to run out the betial wrath at which time it’s GG for the hunter.  If it’s not a BM hunter, then just stick on barkskin and start the DPS race.  So far I’ve won more than I’ve lost when I just calm down, take the incoming damage, and deal out my owl power.

Treants are very useful, but need to be used correctly.  Treants really hurt shamans and warlocks (the ones who don’t AoE) since the spell pushback and lack of escape mechanism.  Mages don’t really have too much trouble (no surprise) since they just frost nova and blink.  Hunters (if they’re smart) can just feign death and the treants will go after the pet (I really hate that).  It will be interesting to see how useful they are in an arena situation.  I haven’t come across many priests, and I’m sure most would burn their fear to get them away, but I think treants may be of use against them.

Manaburn is really damn nasty.  I have yet to hotkey a macro to shift into bear and feral charge, but I will this weekend.  I’m going to need to start relying on this, especially against a priest or mana draining team.  I still haven’t figured out how to go against arena hunters who will be smart enough to drain my mana.  I can just cleanse the poison, but even a tick or two is enough to take a good chunk of mana away.

Moonkin form isn’t all that great, yet.  Maybe with good gear (high resil and high armor) I’ll start seeing the benefit of Moonkin form.  Right now the armor isn’t really helping out much and I find myself in caster form throwing up HOTS more and more often.  I’m not giving up on it, yet, because I truly want to make a moonkin viable in 3v3 (and I love the treants) but I’m already getting doubts and thinking about the 27/0/34 spec.

The main thing I need to focus on is not getting frustrated.  My gear sucks.  I have no trinket.  I have really low stamina (I saw a moonkin 3 levels lower than me with 1k more health… how does that happen?).  I have zero resil.  Yet, I do have strong DPS, strong healing, and druids are damn fun so far.  I really just need to realize these next 2 months are going to be spent getting my ass kicked.  As long as I can accept that, and my arena teammates want to constantly get a beatdown while we learn, we’ll come out on top.