Moonkins vs. Ferals?

[Borak]

I am a decently skilled and fairly active feral druid devoted to the art of arenafighting. I am currently in a 5v5 team with a rating of 1850~ and I begin to feel like a liability for my team. They're rl friends, so theres no talk about replacing me, but I dont want our success to be hindered by my class/specc of choice.

So, I thought about respeccing to moonkin. Our team setup will be holy pally/MS warr/discholy priest/affl lock (pressumably, he's demo atm) and me. We're all skilled and most of us got good gear.

In your opinion, are moonkins better then ferals in a 5v5 environment? I figure they should be, seeing as they can cyclone/root without shifting all the time and got the manapool to cover it, they aint very squishy at all with the armor bonus, and they can pump out quite nice bursts or dot several targets. And while focused they can still perform a decent jobb, unlike a bear.

I figure if I'll go moonkin my jobb will be to keep the dps cc'd as much as possible while doting and debuffing. On the flipside, I can offheal quite good if needed.

What do you gladiators think? Do we have a better setup with me as a doomkin? And how do you deal with a moonkin on the opposing team?


EDIT: Moonkin it is, specced it even before I read the replies. About my old specc/gear, the specc was just a gimmick to see how much we would benefit from me rooting/cycloning more then beating up people. And about the gems, yeah, they're a leftover from when I tanked in that gear, jsut havent gotten around to replace them because they seemed to do the trick a lot of the time and I'm usually quite poor :cry: .

But thanks for the advice!

[goodolarchie]

Moonkins are better than ferals in general to a 5v5 because they can still CC and make for decent burst, but Resto is far far better than Moonkin. At present really only the pali is making use of your crit bonus. Your priest is better off going shadow to mate the aff lock's damage. You provide auxilary healing and massive CC. That's the best way that class combo works in my mind, at least.

And my way of dealing with moonkins? Pummel the nature tree. Kill the moonkin. Or fear / drain mana.

[buena]

I think it would definitely be better than feral.

Balance spec druids seem like they have a lot of potential that isn't being used for arena. What makes elemental shamans such a crucial part of so many high rated teams? It's their damage potential combined with the utility of totems and emergency heals. Well balance druids don't have totems or quite as much burst, but they have CC and innervate. Sounds like a pretty fair trade.

I wouldn't run around in boomkin form unless you are getting targeted. Maybe not even then - bearform or travel form and run away might be better. I think your role would mostly be to get your dots on the target and then CC with roots and cylcone. Picking your spots to throw on a few wraths or to throw some regrowths and lifeblooms around.

I'm not sure if I'd go 41+ balance or if I'd try to get NS. NS can save someone who is getting spiked, but the trees are free dps that don't take your global cooldowns or even your attention. I think I'd probably try trees first and see how it was working.

As a final thought it might make a hell of a 4 dps team with spriest, war, ua lock, balance druid. 4 warlock dots, 2 spriest dots, and 2 moonkin dots all ticking on a MSed target while the druid cyclones enemy healers or helps heal in an emergency. Sounds fun!

[Baconn]

Feral is great for locking down a healer (or 2 sometimes) but it completely encompasses the druid's time, between feral charge, bash, cyclone, and maim. That's all you'd do as a feral druid, with the odd CC and maybe beat up a caster once in awhile in cat form.

Moonkin's probably the better for 5v5, even though you can't CC as much, you can do it without constantly switching forms, debuff a lot more, and offheal when needed.

[JarL]

I've got a lot of issues with your spec and gear. You are far from fulfilling the role of a feral druid with your crit that low and a gimped feral spec. Replace your 12 stam gems with 4agi/6stam and spec 1/46/14. Your crit is about 5-8% too low and all those excess points in balance mean you have no survival of the fittest and no stun/fear resist.

But yes, moonkin would be a better choice for that matrix.

[nord]

It's exactly the same team setup we use for 5vs5.

I also pondered balance but knowing how dominant resto is in 2vs2 and 3vs3 I decided to stay resto and make it a 3 healer team.

So far I have not regretted it.