Basic Resto PvP Tips

Aloha people, having been 85 for ... uh ... six days now, I am now totally knowledgeable and educatable about some PvP tips for trees. Although I guess they're not trees anymore.

SPEC:

I am running with 2/3/36 currently, as a minor modification from one of Lissanna's specs on her site. I am unlikely to change this when the patch hits. I pulled the point out of Swift Rejuv to put the last point into Perseverance.

There are points in Nature's Bounty already, which whill become much more valuable to our PvP once the patch hits. For PvP, faster is almost always better, and turning our efficient heal into a faster heal is big plus on my book. I think in BGs currently I'm getting kicked out of HT / Nourish probably a good...third to half of the time.

Malfurion's Gift I don't think is particularly valuable. OOC is nice for PvE, but over in the PvP area we've been dealing with gimped mana pools for a LONG time in order to get the resilience to survive, so use your tools you've always been using and don't worry particularly about getting OOM. In a BG, die. You rez with full mana ;-). In arena...get out of combat and drink. Those are standard tactics and they haven't changed. You are not locked into combat for an extended period of time like you are in PvE. The other PvP talents are more valuable, drop this for them.

Fury of Stormrage is, IMO, lackluster. Mana, again, is not really an issue we have the leisure to worry about, and wrath isn't a good thing to cast unless you're tree-formed anyway. It's the non-specced cast time that kills us on this (which tree form already fixes), not the mana cost. The 12% chance to proc an instant SF sounds like a lot but you're rather limited by RNG there to make this really worthwhile. Wrath is something you snag when you have a few spare seconds, not something you can generally afford to spam until you proc that off.

I'm jury-out on the T1 talent Blessing of the Grove. I can see the MF buff being useful for gunning down people running away in arena -- I specced 21 points into balance for that purpose back in wrath -- but I don't see where the viable points can come from. Possibly out of GotEM; what with *everything* refreshing our LB stacks (post-patch), the loss of the bloom buff may not be as yuck as it initially seems.

ROTATION:

Ha, you people are silly...rotation in PvP. Cast what's faster. Staying back is more important in wrath than it used to be, what with our much-heavier reliance on cast times. Don't be in the thick of things!

ToL if there's a mage around. I discovered to my dismay in arena that druids no longer have immunity from sheeping...you can't shapeshift out of it anymore. I'm pretty sure if you're already IN a form, you can't be sheeped. But be wary! Mages are not your friends anymore. I am told reliably that the PTR patch notes have been updated to no longer confer sheeping immunity when in ToL...gg blizz... We do have a bit of vengeance in that we can cleanse the sheeps off other people now (<3 Nature's Cure!). I think maybe mage / tree may have finally reached its viability point in 2s... *hope hope*. Tangent: 5-10 this week to start the season, which was actually really good I thought considering that we were 2 months out of practice. And that between us we had a combined 1600 resilience (1200 for me, 400 for kity). You could almost call it 6-9, as I missed the queue on one of them and Kity in her glorious mageyness still managed to kill one of the opposing team without me there. IN SQUISHY CLOTH. So if I hadn't missed the queue...probably a win.

Also: if you are at a node, use Wild Mushrooms on the flag! I know they're practically worthless in PVE at the moment, but when you're sitting there waiting for people to show up and attack you, it's not like you have anything better to do...and they're an excellent emergency-flag-tag-stopper. They won't kill anyone, but they might buy you the time you need to get someone over to the flag who can. And you'll be healing that person as they do, right? RIGHT?

Stampeding Roar is useful in a flag-running situation in TP or WSG, but elsewise treat it like a second dash CD for solo-benefit only.

GLYPHS:

...are mostly the same as in PvE. I have a major glyph slotted for Barkskin still, but that's a personal choice. I think for PvP the major (pun intended) requirements are that you put into Entangling Roots for the insta-cast, and into Treant for the camouflage I mentioned in my last post. I know, I just said a minor glyph was required...that makes me a special internet snowflake, tell me you've read anywhere else that someone required you to pick up a minor glyph ;-).

Glyph of Regrowth is still not worth it, I don't think, though I may need to do some more experimentation with it. Despite PvP placing a higher value on regrowth than PvE does, the glyph retains the same trouble -- it will auto-refresh itself *during the period of the hot* if they fall under X% health, and the hot only lasts six seconds. Window's too narrow to make this one a good pick. You're still not going to be blanketing this around, and the gains are therefore less than using your more standard PvE prime glyph selection.

Gearing to be discussed in a later post :-). Also a foray into the Rated BGs this weekend which will hopefully go well *crosses fingers*