Post by Uiselveti
It would be much easier to help if you would link your armory, but without that I can tell you how I went through on each of my druids (both lvl'd as Guardians), which will hopefully give you some help.
The first druid I lvl'd to 90 was fully raid geared, so at launch our group smashed through dungeons until 87. At 87 we group lvl'd out to 90. This is by far the fastest and easiest way, but it sounds like this option isn't available to you.
My 2nd druid to 90 I didn't have the option of group lvl'ing & was still geared in Firelands gear. I crafted a fullset of ilvl415 blues (all armor, rings, neck, etc...) & had the archaeology polearm at lvl85. As a result, I could pretty much ignore quest/dungeon gear until around ~lvl88, so I enchanted everything. You can probably pretty easily & inexpensively replace any items you have with a lower ilvl with a 415 from your AH, which will help some. At your lvl, I wouldn't worry about enchanting anything unless you have an enchanter & are sitting on a bunch of mats.
Now, the way I lvl'd that 2nd druid as a Guardian is significantly different from what you are describing doing. First off, I almost never used SD. While soloing & pulling huge packs, the ability to heal yourself is more valuable, FR scales with Vengeance so as you take more dmg you can also heal for greater amounts. Also don't forget that you can reforge, keeping in mind that hit, expertise & crit (once hit capped & at least soft capped for exp, crit gives the largest boost to rage income) all benefit your rage income (haste helps as well, but is relatively far behind the other 3). While lvl'ing, due to rounding up as big of packs of mobs as possible, expertise >7.5% is actually pretty valuable, especially when matched with high crit (I was generally 40-50% crit in bear while lvling 85-90), as this would keep my rage income exceeding my rage spent. Being rage capped, healed & using Maul (glyph it for lvling) on CD was normal while lvling. If anything, I would say that our self healing is overtuned for lvling 85-90, at 90 our healing doesn't feel overtuned.
I would recommend you go back to using Mangle on CD, especially proc'd Mangles. Skipping Mangle is giving away rage income.
As far as your talents, I took a completely different toolset for lvl'ing. I took:
- Feline Swiftness - more speed = more efficient in my mind.
- Nature's Swiftness - while lvl'ing, with high amounts of crit rating, NS+HT > Renewal, this changes some at lvl90
- Faerie Swarm - While lvl'ing I would recommend against Mass Entanglement & Typhoon; the whole point is for as many mobs as possible to get hit by Swipe & Thrash (and preferably a crit) as often as possible. That can't happen if you knock them back out of range & if you are standing in melee range of a rooted mob, your root is wasted.
- Incarnation - Soul of the Forest is a viable alternative here, especially if you are running into rage income issues. I did not take Force of Nature as I tend to get antsy if I am in combat with mobs that are not attacking me. It is easier to gauge the dmg in & healing out you need to get through the pack if you have everything on you; with Force of Nature, you can end up w/ a dmg spike when the treants are gone that can gib you if you aren't prepared.
- Mighty Bash - You want as many mobs in melee range as possible & another interrupt is always a good thing.
Hopefully this is helpful and gives you something to chew on.
Post by Thror
You seem to be extremely worried about your
SD uptime. Why do you worry about it so much? Are you having trouble
surviving? Because if you are not having trouble surviving, worrying about your SD uptime is a waste of time. I rarely use SD when I play my (lvl 86) Guardruid. All rage is mostly used on FR. I have not been killed in a dungeon so far.
Levelling is a good opportunity to learn your abilities, but it is useless to worry about an ability that mostly matters in end-game content.
And yes, do take Incarnation, and try to get some Expertise.
My 2nd druid to 90 I didn't have the option of group lvl'ing & was still geared in Firelands gear. I crafted a fullset of ilvl415 blues (all armor, rings, neck, etc...) & had the archaeology polearm at lvl85. As a result, I could pretty much ignore quest/dungeon gear until around ~lvl88, so I enchanted everything. You can probably pretty easily & inexpensively replace any items you have with a lower ilvl with a 415 from your AH, which will help some. At your lvl, I wouldn't worry about enchanting anything unless you have an enchanter & are sitting on a bunch of mats.
Heh, reminds me of
something..
Post by Uiselveti
Heh, reminds me of
something..
Lol, yup. How are you liking the monk?
Thanks for the info Uiselveti, to be honest i hadn't reforged for a while as i was swapping gear in and out quite regularly as i seem to be getting a few nice drops from mobs and it seemed like a pain to keep portalling back to a reforger, but i can see the benefits now more clearly.
I did not mean this to sound like something you should feel you should have to stay on top of, but more rather something to watch for major deficiencies (like exceptionally low expertise). If I were you, I wouldn't worry about even that too much right this second. There are 2 reasons for this:
- Ghost Iron Dragonling which can give you 600 hit, exp & crit which is very useful for lvling & avoiding having to reforge frequently, is very inexpensive, and best of all doesn't require you to be an engineer in order to equip.
- You will make greater gains by changing your playstyle for lvling.
Wasn't sure what my stats were, but Crit appears to be 30% at the moment and Hit 7.5% expertise however is down at 1% as the gear i have on is quite new, the are all greens and most items aren't even enchanted, so i'll stick the enchants on and reforge through to preferred stats and see how that goes. Thanks for the response.
I would reiterate that unless you have an enchanter & are sitting on a bunch of mats or are flush w/ gold (and don't mind blowing it on enchanting lvling gear), enchanting your gear at your lvl is a waste of time/gold. If you really want to enchant items anyway, take a peek at Thror's armory. Sha armor kits are cheap & you will not find a better return on investment for enchanting lvling gear for a Guardian.
On the subject of inexpensive enhancements, what are your professions? MoP made professions ridiculously easy to maxlvl & you might have an unexploited benefit there.