Sunday, February 14, 2010

DPS is not for me.

.


Well after that crapstorm of a run, I think it's time for a drink.


A few weeks ago, after much thought and contemplation, I thought, hey! Druids can be boomchickens! NOWAI. Who knew? I thought durids were 4 haelz. ONLY 4 haelz. wut is this 4 fite and 4 laserchix thing??

Everyone knows that bark form is the best! I mean, my god, even APPLEBOUGH knows this, and Applebough really has some screws loose up there if you know what I'm sayin.

Anyway. Even though bark > all, I decided that I should check out how the other half lives. Er, other third. I started rolling on some 5 man ICC hit gear. I looked into what talents I should take for chicken spec. And finally, last night, I decided to try it out. It's easy right? Moonfire + wrathwrathwrath + sometimes starfire, loot, win.

....not so much.

Here are some complications of being a moonkin.

1. You need to keep Moonfire AND Insect Swarm on the mob at all times. This means keeping track of your dots. So I downloaded the addon DoTimer, because my HotCandy only keeps track of hots.

2. There's this thing called eclipse. So you wrathwrathwrath until you get a buff to starfire, and then you starfirestarfirestarfire until you get the buff for wrath.

It sounds simple.

It should be simple.

WTF. It is NOT simple. I cannot keep track of this AT ALL. AND I have Squawk and Awe, too. Which I configured to my liking! It would suddenly say "ECLIPSE!" on my screen and I'd determinedly start stabbing the 2 key with all my worth to get as many wraths in as possible. Because I was starfiring before, and ECLIPSE! means to switch to wrath right? Nope, turns out I switched to starfire too soon, and I was actually supposed to be wrathing, and THEN switching to starfire when it says OMGECLIPSE! I pretty much always had these mixed up. Bluhhhh. And then I realize that my moonfire and insect swarm fell off like, 20 seconds ago.

Complications of being a spell caster:

1. Shit dies, and then you have no target. Wtf. This does not happen on my hunter. When something dies, and I keep jabbing at buttons on my keyboard, it'll just auto switch me to a new target. Which sucks in a lot of cases - you gotta be careful with who you're shooting arrows at. For instance: Don't shoot arrows at the sheep. Don't shoot arrows at the boss that's behind the trash pull. Don't shoot arrows at your MCed guildmate. Etc. But in general, you don't have to click or tab over to mobs once one is dead.

But with Boomkin, you target something, and say: Ok. What now. Ah, yes. Moonfire. Ok: Moonfire, go! Good. Ok now..... insect swarm. Awesome, lets get all those dots going. Ok, insects are ready... and fired... ok, excellent. Now... wrath! Alright, let's wrath it up. And hitting 22222222222222...... error? Wtf? What do you mean - oh - I have no target? How do I have - wait. Okokok the target is dead, bah, pick a new one - oh god, which one do I pick?

And this is when I just close my eyes, moonfire everything, and spray wrath at anything that moves.

Not really.

But kind of.

I spent more time in my 5 man searching for a target than I did actually DPSing.

I know that my dislike of this situationa has a lot to do with the difference between healing and dpsing. In general, I know that when I'm healing a 5 man, I have complete command over the situation at hand. If someone dies, it's because 1. I was blatantly not paying attention, went afk, alt tabbed, etc. 2. Something happened that was not supposed to happen: dpser pulls aggro, tanks pulls two extra packs, someone DCs, someone stands in the fire, etc. Rarely - VERY rarely, will someone die because I'm not skilled enough to heal them. I'm not saying it's never happened, but it's pretty rare (I'm talking about 5 mans here). I'm just very used to healing, you know? It's what I DO.

With DPS, it's a different story. I fumble around, everything is new and confusing, and I'm desperately trying to figure out what my next move will be (sounds like an awkward high school date, no?).

Although I do like DPSing my hunter, to a large degree (still like healing better).

Maybe I'm just not used to moonkin spec yet - but joaeifjfsrofvnsojdn, no thanks - I'll go back to healing, please!

Have you healers ever tried out DPSing? What did you make of it?

.

20 remarks:

Deandre said...

It's easier than cat form, but Boomkin is one of the hardest to get good DPS out of, and ...even though I raid as one...I abhor eclipse. With burning, flaming, fiery, Ragnaros with heartburn, LET THE FIRES OF HELL ITSELF RAIN DOWN UPON...you get the idea...passion.

I envy my wife's mage. Arcane Blast a few times, Arcane Missile...repeat. Oh look! I had to change targets, at least I don't have to get two dots up to improve my primary nukes!

Ioni said...

omg you made me laugh so hard with this!

Kae said...

I went cat. I found it easier.

:)

Red said...

/startattack
/cast Wrath

make it a macro, slap it on your bar. It will target your nearest enemy and turn your melee attack on. I found this useful for the occasional weapon skill point. Make one for all your common nukes, and spam away. Just make sure you don't pull extra mobs.

Melanie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
coraline said...

"I spent more time in my 5 man searching for a target than I did actually DPSing."
This! I'm a priest trying to find her dark side (after healing my way to 80) and a tree who is sometimes a fail owl. I always pray for tanks who do big pulls so I can just hurricane (or mind sear) away... I don't have problems tracking my hots on 25 different targets, but my dots? Too complicated! :D

Andy said...

The only action my boomchicken sees is on Saurfang (typhoon knockback + hunter frost trap = blood beast domination) so I'm by no means an expert. Still, I've found the best way to dps 5 mans is hurricane spam on trash mobs (AoE deeps ftw!) and only renewing your DoTs on boss pulls after eclipse ends.

(I don't know how good DoTimer is, but maybe you should try out the eclipse addon. It not only tells you when to renew DoTs but also shows which eclipse has procced and how much time is left on it.)

Regardless, I'm with you. Healing takes the cake over lazer turkey, kitty deeps or bear spanking every time.

Happy Valentines Day!
<3

Artheoon said...

In heroics, pull instance, cast Hurricane, sit back and relax. :-)

Seriously, if you are overgeared for heroics, you can just ignore Eclipse and Starfire and even Insect Swarm if you want at least a Wrath to land before the mob is dead. Raid bosses are a different story, that should work exactly like you said. But it's possible to get used to it. What is hard to get used to is that moonkins once were at the top of the DPS charts and now a rogue in greens can outdps you.

StaggerLee said...

That's well funny, and I can totally relate - though, I started out as moonkin and had never tried to heal anyone but myself.
When I hit 80 and dual-specs was an option, I went Resto for a change of pace - That was loadsa fun, mainly because I suddenly was mr. Popular! Going from being frowned upon to being in huge demand, is quite a change!

I have healed a lot and I have blown things to the moon a lot.
But, whenever I change spec, it is all one big mess!
The GCD is not the same for both gearsets :/ which means I HoT up the entire raid, and then realize only half of them got the HoT ...
I have a lot of "wait, wut? o.O"-moments ...'

If you run with the same tank a lot, I can heavily recommend an assist macro.
Never use DoTs on thrash, they'll never get to tick -wrath spam and hurricane is the winning path!
Except you dps with a lot of your super-haste healing gear, then Starfire spam wins.

Jaedia said...

I think the moonkin rotation just made my head explode!

I'm the other way around though, used to DPSing and healing scares the crap out of me.

Anya @ On Starships and Dragonwings said...

Yes! I'm dual specced boomkin too, but I use Quartz aaaaand. Sqawk and Awe probably, but there is something nice that counts down my dots for me and also tells me which eclipse, so I don't find it tooooo bad. Basically what makes it easy for me is that the blog post that I use as my guide says this.

Start a fight with insect swarm moonfire (buttons number 2 and 3 for me) then start wrathing it up until you hit eclipse, then start starfireing it up until the eclipse goes away at which refresh dots and keep starfiring until you get the next eclipse, so refresh your dots when your eclipse is up but the next hasn't hit yet... I still forget, but it works pretty well. I think it's mostly just getting used to it, so go attack some training dummies!

lissanna said...

Murmurs just wrote up a whole 101 guide for boomkin.

http://www.wow.com/2010/02/12/shifting-perspectives-balance-101/

lissanna said...

Also, Squawk and Awe track BOTH your DOTs and Eclipse, so ditch Dot timers.

Also, practice at one of the training dummies in a major city before trying to cast on moving targets in instances.

Hurricane on all the trash mobs (3 or more mobs)

lissanna said...

Also, Squawk and Awe track BOTH your DOTs and Eclipse, so ditch Dot timers.

Also, practice at one of the training dummies in a major city before trying to cast on moving targets in instances.

Hurricane on all the trash mobs (3 or more mobs)

Anonymous said...

Caster DPS, oh the horror. One would think that caster healers would be good at caster DPS, but that is a vicious lie. This is because, as a healer, I hit the button when I think it's situationally appropriate, not because my last heal happens to have ended (though that may very well be the case). Having to chain together casts at exactly the right moment is... exhausting.

I play a cat. There's more wiggle room for WHEN you hit your button. As long as you're not wasting energy by being at 100, it's all good.

theGnomeDruid said...

even having a dps dot class as my main (affliction warlock) i can't get a handle on boomkin dps.

I probably need to go spend a little quality time with the training dummies.

but .. I don't really go boomy for anything other than questing so ... I've not yet convinced myself that's a necessity...

Liz said...

Lol, welcome to the "DPSing is hard as a druid" club. Srsly, whether it's cat or boomkin it's complicating. Though once you do it a lot you get better at your rotation. So don't give up yet! I play a cat druid for my OS and I was terrible when I first started out, but after I memorized (lol) my rotation I got better at it. I did a lot of practicing on the dummies in towns which helped a lot.

If you haven't seen it already you should look up the "cat dps flowchart". Hah, so true. They should make one for bommkin too.

Floella said...

I realize that this post is from a little while back but I just stumbled onto your blog (I've been browsing resto druid ones for a while now :D) and this just made me laugh.

Recently I started raiding again with my guild after maybe a month of a break. In that month my guild managed to lose all the boomkins we had and gained 2 resto druids, so when I came back, they asked me to be boomkin instead of heals. Pretty much the same story as you...it's annoying, irritating, and stupid.

I have a warlock and I can dps on her like no tomorrow, but I cannot dps as a boomkin. I can only be a tree because that is my true calling. So heh, you're not alone in your boomkin dps mess...I'm right there with you :) Safe to say I'm back to healing in my guild because even they agree that I sucked, haha.

Teek said...

I love having to move for fight mechanics just as I proc :D

My offspec is primarily reserved for a soloing and mild pvp hybrid feral druid, I tried to oomkek and just couldn't stay interested :(

it'll always be tree for me!

Kafka said...

I suggest trying kitty :D I got SOOO bored of boomkin, every fight is exactly the same. Feral DPS is even my main spec now (most fun Ive had in WoW) and with 4T10 you can give the rogues a run for their money. I found it extremely difficult at first but once you get used to it it's FUN!