Pandaria Symbiosis Choices for Resto Druid BGs in MoP

[Laethea]

I thought I'd try to get some discussion going on the best symbiosis choices for a resto druid doing bgs, including rbgs, on Frostwolf.

I do a lot of bgs on my horde and ally resto druids, and these are the symbiosis choices I make most often, along with reasons:

- Deterrence (Hunter gets Dash). I probably choose deterrence most often, since it's kind of a "jack of all trades" ability, with a relatively short cooldown- 2 mins. Deterrence can save you from either a destro warlock's chaos bolt, a hunter's shots, or a melee class' attacks.

One thing I like about deterrence compared to ice block (aside from the obviously much lower cooldown) is that you can move and position yourself for when deterrence passes. This positioning can either be defensive- moving behind line of sight, or offensive. I use it offensively a good bit, by positioning myself right in the middle of the enemy team and then spamming disorienting roar as the deterrence is about to pass. The roar won't actually happen until the deter passes, so you can ensure that the moment you are vulnerable again, the enemy players will get cced. If you're tauren, you can follow the disorienting roar up with a war stomp, as I often do.

Deterrence is the clear choice at Temple of Kotmogu, since you can deter while carrying the orb. I'm not sure if this is a bug, since you can't deter while carrying the flag, but it's very strong at ToK regardless. I also like deter for when a rogue opens on me with garrote instead of cheap shot. If you immediately deter, you can waste his opener, and you can tell you team to burst the rogue when his few seconds of subterfuge stealth pass.

The main downside to deterrence compared to ice block is that it doesn't remove DOTs, so it can be fairly useless (and shouldn't be taken) if you're fighting a lot of s priests, aff locks, survival hunters, ferals or boomies.

Another good thing about deterrence is that it provides a very strong ability - dash - to any hunter who chooses to use it. I often tell the hunter I'm giving symbi to macro it to master's call, which will make him a kiting (or flag carrying) god while both are active. It's especially strong when used with the glyph of master's call, which a lot of MoP hunters take. An rbg team could make a good fc out of a survival hunter with glyphed master's call, symbi dash, the posthaste talent (sprint after disengage), and the entrapment/lower trap cd that survival has.

- Ice block (mage gets healing touch). I don't take ice block as much as deterrence, but it's very useful against DOT-intensive teams, such as those previously mentioned. It is also useful against a ww monk's untrinketable fist of fury, and rogue stun openers.

The 5 min cooldown is the main downside for me- that's really long. Plus, you are stuck in place for its duration and unable to heal your team, so the ten seconds of ice block will usually be excessive and you'll want to cancel it. I find that just pressing my symbiosis macro twice cancels it, with no need for a /cancelaura Ice Block macro. Warriors can also, of course, break it with their shattering throw ability, but it's not the end of the world if that happens since, for me anyway, the main use of ice block is to clear dots. I usually cancel it myself and resume healing my team after a few seconds. Priests have to glyph mass dispel to make it break ice block in MoP, and I don't recall getting mass dispelled much while in ice block, so I suspect most priests don't take that glyph in bgs.

Ice block can also be used as a cc break, but a very expensive one.

Ice block gives a very useful healing touch heal to the mage, and I find that I get more requests for symbi from mages than any other class. I'll usually accommodate them if they are guildies, otherwise I'll tell them the best way for them to stay alive is for me to stay alive, and I often think there's a better choice than ice block, with its long cd.

- Intimidating Shout (Warrior gets stampeding roar). I like warrior fear a good bit against teams heavy in rogues and ret paladins. It only has a 90 second cd, which is nice. Warrior fear is physical, not magical, so it's a good answer to a rogue's cloak of shadows. Other melee have an answer to fear, though - such as warrior berserker rage, ww monk nimble brew and DK icebound fortitude.

One annoying aspect of warrior fear is that it requires you to target the enemy to fear them. That's why my symbiosis macro is:

/targetenemyplayer [noharm]
/cast [@focus,help,exists] Leap of Faith
/cast Symbiosis.

That targets the closest enemy player, assuming I don't already have an enemy targetted. Of course, it also targets the enemy with other forms of symbiosis, but I generally use mouseover macros to heal, so that's not a big deal for me. The Leap of Faith part is reference to priest symbi, of course- I don't take that much, but, when I do, I use it to grip a friendly flag carrier, who I always focus.

- Evasion (Rogue gets a modified version of Growl). I never used to take evasion, since my basic strategy as a resto druid is to run away from people attacking me, using mass entanglement, displacer best and other such abilities. Of course, you can't dodge attacks from behind, so evasion is useless if your back is to the enemy while running away.

Recently, however, I have found evasion to be extremely useful against hunter-heavy teams. I decided to try it when I saw I was facing, on my horde druid, a couple of very good hunters from my ally guild. I knew they would target me mercilessly, so I gave evasion a try, and it worked great. One of the hunter changes (which I hate on my hunter) in MoP was that, along with removing the dead zone, WoW developers made hunter shots dodgeable. Before MoP, evasion only gave the rogue a 20% chance to have ranged attacks miss, but in MoP hunter shots are dodgeable like anything else.

So with evasion up, you can go into a team fight against hunters, pop evasion when they target you, and continue healing your team. It may take the opposing hunters a bit of time to realize what is going on (bad ones may never realize it), which is time and dps wasted while they fire arrows that miss you. They can't even scatter trap you, since scatter shot is dodgeable. They could launch a freezing trap at you, though- so watch out for that.

I don't really take evasion outside of this specific situation, however. It is useless against casters, and I still think running away is the best strategy against melee, who should be experienced in getting behind opponents (or have abilities that counter evasion, such as a warrior's overpower or a rogue's backstab). But it's amazing against hunters.

It may sound laughable that a rogue gets growl, i.e. a taunt ability in pve, but it's actually got some pvp use as modified by symbiosis. Namely, it "increases armor by 330% and Stamina by 20%, and reduces chance to be hit by melee critical strikes by 6% for 30 sec." So tell the rogue what he's getting if you give him symbiosis.

- Icebound Fortitude (DK gets a dps version of wild mushroom).

I used to take Icebound Fortitude a good bit, but I've found it to be buggy on Warmane. Namely, I find that it often takes 2-3 seconds for it to break stuns, and this is supposed to happen instantly. That has soured me on the ability, so I really only take it if there's nothing else I like more.

One advantage of IBF compared to deterrence and iceblock is that, as with evasion, you can still use your full abilities during IBF. It also provides immunity to stuns for its duration, which is very nice. It's especially useful against ww monks' fist of fury, which is an untriketable stun but countered by IBF. Nothing kills me faster as a resto druid than a good ww monk bursting on me with fists of fury. So if I see there's a good ww monk on the other team, I will often take IBF.

I think there's a lot better case for taking icebound fortitude if you are a tree form-specced resto druid. In that case, you can (and should) pop IBF at the same time as you go to tree form. That will give you higher uptime on your ability to spam instant regrowths or whatever during tree form. If, unlike me, you find that IBF reliably breaks stuns instantly, you can wait until you get stunned to use it.

I personally am soul of the forest-specced on my druids, though, so I usually don't take IBF because of it's bugginess (for me, anyway). Plus, I've found that I died a number of times with IBF active. Its 20% damage reduction is nice but not all that powerful, and most enemies in bgs won't even notice you popped it and continue pouring dps into you. That's a downside compared to, say, deterrence, which tends to cause enemies to target someone else. Or evasion, which when used against hunters, kills their damage against you.

I've heard that the DK version of wild mushroom does a good bit of damage, but I haven't really paid attention to this issue, so I can't say if that's true. Occasionally a DK will ask me for symbi, though, which suggests that some DKs have found its damage to be powerful.

- Warlock teleport (lock gets rejuvenation).

I very rarely take warlock symbiosis, since it requires you to coordinate with the lock. That is, the warlock decides where his teleport goes, and you have to know where that is, and be within range of it, to get use out of it.

This form of symbiosis can be ground-breaking, however, if you are healing a warlock fc in the flag room at Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks. In that situation, you can coordinate with the lock and you can both teleport away out of danger. If there's a mw monk healer, he can set his transcendence there as well and join in the fun. The warlock gets rejuvenation, so that's another survival tool he has as fc.

I have done this a couple of times in bgs, with great success. After one game, I even had an enemy whisper me and accuse me of hacking until I explained what was going on. I'd note that you don't have to start the bg with this form of symbiosis to use it in the bg- you can use a /cancelaura Symbiosis macro and get rid of your current symbi and take warlock symbi if you find yourself in this situation. There's obvious potential for an rbg team to make use of this strategy.

- Leap of Faith (Priest gets cyclone). I don't take this all that often, but I notice that other druids take it a lot. The ability is self-explanatory and obviously useful, but as a soul-of-the-forest specced resto druid, I find I'm most useful healing the raid, rather than the FC. I prefer the abilities that let me stay alive, and it's not much use gripping the fc if you die soon thereafter. A tree form-specced resto druid healing an fc would probably find it useful more often.

Other forms of symbi:

Once in a blue moon I'll take a monk's fortifying brew, if nothing better is available. It's not bad, it's just not as good as other forms of symbi.

I basically never take shaman symbi for spiritwalker's grace, since I find my mobile healing as a druid is good enough without it. I'd note that an ele shaman gets solar beam from symbi, though, which is hugely powerful if used correctly. When I was healing rbgs in MoP on retail, my team would sometimes tell me to symbi an ele shaman (if we had one- we usually didn't), who would then use solar beam in conjunction with a dk's mass grip and a mage's ring of frost, just like boomies used to do to great effect in the MoP era. You really need a good, coordinated team to pull that off, though. I've never done it on Warmane, though I would in an rbg if a team asked me.

As a final note, paladin symbi is laughable for resto druids- you get cleanse. Some seem to think you get divine shield, but that's ferals who get that, not resto druids. I guess if you were really on the ball you could cleanse a shadow priest's devouring plague right after it was cast, but that's very situational, and it's hard to notice exactly when a priest uses DP on you. So I never give a paladin symbi.

Anyway, those are my experiences with symbiosis as a MoP resto druid- any comments, corrections or disagreements would be welcome.