I'm Resto, heart and soul. I went to Sunwell Isle to start accumulating Sunwell Rep and realized right away that there is no way I'm going to last a minute soloing that area with my current Spec.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Misha&n=Magellan

I raid heal every weekend, so I've got a week to race through my quests. I have to decide on one of the following:

1) Keep my healing Spec and complete my Sunwell Isle quests with a group. Perfect solution, but not likely;

2) Switch back to Feral for a week, I already have a nice feral set that just needs to be dusted off and is ready to go;

/or

3) Switch to Balance for a week and use my current gear. I have never played balance, and have just recently thrown some extra points into the Balance tree for dailies and such, and I find that I'm quite liking it.

Problem is, all of my gear is strictly Feral or Healing. I don't really have any Balance gear.

I'd like to try option 3 because I'd really like to try Moonkin form, but, I don't know if I can get away with using my current gear for Balance? Just for a week?

I'm pretty new, but I've become a big fan of the Dreamstate +1 build, 34/0/27 that I am working toward. Cheap Regrowth due to 2.4, good mana regen and damage talents, Moonkin form bonuses, and +heal/+dam gear like yours should equal a lot of fun. My guess is that since your healing gear has +spell damage on it; you should be fine for just a week.

When you're outside you can root rot mobs all day long in Boomkin form, and if you have to take a few hits fighting indoors you'll last a lot longer without needing to change forms due to the armor bonus. The crit bonus is nice, and noticable, too.

Speccing up to Boomkin will increase your damage output by a ton, you will be pleasantly surprised. I know it's a different world at 70, but FWIW I select gear based on +heal, and still have a blast.

Sorry if I sound like a fanboi noob, but I haven't had this much fun on a toon in any game, ever. ;-)

Oiy

I've read that the 20/0/42 build provides nice balance DPS and all the tree talents you need. Could even go to 21/0/41 since a few of the Tier2/3 Resto talents aren't really needed when raid healing.

im a huge fan of dreamstate, but your guild will want you to tree heal for the raid probably, which is better imo. the problem with dreamstate is that it is very gear dependant, so your healing will suffer very little from it and your booming will be very subpar since you dont have the gear.

my suggestion (if your not into pvp and/or on a pvp server) is to ditch natures grasp for starlight wrath. a point in NS is so/so but 5 points is too much for anything not related to pvp. half a second less on cast is huge and awsome. also pick up brambles instead of improved moonfire and control of nature. moonfire is a mana hog and a little bit of crit on part of a spell isnt worth it unless your gearing to gain more benefit. IS and roots with 3 in brambles is an efficient dot, and if your patient (and if you have been grinding resto you must be) you can have little to no downtime doing your grinds. just use your resto gear and you will have plenty of dmg for grinding.

now the sunwell daily's suck because stuff spawns on you all the time and there a hundred ppl there grinding so its a little different. if you really want to spec to grind there pick up celestial focus and control of nature so you can cast when something spawns on you. most places its not necesary if your not too lazy to root.

Starfire, root, IS, wait till roots is half expired and repeat. 2 rotations of this and it will be dead or close to it and you havent even been touched. if it hits the fan, hot your self and wrath spam.

if your on a pvp server dust off the feral gear. if you dont want to then get any anti pushback you can (control of nature, celestial focus, 1 point of NG) and roll a bloom while you spam wrath or MF.

I'm Resto, heart and soul. I went to Sunwell Isle to start accumulating Sunwell Rep and realized right away that there is no way I'm going to last a minute soloing that area with my current Spec.
Why not? I solo there all the time. My spell dmg is a little better than yours but not hugely.

You might just try putting a few more points into Balance. Here's my character sheet. I have a few pieces of +spell dmg gear now but I did ok soloing before I had those.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=The+Scryers&n=Zute

For technique what I do is open with Starfire, immediately root. Moonfire, Swarm, wrath, wrath, wrath, dead. If I get beaten on, I pop a lifebloom or two.

Try balance. All druids should try all specs imo. Any excuse to try it once is valid. :>
Your healing gear will be fine to get a basic idea. Just imagine that your nukes do way, way more damage, and that will give you an idea of what geared-for-it moonkins can do. :>


-Annikk

You bonus damage is fine for soloing at Isle of QQ. I do it all the time in my PVP gear, which drops my bonus damage by almost two hundred as compared to my PVE gear (from 666 -> 475ish). Things take a little longer to kill and my mana regen sucks balls, but at least I do a little better when horde jump me ...

My goal with Babycow is end-game resto. Thus, I'm levelling balance so I can choose all of the good resto gear and not really be harming my questing abilities. So far I'm doing amazingly well (imo) and hold top spots still in instances on the dmg meter.

i began my days as a young druid as a boomkin and after i hit 70 i became resto for my guild and i loved it but since the xpansion came out ive chosen to lvl to 80 in boomkin form the only actual boomkin gear i have is some old pvp gear so i just use my resto gear its extremely powerful and since healing power and spell power are the same you just have to ask yourself if when doing quests and dailies require crits and haste or just mad mp5 its your call but i am stomping the scourge in my resto gear:duel2:

I've levelled to 80 with the sole intention of re-speccing back to Resto. So, I've collected more healing gear than DpS gear.....however, a lot of my guildies have respecced to healing and I'm now actually needed to provide DpS for 5-mans. Which, I don't mind (because it's a nice change), but suffised to say, I'm not exactly topping any damage meters.

I CANNOT wait to start healing 25-man's again. That's my thing.

And, hello??? Bag space? Good grief, I GOTTA clean out some of that gear!!! It's gonna hurt because some of it was SO hard to get. /sob

It's tough being so versatile sometimes.

:banghead:

Argh bag space... After just respeccing to boom, I'm still carrying all my feral gear for those "just in case I need to shift" moments... and yeah... I think i'm going to have to stop doing that. Outfitter makes it too easy & tempting to do that, but there's just not enough room!!!

I actually made it official by dumping all of my extra healing gear in the bank. Unless I REALLY need the extra gear I can't afford to carry it anymore.

Hell I ran out of bag space soo much I elected to just spend 1k getting a banking guild set up. I'm soooo much happier now that I have the space.

The original bag you get when you create your character (16 slot i think) that's not replaceable, is it?

The original bag can't be upgraded for now.

About being balance with resto gears. I am doing it presently and everything is fine as long that I don't try to cast on mob that are 2 level higgers that me. As I don't have any + hit bonus.

Eridalafar

Ugh, I seriously change my spec so often I have to keep my gear in my bag. I currently carry 58 pieces of gear that make up the outfit for 4 different roles.

Always need your kitty and heals set when tanking (just good practice)

Always need Heals and Boomkin sets when doing either of those Roles

And Always need to keep your bear/resto set with when feral DPSing.

Oh, and don't forget food buffs and flask for each role too! :)

I wish blizz would release a "Gear" bag. Even if it were unique equip, a 32 slot bag for gear would be uber useful! I have a 32 slot LW & Mining bag(maybe only 28??? can't remember), that sit in my bank, holding mats I won't ever use. Why can't they give us one that would be useful?

I feel your pain on the gear issue, Solar. I tote 4 sets of gear around with me at all times: Bear set, Kitty set, Healer set which really only makes a gimp Off healer, and PvP healer set. I have 20 slot bags equipped, except for the original Backpack that I can't replace (argh!). Up until last night when i consolidated a few of my sets (my PvP gear and dps gear are interchangeable to a point, relying on crits to keep up SR rotations, that's not gonna last for further endgame though) I had like 5 empty slots. Now my backpack is mine again (for the time being)

I dont understand why u carry (as feral)
a healer- and boomkin-set with you.
You will do crap healing and crap caster-damage.

And if someone wants you to respec for heal,
then take the time to go to your bank and get your specific gear.

I have 3 gear with me at all time:
- Tank
- DPS
- PvP

They take up 2 bags in my inventory.
Half a bag is for buff-food and the rest is free to use as i like.

i mis-spoke...
about 4.5 sets of gear: PvP set, Bear set, kitty set, Healer set and PvP healer set, although the PvP healer set is getting cleaned out momentarily. The PvP healer set had some overlapping items with my healer set, and the PvP set has some overlapping items with my dps set (the dps set is going to get more specialized though)
the healer set started as a habit, more than anything else... back in the Kara days when we were running 2 healers, there were a couple fights where i would fill in as 3rd healer, so i kept maintaing my healing set through Wrath... It's fallen relatively short with the new content, and I'm really only picking up heroic drops atm (when we're running with a priest so i can need the leather)...

When the dual-spec hits, I don't know if I'm going with kitty dps and healer, or kitty dps and tank... ath this point, our guild is looking for healers more often than tanks, so im leaning towards resto.

I dont understand why u carry (as feral)
a healer- and boomkin-set with you.
You will do crap healing and crap caster-damage.

And if someone wants you to respec for heal,
then take the time to go to your bank and get your specific gear.

I have 3 gear with me at all time:
- Tank
- DPS
- PvP

They take up 2 bags in my inventory.
Half a bag is for buff-food and the rest is free to use as i like.

Hmm, I have to disagree. As bear spec, I can toss on my heal set and have +1500 SP and ~200 MP5. Yes, I lack WG and Swiftmend, but if you think rolling hots from feral in caster gear don't make a difference, I think you haven't encounter the right situation (Sapph-Naxx). I can maintain 1.5-2k HPS as feral. Thats a big difference in a fight where you are just barely failing. Instead of my crappy 1500 DSP as kitty I can contibute 1500+ HPS and lift the burden of Decursing from the real healers.

I could certainly leave gear in the bank, but I often get the "oh, we need a ______" and we are all set to run. So the respec is rushed and forgetting gear or Outfitter failing to pull out an important peice could be waisting 24 other peoples time and not just my own.

Also, a feral (kitty druid) will do more damage just spamming hurricane in a decent boomkin set, than they will do as a kitty single targeting each mob down on trash pulls. Until Swipe is tested and proven, there is a good need for caster sets to be carried.

On top of the gear, I try to keep buff food/pots/flasks for almost every spec, not just for my own needs, but heck...its a burden of being a raid leader too long. Someone always forgets somthing.

Also, on a side note...when I have all my gear with me its easy to tell if that offspec roll the was just spammed in RW is an upgrade or not. There is no way I could keep track of 4-5 sets of gear without having it with me.

I carry:

Bear Set (Main Spec)
Kitty Set (Obviously for fights that require one tank, plus some pieces are shared)
Healer Set (Shares peices with Boomkin)
Boomkin Set (Shares peices with healer/PvP)
PvP (Boomkin)

I have to agree with solar. As a Feral I always carry a full healing kit (i guess it could be used for ranged dps, but I've never really tried that...), tanking kit and kitty kit. Right now I have quite a bit of overlap between cat and bear so I only need 1.75 (20 slot) bags to carry all that gear. And I use my healing kit from time to time. And like Solar said, I wouldn't know if an item was an upgrade if I'm not carrying it with me. FWIW, Resto/boomkins have it so easy when gearing up since they can take cloth or leather. I've ended up with nearly 1700 healing just from pickup up the scraps. In fact, my healing kit is far, far nicer than my feral kit.

Since I no longer have the need (yeah nice BoE crafted items, woot!!!!) and have never had the desire to PvP, I don't have to carry around PvP stuff anymore. But, when I did, I had my Feral PvP set with me at all times (and only 18 slot bags).

Now in LK, I never have a bag space issue (20 slot bags and no PvP set!!!). I really should start carrying more food/potions/scrolls with me just to fill the space. As long as I have full 20 slot bag empty at the beginning of the day I have more than enough space for anything I could possible do. In BC, I often had to get by with just 12 slots free. Now I have more than 30...

Regarding outfitter, the one thing I hate about it is that it never puts my healing off-hand back in the right place. It always puts it in last available spot, rather than the first available spot. I can't tell you how many times I have accidentally sold my healing off-hand. ugh!

My love of the druid flexibility is also my curse.

And I can't put my gear in the bank....thats full too! Certianly some spring cleaning is needed there. But on top of gear collection, I am a bit of an AH junky too. I like to buy in bulk and then slowly trickle junk back into the game when pricing is favorable. Oh, who am I kidding, I am a pack rat!

And yes, I have a bank alt with his own guild and two pages full of stuff. But I leveled JC in a weekend and spent about 1k gold in the process. So, that pile of junk saved me at least 2k.

I have your same issue Tlbj, my Boomkin and Healing sets are far superior to my tanking set (I suppose that makes some sense, since we are allowed 1 Main spec item and unlimited offspec items). I got a chance to DPS a naxx last week (most, healed Sapph), and ended up second on overall damage, as offspec! So that lit a fire under a good portion of our DPSers! Slackers.

I carry:

Bear Set (Main Spec)
Kitty Set (Obviously for fights that require one tank, plus some pieces are shared)
Healer Set (Shares peices with Boomkin)
Boomkin Set (Shares peices with healer/PvP)
PvP (Boomkin)

QFT

Getting a gear management addon like Outfitter helps a lot.

But I love the idea of a gear bag!

since i last posted here I've won the roll for the 22 slot bag in OS, determined that i REALLY like having extra slots, and went ahead and bought Haris Pilton's Gigantique Sack... I actually have enough room in all my bags to run the Hodir dailies, looting everything, and skinning all that i can, without having to stop at the quartermaster to unload vendor trash... I love it!

y kitty gear has gotten a couple upgrades, too. I won the roll on the T7.5 gloves the same night in OS, and I've finally dinged exalted with the Wyrmrest Accord, so i picked up the bracers and fur-lined 'em. Just those 2 improvements, and I'm finding myself more consistantly in the top 2 for Damage Done on the meters.

Has anyone else experienced a problem with Outfitter since the patch? I don't see my Outfit bar, and I keep getting an error when i try to open Outfitter :(

Outfitter released an updated version the day after patch I believe. Mine is working fine.

I also won the 22 slot bag, but refuse to buy the gigantique sack, I will instead wait until a guildy can make me the 22 slot bag available from tailors.

I have begun to leave my PVP gear in the bank, which I hate, because I like to just jump in a BG or arena out of the blue, but such is life. Most of my PvE gear is better for PvP anyway.

WoWmatrix is a great mod to help manage mods. ( I know, its a sickness) They had most of the patch friendly mod updates within 24 hours of patch.

weird... when i go to Curse, it only shows the update from 11/22/08... i think i have that update already, but i may have to try again when i get home tonight