Monk Heirlooms

With the beta invites being sent out by the hundreds of thousands and the expansion drawing ever closer to going live, I think it’s time to start getting plans for heirlooms in motion.

I know a lot of people will not want to use heirlooms on their monks, especially since the class and expansion are going to be brand new, but I also know that there are a lot of people who really don’t like the leveling process at all who are going to make use of every heirloom they can get their hands on. And you can’t forget the twinks, of course.

This guide is written for those of you who do want to use heirlooms on your Monks, and would like a little direction in which purchases to make, and which enchants to use on them if you feel like maximizing your leveling potential.

As you continue reading, please keep in mind that this guide is aimed strictly at showing you which heirlooms are you best option among the heirloom gear; I am not necessarily saying that you should use these heirlooms exclusively and ignore all other gear. For example, I would never use the Dread Pirate Ring unless I really wanted to level a character quickly because it offers only secondary stats and an experience bonus. I would much rather use rings that provide a bonus to my primary stats that I know I’m going to use. As a guide that covers heirlooms though, I’m going over every slot for which heirlooms exist to say, “if you’re going to use an heirloom in this slot, then this is the one you want.”

Heirlooms in Mists of Pandaria
As far as we are aware at this point, there have been no new changes to heirlooms in the upcoming expansion. The items still have the same level restrictions, the same item level limits that prevent using upgraded enchants, a quick scroll through the list looks like they all give the same bonuses to the same stats, and there is still no way of getting heirlooms from one server to another without paying for a character transfer.

There has also been no change to the methods of farming for your heirlooms, so you’ll still need to pick your chosen method(s) of farming for Justice Points, Honor, Champion Seals, Darkmoon Artifacts, and gold along with guild reputation.

The fastest method of farming that I’ve found so far has definitely been Honor farming. Doing random BG’s at least until you score a victory, hitting Tol Borad every chance you get, doing Wintergrasp weeklies, and so on can really get those Honor points flowing. The PvE heirlooms are almost without exception better than the PvP heirlooms, but you can convert your Honor to Justice Points and still earn those heirlooms faster than if you had just farmed the JP itself. Running a few random dungeons can speed up that process too, of course, but if you’re going to pick and single method and stick with it then Honor is the key for me.

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Monk Class
Monks are the new class coming in Mists of Pandaria (MoP), which are very mechanically similar to Druids in many ways. Monk talent trees allow them to fill three of the four roles: tank, heals, and melee DPS.

Two of the Monk talent trees utilize Agility as their primary stat, very similar to the Druid’s feral forms. The third tree, healing, utilizes Intellect as their primary stat, similar to the Druid’s Moonkin and Restoration specs. Monks also have another resource called Chi, but gear has no impact on Chi so I will not discuss it in this article.

The only real difference in heirloom choices between the two classes at all is in which weapons they are able to equip. Monks have a pretty limited selection of weapons to chose from, but they also have the advantage of being able to dual wield in all three specs. According to the Monk overview on battle.net, the Monk can use the following weapons: Fist, one-handed Axe, one-handed Mace, one-handed Sword, Staff, Polearm. Of those weapons, there are no fist or polearm heirlooms and the restriction of only being able to use one-handed versions of most of the melee weapons as well as no access to Daggers means that some of the better Agility-based heirlooms are off limits. Lucky for the Mistweaver healing spec, Monks do have access to staves which means they’ll be flying high with one of the strongest heirloom weapons available.

Brewmaster (Tank) and Windwalker (Melee DPS)
Both of these specs use Agility as their primary stat, so many of our gear choices will be very simple. At this point in time I am not in the MoP beta yet, so my knowledge of the class comes only from what I’ve been able to read online. Once I am able to see more about how each of these specs work I will be able to revise this list, if necessary, to adjust some item slots if a secondary stat priority makes one weapon (for example) significantly better than another.

Slot	Item Name	Stats
Helm	Stained Shadowcraft Cap	Agility, Stamina, Hit, Crit, +10% XP
Cloak	Inherited Cape of the Black Baron	Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste, +5% XP
Shoulder	Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders	Agility, Stamina, Hit, +10% XP
Chest	Stained Shadowcraft Tunic	Agility, Stamina, Hit, +10% XP
Ring 1	Dread Pirate Ring	Stamina, Hit, Crit, +5% XP
Main Hand	Venerable Dal’Rend’s Sacred Charge	Agility, Stamina, Crit
Off-Hand	Venerable Mace of McGowan	Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste
Trinkets	Swift Hand of Justice x2	Haste, Kills restore health
Suggested Enchants

As far as the armor pieces go, there’s no question those are the ones that you want. Since Monks are limited to only cloth and leather armor, you want the leather pieces that have Agility (not that you have a choice).

Weapons give you a little bit of wiggle room because there are two options for you to choose from. The only reason I went with a Sacred Charge and a Mace is because I found no indication in my research that Monks gain any particular benefit from Haste. The Sacred Charge has a higher Crit bonus because it has no other secondary stat, so I would lean towards using one from a min/max perspective. The values of the secondary stats are low enough that you’ll be perfectly fine dual-wielding Maces if you would rather do that.

The only reason I’m suggesting Haste trinkets is because you would get no benefit at all from the Intellect trinkets and their mana restoration, which is your only other option for heirlooms.

Mistweaver (Healing)
The Monk is a leather wearing class, so leather armor is the way you should go in my opinion. If you have the cloth heirlooms and want to use those then feel free to do so. The major difference between the leather set and the cloth set is that leather pieces have Spirit on them while cloth pieces have Haste. While looking over the Mistweaver’s healing spells, I didn’t see any particular need for Haste where as the changes to intellect and mana pools has only increased the importance of Spirit for mana regeneration.

Slot	Item Name	Stats
Helm	Preened Tribal War Feathers	Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Crit, +10% XP
Cloak	Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, Haste, +5% XP
Shoulder	Preened Ironfeather Shoulders	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, +10% XP
Chest	Preened Ironfeather Breastplate	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, +10% XP
Ring 1	Dread Pirate Ring	Stamina, Hit, Crit, +5% XP
Main Hand	Dignified Headmaster’s Charge	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, Spell Power
Trinkets	Discerning Eye of the Beast x2	Intellect, Kills restore mana
Suggested Enchants

The staff beats out the one handed options at every level. You can occasionally get higher stats for a level or two when you combine a one-handed BoA caster mace with an off-hand item, but the staff will top the combination again within a few levels until you get near to not using the 1-80 heirlooms any more anyway. Even though you can dual wield as a Monk healer, the off-hand weapons that have caster stats on them suck.

Enchanting Your Monk Heirlooms
I know a lot of people feel that using heirlooms in the first place already makes the leveling process too easy or too fast, but I play to level and I treat my leveling game the same way other people treat their end game. That means I like to maximize my performance at all times and in every way that I can, which includes enchanting my heirlooms with the best enchants available.

For those slots that I give multiple options for enchanting I have listed the enchants in the order that I would suggest them. As this guide is directed at leveling, I’m going to put my focus on leveling and not PvP twinking. What this means is, I’m going to lean heavily towards enchants that will benefit you through the entire leveling process as much as possible. If you are looking at this list for your twinks then you shouldn’t necessarily assume that it’s the best enchant for a PvP twink. If you have questions about enchanting heirlooms for your twinks, leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to help.

Brewmaster and Windwalker (Agility)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Arcanum of Ferocity: +34 Attack Power, +16 Hit

Arcanum of the Outcast: +17 Strength, +16 Intellect

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

Ferocity is the clear winner here as there isn’t an Agility enchant available for you. Outcast is a decent option, though it’s not spectacular since Strength is only half as good as Agility at best, and the Intellect doesn’t do anything for you in either of these specs.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Cloak – Stealth: +8 Agility, +8 Dodge

Enchant Cloak – Lesser Agility: +3 Agility

Enchant Cloak – Superior Defense: +70 Armor

Swordguard Embroidery: Attacks have a chance to grant 400 Attack Power for 15 seconds.

Flexweave Underlay: Turns your cloak into a parachute for 30 sec.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

Stealth is by far your best option thanks to the change it received in the Shattering making it what it is today. Superior Defense is a great enchant when you’re at a low level, but the higher you go the less important it becomes, so from a leveling perspective I’d even take +3 Agility over +70 Armor.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

Inscription of Vengeance: +26 Attack Power

Greater Inscription of Vengeance: +30 Attack Power, +10 Crit

Greater Inscription of the Gladiator: +30 Stamina, +15 Resilience

Master’s Inscription of the Axe: +120 Attack Power, +15 Crit

Inscription of Warding: +13 Dodge

Greater Inscription of Warding: +15 Dodge, +15 Stamina

Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle: +60 Dodge, +15 Parry

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Vengeance in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

If you’re a Brewmaster Tank, then you’ll want to look at the last 3 for your tanking stats.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Chest – Great Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Stats: +3 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Major Health: +100 Health

While an extra 100 health is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting 10 health for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

Weapons: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Weapon – Agility: +15 Agility

Enchant Weapon – Crusader: Proc: Heal for 75-125 and +100 Strength for 15 sec.

Since Monks can dual wield, you’ll most likely want to use two +15 Agility enchants on your weapons. I haven’t found a good article covering the stat changes in MoP yet, so I’m not 100% sure if Monks will benefit at all from Strength or not. Since I’m not sure, I’m going to assume that things remain as they are for now, and I’ll revise this portion later if I find out differently.

My personal preference for Monks will be to use the Agility enchants over Crusader, or possibly to use one of each enchant with Crusader on the main hand weapon for more chances to proc its effect.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Ring – Stats: +4 All Stats

This ring enchant requires a reputation grind to purchase the pattern for it, requires you to be an Enchanter to activate it, and requires character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list this one since it has the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

Mistweaver (Intellect)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Arcanum of Renewal: +16 Intellect, +18 Spirit

Arcanum of Power: +22 Spell Power, +14 Hit

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

It’s up to you whether you would rather enchant more for DPS (Arcanum of Power) or Healing (Arcanum of Renewal). Personally, I went with Renewal for mine because I prefer Intellect over Spell Power for leveling because as a healer there’s very little chance you’ll need to increase your Hit and with the changes to mana in this expansion I’d rather boost my Spirit for the extra regen.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Cloak – Stealth: +8 Agility, +8 Dodge

Enchant Cloak – Superior Defense: +70 Armor

Enchant Cloak – Subtlety: Decreases threat by 2%

Lightweave Embroidery: Casting has a chance to grant 295 Spell Power for 15 sec.

Darkglow Embroidery: Casting has a chance to restore 400 mana.

Swordguard Embroidery: Attacks have a chance to grant 400 Attack Power for 15 seconds.

Flexweave Underlay: Turns your cloak into a parachute for 30 sec.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

If you’re wondering where the caster enchants are for cloaks, welcome to the club. Your best choices are professions-specific and will give you no benefit until you’re in your 60′s at the earliest. If you’re a solo player or like to level in PvP, then Stealth and Superior Defense are your best options because they’ll add some survivability. If you prefer to stay in groups then Subtlety is a decent option to help reduce your threat, though it’s largely unnecessary. My personal preference is Stealth, though I do have Subtlety on one of mine and a +5 to All Resistances on another. There just isn’t a good caster option outside of professions.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

Inscription of Discipline: +15 Spell Power

Greater Inscription of Discipline: +18 Spell Power, +10 Crit

Greater Inscription of Faith: +15 Intellect, +10 Spirit

Greater Inscription of the Orb: +12 Spell Power, +15 Crit

Greater Inscription of the Gladiator: +30 Stamina, +15 Resilience

Heavy Knothide Armor Kit: +10 Stamina

Master’s Inscription of the Crag: +60 Intellect, +15 Spirit

Master’s Inscription of the Storm: +70 Spell Power, +15 Crit

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Discipline in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Chest – Great Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Stats: +3 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Major Mana: +100 Mana

Enchant Chest – Major Health: +100 Health

While an extra 100 health or mana is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting health and spell power for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

With the changes to mana in MoP, maybe the +100 Mana enchant will become a big deal, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Weapon: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Weapon – Spellpower: +30 Spell Power

Enchant Weapon – Healing Power: +29 Spell Power

Enchant Weapon – Mighty Intellect: +22 Intellect

In the current live patch Mighty Intellect is the superior enchant, but once MoP launches that’s going to change because Intellect will no longer increase your mana pool. There are only two things that will keep the +22 Int enchant on this list once MoP launches. First, it’s easier to find people that have +22 Int versus those with +30 SP not to mention it’s a cheaper enchant materials-wise. Second, Intellect still increases spell crit in MoP (as far as I’m aware), so you do get at least something besides just 22 SP vs. 30 SP out of the deal. Even with the spell crit factored in though, diminishing returns on spell crit will make the +22 Int enchant less and less effective every time you gain a level.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Ring – Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Ring – Spellpower: +12 Spell Power

These ring enchants require reputation grinds to purchase the patterns for, they both require you to be an Enchanter to activate them, and they both require character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list these two since they have the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

 

Sage/Sorcerer Leveling: 10-20 Healing

For the first 10 levels of playing a Sage/Sorc healer, you’re no different than any other Consular/Inquisitor out there, so I’m going to refer you to my 1-20 DPS Guide for information about how to level and what spells you get during the 1-10 range if you feel you need it.

This guide is aimed specifically at leveling as a healer which takes place from level 10 on, so that’s where this guide is going to start. I will be discussing how to deal damage in the healing spec, and how to go about questing and so forth, I’m just going to assume that you’re already at least level 10 for the purpose of this specific guide.

Playing a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
Playing a healer isn’t all that much different than playing as a non-healer. You’ll still cast similar spells while you’re solo questing, and overall you’ll notice very little difference. The only real difference is that your talent points are going to help you better survive and better keep your companions alive as opposed to making you deal more damage. So instead of killing a group of mobs in 10 seconds, might take you 12-14 seconds instead.

Once you step out of the realm of solo play and into grouping your experience will change a bit because your primary focus shifts towards keeping everyone in your group alive rather than trying to kill things. That’s not to say you can’t help them kill the mobs you’re facing, which you should do if there’s no need for your heals, you just have a change in priority.

The key to healing is understanding your resources and the taxation on them. As a Sage your resource is called Force, and you have a total of 500. A talent exists in one of the damaging trees that will increase your total to 550 for one point or 600 with two points, but otherwise there is no way to increase your resources beyond 500. Your spells will range in cost from 20 Force to 65 Force (at this level range), and you regenerate Force at a rate of 8 Force per second. If math really isn’t your thing, don’t worry about it, but if you like to know the numbers behind the class then there’s your starting point.

In order to heal effectively you need to know how much healing each of your spells is capable of, how much Force they cost to cast, and how much time it takes to cast them. Those three things are what determines how useful each individual spell actually is. I’ll get to that in just a moment, but first let’s take a look at what spells you have.

Important Spells & Abilities
This list is only going to include the spells that particularly important for your healing. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, as I’ve already covered DPS leveling you can refer to that post if you would like information regarding rotations and which spells to use when and how. So this list will include your heals, obviously, but also spells that can perform a specific function for you while healing that’s important for leveling as a spec that has no damage buffs.

Benevolence/Dark Heal (10): Heals a friendly target. (fast cast, small heal)
Deliverance/Dark Infusion (12): Heals a friendly target. (long cast, big heal)
Force Armor/Static Barrier (14): Surrounds the target in a Force shield that absorbs a high amount of damage and lasts 30 seconds. Protected targets become Force-Imbalanced and cannot benefit from Force Armor again for 20 seconds.
Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness (14): Crushes the target’s mind with the Force, instantly dealing kinetic damage and additional kinetic damage over 6 seconds.
Weaken Mind/Affliction (16): Weakens the target’s mind, dealing internal damage over 15 seconds.
Force Speed/Force Speed (16): Increases your movement speed by 150% for 2 seconds. Does not break stealth.
Mind Snap/Jolt (18): Interrupts the target’s current action and prevents that ability from being used for 4 seconds.
Noble Sacrifice/Consumption (20): Sacrifices 15% of your maximum health to restore 8% of your maximum Force. Each time this ability is used, your Force regeneration rate is reduced by 25% for the next 10 seconds. Stacks up to 4 times.
Rejuvenate/Resurgence (Lv 20 Talent): Immediately heals the target for an amount, plus an additional amount over 9 seconds.

Healing Spells
Benevolence is the first heal you receive, and one of the worst heals you’ll ever have. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its uses, but it’s not one that you’ll cast with any amount of frequency once you get another option. This spell costs 50 Force, has a 1.5 second cast time, no cooldown, and heals for a fairly small amount.

Deliverance is your bread and butter healing spell. It costs 55 Force, has a default cast time of 3 seconds (2.5 w/ talents), no cooldown, and heals for a significant amount. For 5 more Force and one extra second worth of cast time, this spell will heal for roughly twice as much as Benevolence, which is why it’s so much better. Soon after level 20 you’ll also get another talent to help with that cast time to make it even better.

Force Armor is a “bubble” which means it absorbs damage that the target would have taken until it reaches its limit and is then removed. This spell has your highest base cost at 65 Force (35 Force with higher level talents), an instant cast time, a default 4.5 second cooldown (1.5 seconds with later talents), and absorbs a “high” amount of damage. Force Armor is also unique in that it applies a debuff to the target that makes them immune to Force Armor for 20 seconds so it prevents you from spamming bubbles on a single target over and over.

Rejuvenate is a healing spell that also contains a heal over time (HoT) effect to it, and it will soon become the single-most important spell because of how other talents interact with it (I’ll get to the details in the 20-40 guide). Rejuvenate costs 30 Force, has an instant cast time, a 6 second cooldown, and heals for a decent amount.

Utility Spells
Mind Crush and Weaken Mind belong in the same listing here because of what they are – damage over time (DoT) spells. As a healer, you’re lacking a lot of the killing power that other specs have, but DoT’s allow you to deal damage to several targets at once without having to waste time casting the damage spells which allows you to spend cast time on your heals instead. If you find yourself facing tough enemies, one of your best tactics as a healer is to cast your DoT’s on them and then start running away and stopping only to heal yourself or reapply your DoT’s. This tactic is called “kiting” and I can go into more detail in a later post if anyone needs me to.

When DoT kiting you don’t want to run away in a straight line, you want to run in circles and abuse terrain and structures to keep distance between you so that they can’t hit you with melee attack, and break their line of sight so that they can’t use ranged attacks on you either. When your DoT’s wear off, simply reapply them and then take off running again.

Mind Snap is an interrupt spell, used to cancel a spell that’s being cast by an enemy. I mention this first because as a 30 meter ranged interrupt it’s one of the best in the game so you should be familiar with it, and second because one of the best ways heal damage is to not let it happen in the first place. If an enemy is casting a spell that you know is going to deal high damage or they’re casting a crowd control spell on you, your companion or a party member then you can use this to stop the spell from happening and preventing it from being cast again for 4 seconds. Experience will teach you which spells are worth interrupting and which you can ignore.

Force Speed increases your speed by 150% for 2 seconds (which is 40% faster than the fastest mount in the game right now, btw). There are countless ways that this spell is useful, but the main reason I wanted to mention it is for the same reason that I mentioned the DoT spells and Mind Snap up above – it’s fantastic for kiting, and getting out of your enemies’ attack range is a great way to prevent damage from happening to you in the first place. It’s also good for group play if you have members of your party/raid that have moved out of your healing range so that you can quickly reposition yourself to be able to reach whoever is in need of a heal.

Noble Sacrifice is a spell you definitely need to be aware of. Casting it sacrifices 15% of your health in order to restore 8% of your Force. At this level, casting this spell is a bad idea unless you absolutely NEED the Force it gives you. As you get higher in level you’ll get talents that reduce the amount of health you have to sacrifice as well as a proc that removes the health sacrifice all together. So keep it in mind and remember it’s there to be used, but be cautious for right now of casting it without a literal need. It’s also important to note that casting this applies a 10 second debuff on yourself that reduces your Force regeneration by 25%, and this debuff stacks up to 4 times which means a full stack will completely remove your Force regeneration for 10 seconds.

If you need the Force to keep people alive, then by all means use this. Also, if you’re not taking any damage at all and not in any threat of taking damage, then go ahead and use it. Keeping people alive is your job, and if sacrificing some of your health in order to heal someone else is required then so be it. Just keep in mind that if you die because of using this then nobody is getting heals regardless.

Leveling a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
This is the section where I normally like to talk about rotations and such, but healing doesn’t have an actual rotation so I’ll discuss how to heal in just a moment. I’ll go ahead and talk about your damage rotation while you’re questing, but first I want to address something that’s bothered me about so many other guides I’ve seen out there for people talking about leveling this class.

Time and time again I see Sage/Sorc guides say that you should start every build, no matter which tree you’re going to spec into, with your first 5 points spent in Inner Strength/Electric Induction (9% Force cost reduction) and Mental Longevity/Reserves (+100 total Force). I’m here to tell you right now that with the exception of a full Telekinetics/Lightning build I have never put any of my first 5 points into either of those two talents, and I’ve leveled just fine.

I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea for you to put some points in there early on, but I am saying that it’s unnecessary. If you find that you’re constantly running out of Force then the first thing you should do is evaluate which spells you’re casting and whether or not their effect is worth the Force cost to see if maybe you’re not casting the right spells. If everything looks good there, then you may want to consider putting points into those talents to alleviate some of that Force cost.

For example, as a healer you do not want to use Project/Shock in your rotation because it’s damage compared to its Force cost make it a total waste if used for anything other than finishing off a mob that’s close to dying. It’s just like Benevolence/Dark Heal, the cost is just too high for what you get out of it.

Sage Weak Mobs: Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, Telekinetic Throw
Sorc Weak Mobs: Lightning Strike, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2, Force Lightning

This is a simple rotation for taking out the weak mobs. Pull with a cast time spell, follow it with a channel, two more cast times while the channel’s cooldown finishes, then fire it off. You can use Project/Shock here to finish off mobs that are low on health, or you can use Force Wave/Overload to deal AoE damage instead. Some healers also like to keep Saber Strike on their bars since it’s free damage and also regenerates a small amount of Force, and use it as their finishing move instead.

Sage Strong+ Mobs: Force Lift, Mind Crush, Weaken Mind, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, Telekinetic Throw
Sorc Strong+ Mobs: Whirlwind, Crushing Darkness, Affliction, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2, Force Lightning

These rotations differ from the others only in the spells that you’re going to start combat with. You want to start by using your 60 second crowd control spell on the toughest target out there to remove them from the equation. Follow that up with Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness and Weaken Mind/Affliction both on the second-toughest target, and then fall into your default rotation. The reason why we start this round with Telek. Throw/Force Lightning instead of Disturbance/Lightning Strike is because we’re already in combat and can’t take advantage of having Dist/LS’s cast time combat-free, so instead we go for instant damage with our channeled spell and then use the cast-time spells while the other is on cooldown.

If you’re solo questing, then it’s also a good idea to cast Force Armor/Static Barrier on yourself and/or your companion before combat begins so that you can focus on the damaging spells once the fight starts instead of having to jump straight into healer mode where you’re dealing no damage at all.

If you have your bubble’s debuff active and you’re taking some damage, then Rejuvenate/Resurgence is your next best bet for keeping yourself healthy while still focusing primarily on damage to kill the mobs. If you need more healing than that, then of course it’s perfectly fine for you to actually cast your healing spells as needed.

Also, always keep in mind that you have some fantastic crowd control spells at your disposal. Force Stun/Electrocute is a nice stun that will give you time to cast a couple of heals freely, Force Wave/Overload is an AoE knockback that can buy you a little time for healing or to run away, and Force Lift/Whirlwind has a cast time on it but it does remove the target from combat completely for up to a minute. And if all else fails, hit your Force Speed and run away until you can either heal safely or the mobs drop combat and reset.

How to Heal With a Consular Seer/Inquisitor Corrupter
Healing doesn’t have a rotation at all because here’s no consistency in when someone is going to take damage or how much they’re going to take. There is sort of a priority system, but it doesn’t actually come into effect in this level range, so what I’m going to do is explain how and when to use each of your healing spells and a couple of different situations and how you might handle them.

Benevolence/Dark Heal
This spell has an incredibly high Force cost compared to how little it actually heals you for. It’s only real benefit is that it has a short cast time, so it can give you a little boost in an emergency when other spells are not available. For this level range, you want to avoid using this spell whenever possible. If you absolutely have to have a heal in the next 1.5 seconds and your bubble isn’t available to be cast on the target, then go ahead and use this spell.

After a few more levels you can use this to top people off when you get a proc that cuts its Force cost in half, so it will eventually be useful for topping people off when you have nothing else to do. Until you get those talents (in the 20-40 range), your main use for this spell is to pad someone’s health who has taken a lot of damage really fast but you’re unable to use your bubble on them, so hopefully a quick heal will provide enough of a buffer that they can take one more hit while you switch to casting Deliverance/Dark Infusion or while your bubble cooldown or debuff clears to allow the bubble to provide a barrier for those larger heals.

Deliverance/Dark Infusion
This is your main heal now and forever, so you want to get real familiar with this one. It has a 2.5 second cast time after talents, so it’s a little bit slow. Because of that, you’ll want to get a feel for how long that 2.5 seconds really is so that you can judge, based on how quickly your target is taking damage, whether you have time to cast this or if you need to sneak a bubble or other healing spell in first.

In terms of a default rotation, it’s good to be in the habit of casting Rejuvenate/Resurgence before Deliverance/Dark Infusion because of other talents you’ll receive shortly after level 20.

Force Armor/Static Barrier
Since bubbles prevent damage from happening at all rather than simply restoring lost health, it is the most effective method of healing out there. Because of that you want to make sure you’re making frequent use of this spell when targets really are taking the damage to warrant its use. It does have the highest Force cost you’ll see until you get your level 40 talent, but it’s a great tool.

There are three ways that you want to utilize this. First, to prevent damage from happening in the first place which gives you time to regen your Force and gives you time for a breather or to reevaluate the situation if needed. Second, it gives you a buffer for your HoT spell to give its full healing to the target because while they’re pseudo-immune to damage the HoT gets to tick away freely. Third, it acts as a buffer to allow you the time to cast a bigger heal (Deliverance) without the target taking more damage during your cast time.

The two things to keep in mind about this spell are its debuff, which prevents the target from having the bubble cast on them again for 20 seconds, and its Force cost. Because it’s the highest cost you have, you don’t want to cast this on people who aren’t going to take enough damage to make it worth the cost. You can spam bubbles on your whole party if you really want to, but if three of your four party members never take any damage then all you’ve really accomplished is wasting 195 Force.

Rejuvenate/Resurgence
This spell is good right now for a couple of reasons. First, it provides an instant healing effect with an instant cast time, which is great even if the healed amount is low. Second, it provides a heal over time effect which acts similar to a bubble in that sometimes the HoT tick will fall right after damage is taken and it basically works out as though the damage had never occurred.

Having that HoT effect bringing a constant stream of healing in also gives you more time to cast other, bigger heals that have a longer cast time. Waiting on a 2.5 second Deliverance cast isn’t quite so bad when you’ve got a HoT ticking away that’s keeping your target somewhat more stable (hopefully) while the cast time is taking place.

Situation Examples
Now we’ll look at a couple of example situations and how you should go about using your spells to handle the situation. Keep in mind that the following information is applicable only for healers up to level 20 as talents from 21+ will significantly impact how you heal.

Minimum Damage: Target at 70%+
When your target still has most of their health you don’t need to be too worried just yet, so start off with Deliverance/Dark Infusion, followed by Rejuvenate/Resurgence. This will provide a nice, big heal at the front followed by a HoT that will either help top them off or provide some buffer to keep them nearer to their full health. If Rejuv/Resurg is on cooldown, then use your bubble after your big heal instead.

Moderate Damage: Target at 30%-70%
When your target has taken some pretty big hits you need to be more aggressive in your healing to prevent them from getting to a critical level. Start with Rejuvenate/Resurgence followed by Deliverance/Dark Infusion and follow it up with Force Armor/Static Barrier, and if necessary follow with another Deliverance/Dark Infusion.

High Damage: Target below 30%
If someone is in critical condition and desperately needs healing to prevent them from dying, then it’s time to get serious. Your first priority in this cast is Force Armor/Static Barrier if they don’t have the debuff to prevent it, followed by Rejuvenate/Resurgence and Deliverance/Dark Infusion once or twice to bring them to a more stable level.

If your target does have the Force Imbalance/Deionized debuff on them that prevents your bubble from being cast, you might consider (very carefully) casting Benevolence/Dark Heal first if the debuff is about to wear off of them within the next 2 seconds. If it’s going to be more than 2 seconds before the debuff is gone then you should skip them both and go for Rejuv/Resurg followed by Del/DI casts to get them back up to a reasonable level until you can bubble them again to buy yourself some more time.

At this level range you don’t have a whole lot in the way of emergency healing tools, so your goal is to keep people right around that 70% or higher range. You don’t need to keep people at 100% health at all times, and your Force pool won’t allow you to do that very often anyway. Everyone has a free non-combat ability that refills their health and resource bar, so there’s no reason you should feel a need to top them off when your real job is to keep them alive during combat and they can freely top off themselves after the fighting is over.

Talent Spec: 20 Seer/Corruption Tree

Sage: Seer	Sorcerer: Corruption
Torhead: Seer	Torhead: Corruption

I’ve listed these in priority level based on what level they become available to you. So the first two are tier 1, the second two are tier 2 and so forth. Immutable Force is the more important talent in tier 1, but it benefits a spell that you don’t get until level 12, meaning that if you spend your first 2 points on it then you have a talent that currently gives you no benefit. So if you want to get all technical about spending points then you want 1 point in Penetrating Light followed by 2 in Immutable Force and then then 2 more in Penetrating light.

Immutable Force/Dark Mending 2/2: Reduces the activation time of Deliverance/Dark Infusion by 0.5 seconds.
Penetrating Light/Seeping Darkness 3/3: Increase your Force critical chance by 3%.
Foresight/Lucidity 3/3: Reduces the pushback suffered while activating healing abilities by 75% and lowers the threat generated by healing abilities by 15%.
Pain Barrier/Empty Body 2/2: Increases all healing received by 8%.
Rejuvenate/Resurgence 1/1: [Instant cast, 6 second cooldown] Immediately heals a target for an initial amount, plus an additional healing over 9 seconds.

Immutable Force is absolutely critical for a healer because it reduces the cast time of your primary healing spell by 0.5 seconds. That might not sound like a whole lot, but with how much you’re going to cast that spell it’s a BIG FREAKING DEAL, trust me. Penetrating Light increases your crit chance, making your heals more likely to crit thus saving you Force in the long term by not needing to cast so many healing spells among other things.

Foresight is important in pretty much any situation. While solo or in PvP you get the benefit of reduced pushback on your heals, while solo questing you also benefit from reduced threat for when you’re letting your companion take all the hits, and in group play you’re reducing your threat generation so that mobs keep hitting your tank rather than destroying your expensive robes. Pain Barrier is all about your own survivability by increasing the healing that you receive. The role of a healer is almost as critical as it comes, so keeping you alive is always a good thing.

Rejuvenate is your heal over time, or HoT, spell. It works very similar to WoW’s Regrowth spell by providing an initial heal when you first cast it, plus a heal over time effect afterwards. At level 20 this is just another nifty little heal for you to use that takes some of the stress off of you thanks to the heal, but in a couple more levels it’s going to be the keystone to everything you do.

 

Sage/Sorcerer Leveling: 1-20 DPS

Playing a Sage/Sorcerer
For the most part, playing a Sage/Sorc is much like playing a spell caster in any other MMO. In the world of SWTOR, they’re the only real spell casters in the game. While you can get a caster feel from some of the ranged classes (Trooper, Smuggler, Bounty Hunter, Imp. Agent) most of what they do doesn’t really feel like casting, at least not to me, unless you’re playing their healing spec.

Concerning Sage/Sorc DPS, there are two primary trees available to you and they each have their own feel. The Telekinetics/Lightning tree is the turret casting tree, where you’ll spend the majority of your time remaining stationary while you simply turn left or right as needed while you spam-cast your spells. You do have some spells that you can use on the move, but you’ll have a loss of overall DPS if you use them without needing to move. The Balance/Madness tree relies on damage over time (DoT) effects and channeled spells for the majority of it’s damage and is much more mobile as most of the spells you’ll use in those trees are instant cast either by design or thanks to talent-based procs.

When you reach level 10 and take your advanced class of Sage/Sorcerer there’s going to be a complete change in how you handle combat. Out of all of the classes and advanced classes, the Sage/Sorc AC has the largest shift in playstyle because you’ve just spent 10 levels killing things primarily with melee attacks with some occasional spells thrown in (maybe) and now you’re never going to use another melee attack again. Some players do play low level Consulars/Inquisitors trying to focus on spell casting, but since both of your damaging spells have cooldowns you’re really better of just beating things up in melee.

In addition to the switch from melee to casting you’re also going to notice that your spells now actually have a decent range on them. Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning) jumps up to 30 meters by default as does Project(Shock), and your new spam-cast spell, Disturbance(Lightning Strike), is a 30 meter cast as well. You also get to quintuple your Force pool from 100 to 500, and your primary crowd control spell Force Lift(Whirlwind) goes from an 8 second duration up to 60 seconds. All of these changes combine to make one heck of a shift in playstyle, so you’ll want to find a few things to kill to get a feel for your new life as a real caster.

Important Spells & Abilities
I’ll break this section into two level groupings. I’m going to leave out numeric values since I have no trustworthy source to get the numbers relative to level 20. Hopefully the database sites out there can grow and develop soon so that we have a reliable source at least equal to what Wowhead is for WoW. Numbers in parenthesis after spell names reflect the level at which those spells become available, and spells with (1) are all spells that you start with.

The first group is level 1-9 which is your pre-Advanced Class levels where you’re a combination of both of your AC’s minus all of the cool effects that define the AC’s. The second group is levels 10-20, covering primarily the Sage/Sorc AC though there are some pure Consular/Inquisitor spells that open in that bracket as well.

CLASS BUFFS & REFILL
Force Valor/Mark of Power (1): Increases the target’s Strength, Aim, Willpower and Cunning by 5% and internal and elemental damage reduction by 10% for 60 minutes. If the target is a party member, all other party members are also affected.
Meditation/Seethe (1): Allows you to pause and meditate to restore your health and Force. Damage causes the effect to end prematurely. Cannot be used during combat.

Force Valor is your class buff, and one that you should always have active. Every class has a version of this, though not all classes buff the same stats (the Trooper buffs Endurance for example).

Meditation is the replacement for food and drink in SWTOR. It’s basically the means by which you refill your health and Force bars after combat.

LEVELS 1-9
Saber Strike/Saber Strike (1): Deals weapon damage spread across a flurry of 3 attacks.
Double Strike/Thrash (1): Strikes the target twice. Each hit deals weapon damage.
Project/Shock (1): Throws debris at the target, dealing kinetic damage. Standard and weak targets are additionally stunned for 3 seconds.
Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (2): Hurls a volley of debris at the target, dealing kinetic damage and slowing movement speed by 50%. Standard and weak targets are immobilized for the duration.
Force Wave/Overload (3): Deals kinetic damage and knocks back all enemies within 8 meters. Standard and weak enemies are additionally knocked down for 3 seconds.
Force Lift/Whirlwind (4): Lifts the target helplessly into the air, preventing all action for up to 8 seconds. Non-player, non-standard and non-weak targets heal rapidly while lifted out of harm’s way. Damage will break the effect prematurely.
Force Stun/Electrocute (6): Deals kinetic damage and stuns the target for 4 seconds.
Force Potency/Recklessness (8): Grants 2 charges of Force Potency, which increases the Force critical chance of your direct attacks and heals by 60% and increases the range of Telekinetic Throw to 30 meters. Each time a direct Force ability critically hits or you activate Telekinetic Throw, you lose 1 charge. Lasts 20 seconds.
Force of Will/Unbreakable Will (9): Demonstrates your force of will, immediately freeing you of all incapacitating and movement-impairing effects.

Saber Strike, Double Strike and Project are your starting offensive spells and what you’ll be using primarily to kill things up to level 10. Saber Strike restores Force while Double Strike and Project both spend it. The two melee strikes are all you need to reach level 10, though you’ll never touch them again once you get your advanced class (AC). Project will remain on your bars, as it will be useful for the Telekinetics/Lightning tree and surprisingly good for Balance/Madness.

Telekinetic Throw is one of your bread and butter spells regardless of which of the DPS trees you decide to focus on. For Telekinetics/Lightning this spell is best used when other talents proc to speed up the channel time, while for Balance/Madness this becomes your primary filler spell used to proc instant casts. Force Wave is a combination of area of effect (AoE) damage and crowd control as it knocks most targets back and weaker targets are knocked prone all together. This spell works great as an interrupt because of its knockback as well, and at low levels the damage it deals is good enough that it’s useful as a finisher spell for groups too.

Force Lift is a somewhat weak crowd control (CC) spell when you first get it with only an 8 second duration, but when you choose your advanced class it bumps up to 60 seconds and becomes significantly more useful. The Balance/Madness tree has multiple talents that improve its effect as well, including making it instant cast, modifying it to become a stun when broken early, and having it affect up to 3 targets instead of only 1. Force Stun is another of our CC spells, applying an instant 4 second stun. In some ways this is the more useful CC, especially for Telek./Lightning because it’s instant, and it deals damage in addition to the stun, not to mention Force Lift breaks on damage where Force Stun does not. When comparing this to Force Lift don’t weigh them too much one against another, consider them each their own tool with their own uses. Force Lift is best used before combat begins for example, where Force Stun is more useful mid-combat.

Force Potency is a short term buff that from 1-10 is most useful in my opinion for extending the short range of Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning), with its increased crit chance just a nice side effect since most of 1-10 is done via melee attacks. Once you take your advanced class the range on Telek. Throw is increased to 30 meters by default so it becomes strictly a crit buff (and a good one at that).

Force of Will is your final spell for the 1-9 bracket and it’s your CC breaker. You do face more CC from non-player characters/monsters in SWTOR than in most other MMO’s, but the primary use for this is still very much PvP related. As someone who enjoys player vs. player (PvP) combat I love that they give us our CC breaker so early.

LEVELS 10-20
Benevolence/Dark Heal (10): Heals a friendly target. (fast cast, small heal)
Disturbance/Lightning Strike (10): Fires a blast of telekinetic energy at the target, dealing kinetic damage.
Deliverance/Dark Infusion (12): Heals a friendly target. (long cast, big heal)
Force Armor/Static Barrier (14): Surrounds the target in a Force shield that absorbs a high amount of damage and lasts 30 seconds. Protected targets become Force-Imbalanced and cannot benefit from Force Armor again for 20 seconds.
Mind Crush/Crushing Darkness (14): Crushes the target’s mind with the Force, instantly dealing kinetic damage and additional kinetic damage over 6 seconds.
Channel the Force/Channel the Force (15): Summons the Force to aid you and your companion, immediately finishing the cooldown on Force Stun and restoring 2% of maximum health every 3 seconds. Requires an active companion. Lasts 1 minute.
Weaken Mind/Affliction (16): Weakens the target’s mind, dealing internal damage over 15 seconds.
Force Speed/Force Speed (16): Increases your movement speed by 150% for 2 seconds. Does not break stealth.
Mind Snap/Jolt (18): Interrupts the target’s current action and prevents that ability from being used for 4 seconds.
Noble Sacrifice/Consumption (20): Sacrifices 15% of your maximum health to restore 8% of your maximum Force. Each time this ability is used, your Force regeneration rate is reduced by 25% for the next 10 seconds. Stacks up to 4 times.

Benevolence is our first heal, and it’s kinda lacking. It has a short cast time which is great, but it costs 50 Force and heals for a relatively small amount. Deliverance is our second heal and while it takes twice as long to cast (3 seconds) and costs 5 more Force the heal is significantly stronger. If you’re in dire need of a heal then Benevolence can get you out of trouble, but Deliverance is significantly stronger if you can handle waiting just a second and a half longer.

Disturbance is your main spam-cast spell once you have your advanced class. It has a fairly short cast time, no cooldown, and deals respectable damage. If you go for the Telek./Lightning tree then this is your primary spell, where Balance/Madness will switch to using it mostly on talent procs once they get to level 20-21. Mind Crush is a damage over time (DoT) spell that has a cast time and a cool down. In this level range you’ll mostly use this to pull mobs with big heal pools or on bosses, but it becomes more important later on.

Force Armor is a bubble which absorbs all damage while it’s active. The amount that it can absorb is based on your level. It’s a great addition to your spell book and one that I frequently use right before a pull or in mid-combat for myself or party members as needed. Force Speed is another great all around Consular/Inquisitor spell, this time as a speed increase. In player vs. environment/everything (PvE) this spell isn’t terribly useful in terms of combat, while in player vs. player (PvP) it’s amazing. I use this spell all the time. If it’s on cooldown and I have any intention of running from one point to another, I’m doing it.

Channel the Force is an odd spell to me. It resets the cooldown on Force Stun and puts a heal over time effect on you and (I think) your companion, which is great, but it’s only usable when you have a companion out. It’s good for those times where you’re soloing something and having a rough time or when you’re in a small group because you have to have a companion out in order to cast it. For me, because it’s only usable when I have a companion and I almost never use my companions for combat, I forget this thing exists 99% of the time. For me it just seems like it’s an incredibly useful spell that can’t be used in groups which makes me want to be used to not having it so that I don’t come to rely on it when/if I ever raid or when I’m doing PvP.

Weaken Mind is another DoT spell, but this one has no cooldown and no cast time making it very easy to spam all of the targets in combat, and both DPS specs will want to use this on any targets that are likely to live for more than just a few seconds.

Mind Snap is our interrupt, used to stop pretty much any/every ability that has a cast time or a channel. At low levels I usually interrupt damage spells from my opponents, but once you get to around Alderaan (mid to upper 20s) and higher you start to run into mobs that use healing so I save it for them. From 1-20 using it isn’t all that important, but interrupting spells is a great habit to get into early on.

And last but certainly not least we have Nobel Sacrifice which converts 15% of your life into 8% of your Force. At low levels I wouldn’t advise you to use this very often. If you need the Force, then you need the Force, but if you’re hurting that bad for resources then you probably don’t have the health to spare either.

Leveling a Sage/Sorcerer
Now that you know more than you probably ever wanted to know about all of your spells and such, let’s take a look at how you actually play with Sage/Sorcerer.

Consular 1-10 Weak Mob Rotation: Double Strike, Saber Strike or Double Strike x2-3
Inquisitor 1-10 Weak Mob Rotation: Thrash, Saber Strike or Thrash x2-3
Alternate 1-10 Rotation: Double Strike or Saber Strike on all targets, Force Wave

When you’re first starting out you can kill almost everything with Double Strike + Saber Strike assuming DS doesn’t kill them outright. For tougher mobs, Double Strike x2-3 will finish most of them off. If you find that you still need to do a little bit more damage, I suggest Force Wave as your finisher to deal some AoE damage.

You can use your spells if you want to, it’s alright to start off combat with Telekinetic Throw if you’d like. On the one hand, Telek. Throw does really good damage and often times you’ll kill your first target using this by itself. However, you’ll actually kill things faster if you just rush in and open a can of melee.

The Alternate rotation is another method of playing at low levels, which is using a single melee attack on each target in the group followed by a Force Wave. Doing this will kill just about every weak mob in the starting planet, and the ones that don’t die should fall to a single attack after Force Wave.

Telekinetics 10-20 Weak Mobs: Telekinetic Wave, Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, Telek. Throw
Lightning 10-20 Weak Mobs: Chain Lightning, Lightning Strike, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2, Force Lightning
Balance 10-20 Weak Mobs: Disturbance, Force in Balance, Telekinetic Throw, Project, Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw
Madness 10-20 Weak Mobs: Lightning Strike, Death Field, Force Lightning, Shock, Lightning Strike, Force Lightning

When you first start trying our your advanced class rotating through Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2, and then repeat will destroy everything in your path. If you need a little extra safeguard for the fight feel free to start off with Force Armor and/or Force Lift before you start with the damage spells. If you’re going to start combat with a CC effect like Force Lift you usually want to target the strongest enemy with it so that you can kill off the weaklings first and then go back for the tough guy. If you do, go ahead and take the time to heal yourself up if needed after you’ve killed the weak ones before you break your CC on the big guy. You have the full 60 second duration to heal or regenerate your Force points, so you might as well take advantage of that.

If mobs get low on health and you don’t want to waste a cast time on them, finish them off with either Project, Force Wave or Telekinetic Throw, or you can use your melee abilities if you haven’t taken them off of your bars yet.

Telekinetics 10-20 Elites: Telekinetic Wave, Mind Crush, Weaken Mind, Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2
Lightning 10-20 Elites: Chain Lightning, Crushing Darkness, Affliction, Lightning Strike, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2
Balance 10-20 Elites: Mind Crush, Weaken Mind, Force in Balance, Telekinetic Throw, Disturbance x2
Madness 10-20 Elites: Crushing Darkness, Affliction, Death Field, Force Lightning, Lightning Strike x2

When you’re facing elites you want to make sure you put your DoT spells to use, and using them to pull is a safe and easy way to do that. If you’re facing several strong opponents then you might want to pull with Force Lift instead, or use Force Lift after Mind Crush. Just make sure you don’t use Mind Crush on the target you plan to CC or else the DoT effect will break your CC early.

After you have established your DoT’s and used any CC that you need, you can fall back into the rotation you use on the weak mobs that I listed above. As your DoT’s expire from running their full duration reapplying them may or may not be necessary depending on how much health they have left. If you see that they’re going to die in the next 3-5 seconds you don’t need to bother reapplying, but if they still have more than 25% of their health or so, go ahead and recast Weaken Mind if nothing else.

Any time you need to move, for whatever reason, that’s when you want to utilize Project(Shock). As Balance/Madness you have a good chance to double-Project(Shock) for extra damage which makes it a good option even when you don’t necessarily need to move, especially if there are weak mobs who will be stunned by the effect as well.

Talent Spec: 20 Balance/Madness Tree

Sage: Balance	Sorcerer: Madness
Torhead: Balance	Torhead: Madness

Balance/Madness is a fairly new tree for me, having switched in just the last week or so from Telekinetics/Lightning. I really fell in love with this tree after level 25, but I’ve had a blast with it on a new Sage as well.

What I like most about this tree is that it puts a stronger focus on instant casts and channeled spells which allows you to be more mobile (something I like for PvP) and making it easier to bounce around on targets when you see that one of them is just one hit away from dying so you can toss an instant spell at them and then switch back to your initial target instead of having to finish your current cast time, switch to them for another cast time, and then switch back.

The instant cast nature of the spec along with the procs that you’ll eventually get from channeling Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning) make this spec feel much more aggressive an in control of the battle compared to the Telekinetics/Lightning tree. It also allows you to solo more content by making it easier and more viable for you to abuse the Line of Sight (LoS) technique to kill Strong+ or higher level mobs.

In the descriptions below, the spell names in the open refer to the Sage ability and the names in (parenthesis) refer to the Sorcerer-equivalent ability.

Empowered Throw/Calcify 3/3:
Increases the damage dealt by Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning) by 12%.

Will of the Jedi/Will of the Sith 2/2:
Increases total Willpower by 6%.

Upheaval/Chain Shock 3/3:
When you activate Project(Shock), you have a 45% chance to activate a second Project(Shock), dealing 50% of normal damage.

Critical Kinesis/Disintegration 2/2:
Increases the critical chance of Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning) and Disturbance(Lightning Strike) by 10%.

Force in Balance/Death Field 1/1:
Deals internal damage to up to 3 targets within 8 meters of the targeted area and heals you for 22 per affected target.

Empowered Throw and Will of the Jedi are both great talents for the first tier, and I generally alternate putting points into them while I level so that I get some benefit from both at the same time. Telekinetic Throw is your main spam spell with this spec, or rather it will be when you reach level 21 (see Force in Balance below).

Upheaval is one of my favorite talents as a Sage, purely from a “check out how freaking amazing I am” perspective as I launch two large chunks of terrain at your face. It also helps to make this spell actually worth casting as its damage is otherwise much less than any of your other spells. For folks who don’t like this talent, Pinning Resolve is a solid replacement as it makes your Force Lift(Whirlwind) hit up to 3 targets at once instead of 1.

Critical Kinesis is the second talent I like to take on tier 2 of this tree for the extra crit. I personally go for Upheaval first strictly because I like to make Project more viable in low level PvP, but Critical Kinesis is a great talent for both PvE and PvP, so take them in whichever order you prefer.

Force in Balance is my priority talent for level 20 because it’s a fantastic AoE spell. It deals great damage, is instant cast, and it targets an area rather than an enemy so it can be used to fish people out of stealth or to hit people who are out of your line of sight. However, this third tier is also where you get Telekinetic Balance/Madness which removes the cooldown from Telekinetic Throw(Force Lightning), allowing it to become your spam spell. Being able to spam TT/FL isn’t crucial just yet because we’re missing other key talents due to our level, but that will change very soon. Between these two talents, the one you do not take at level 20 should be taken at level 21 as they’re both fantastic talents.

Talent Spec: 20 Telekinetic/Lightning Tree

Sage: Telekinetics	Sorcerer: Lightning
Torhead: Telekinetics	Torhead: Lightning

This is the spec that I started out with on my Sage/Sorcs, and it served me very well. This is the tree that I was using when I first started soloing Heroic 4 quests without even using with my companions.

This tree gives you a feel of the more traditional caster, standing in the back spamming cast time spells for stacking buffs and unleashing channeled spells for better damage. This tree is great for being able to maintain a high rate of spell casting without having to sacrifice performance.

In the descriptions below, the names refer to the Sage ability and the names in (parenthesis) refer to the Sorcerer-equivalent ability.

Clamoring Force/Convection 3/3:
Increases the damage dealt by Disturbance(Lightning Strike), Mind Crush(Crushing Darkness), Telekinetic Wave(Chain Lightning), and Turbulence(Thundering Blast) by 6%.

Inner Strength/Electric Induction 3/3:
Reduces the Force cost of Force attacks and healing abilities by 9%.

Concentration/Subversion 2/2:
Reduces the pushback suffered while activating Disturbance(Lightning Strike), Telekinetic Wave(Chain Lightning) and Turbulence(Thundering Blast) by 70%. In addition, Disturbance(Lightning Strike) has a 100% chance to increase your Force regeneration rate by 10% for 10 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.

Disturb Mind/Exsanguinate 2/2:
Increases the duration of Weaken Mind(Affliction) by 6 seconds.

Telekinetic Wave/Chain Lightning 1/1:
Sends a wave of telekinetic energy/lightning that deals kinetic damage to up to 5 targets within 8 meters of the primary target.

Clamoring Force is a simple damage increase which just so happens to buff virtually every spell you’re going to use frequently. Inner Strength reduces your Force costs which allows you to cast more spells for longer periods of time. I like to put points into Inner Strength over Mental Longevity (+50/100 Force) because over time that 9% reduction of cost adds up to be way more than a simple boost to my total Force. I also suggest you only put 2 points into Mental Longevity to start off with and then put the third point in at level 19 since you shouldn’t have too many problems with Force management at this level. Eventually, you’ll have points in both Inner Strength and Mental Longevity you just don’t need both at this level.

Concentration is a talent that I would normally ignore because the nature of casters is to stay out of situations where you would suffer pushback in the first place, but they also added a Force regeneration feature to it which makes this much more appealing. Keeping three stacks of Concentration up at all times really helps your longevity in a big fight. Disturb Mind increases the duration of your instant-cast DoT spell by 6 seconds which in turn means it deals more damage. Disturb Mind isn’t too critical for Telekinetics/Lightning for this level range but it will be pretty soon. If you want to spend these points elsewhere, Mind’s Eye(Lightning Spire) is a good choice for one point, and the other I would put in Mental Longevity(Reserves).

Telekinetic Wave is a cast time AoE that is centered on an enemy target, making it somewhat more limited in its use because of targeting, but still a great addition to your caster toolbelt since your only AoE option without it is your dinky pushback. As you continue to gain levels you’ll unlock other talents that just keep making this spell cooler.

Gearing Up
When you’re looking for new gear to increase your performance you want to make sure you’re always looking at your primary stat first. Sage/Sorcs rely primarily on Willpower for performance, so big boosts in Willpower are always a good thing.

Your secondary stat depends on your spec and what level you are. In the 1-20 level range the only secondary attributes you’re likely to find in large supply is Power (increases damage/healing) and Critical Rating (Crit), and lucky for us those are both appealing stats. Power is a guaranteed performance increase where Crit is good when you score a critical hit and worthless when you don’t making it a bit more hit and miss but potentially stronger when it does happen. I personally lean a bit more towards Crit than Power for the Sage because we have talents that proc additional effects based on getting critical hits with some of our spells.

Other secondary stats that are good include Accuracy (chance to hit) and Alacrity (haste, or the speed at which you cast your spells) though both of those are pretty hard to find in this level range. You won’t find enough gear with these stats on them in this level range for them to really matter, so if you happen to come across one you might as well use it, but don’t worry about hunting them down or trying to reach certain amounts in this level range. If you find it you find it, if you don’t you don’t.

The simplest way to keep yourself on top of the gearing game is to use gear that accepts mods and then craft or purchase mods as you level to keep it up to date. Modification items (mods) can be purchased on worlds beyond the starting worlds for either credits or commendations, or they can be crafted by the Artifice and Cybertech crew skills (as such you can often find them cheap on the Global Trade Network (GTN) as well).

And just to be clear, you will always and forever wear Light Armor and nothing more.

Crew Skills & You
Since I see the question of Crew Skills (professions) come up a lot whether it’s in game, on the blog, or on twitter, I decided I would go ahead and include a quick section for that with this post as well. The most important thing with professions in any game is that you take what’s appealing to you. It doesn’t matter whether it’s appealing because it’s the best thing out there or because you think it has a cool name, so long as it appeals to you in one way or another.

That being said, let’s take a look at the crew skills that have something to offer a Sage/Sorc.

Artifice: One of your best options as it allows you to craft three mods that you can use for your gear (Crystal, Hilt, Enhancement) and it allows you to craft your own off-hand items. Off hands are pretty easy to find as drops and the occasional quest reward, but being able to craft them gives you more control over which stats you get and allows for more frequent upgrades.

Biochem: A fantastic profession for every class, allows you to craft healing medpacs, long term buff stims, and short duration buff adrenals. Also allows you to craft Implants for level 21+ which is an often hard to fill slot while leveling (even more so because you have two implant slots to fill).

Cybertech: Another solid option, allows the crafting of Armoring and Mod modifications as well as Earpieces which can also be hard to find while leveling. Also allows you to craft explosives that deal targetable area of effect damage and include additional damaging debuffs or crowd control effects on the targets within the area.

Synthweaving: An appealing, but somewhat disappointing, crew skill that allows you to craft armor pieces for Force-users. While you can get some patterns for modable gear, the majority of your recipes will pale in comparison to modable gear of an equal level unless you’re willing to spend the credits/materials to craft blue quality or higher pieces which even then could be replaced by modable gear with better stats within a few levels. Synth offers nothing other than armor pieces, making it one of the least versatile and least useful crew skills available.

Diplomacy: Diplomacy is a pure mission skill, and offers very little to your class directly. The reason why I mention it is because all Diplomacy missions have a Light/Dark component to them which allows you to build your Light/Dark points faster than anything else. If you want to maximize your Light/Dark standing and do it quickly, then Diplomacy is the key.

Slicing: Slicing is a gathering/mission skill and is similar to Diplomacy in that it offers nothing specifically Sage/Sorc-related. What Slicing does offer is a cheap and easy way to have all the credits you’ll ever need. Just be sure that you don’t judge it by the first or second tier’s mission results and that you never waste your time/credits running missions above tier 5.

 

Darkmoon Artifact Farming

The Darkmoon Faire itself is over for the month of December, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep on farming artifacts for it.

The Darkmoon Artifacts can be found in a few different ways which we’ll get into the specifics of in a moment. In order to find them you have to have gone to the Faire and received a copy of the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide that you’ll carry around with you. Having the Guide allows you to loot artifacts from dungeon bosses and from enemy player corpses in battlegrounds.

Dungeon and PvP artifacts do not have a 100% drop rate from the targets who can potentially drop them, and the artifacts are not unique which means you can find dozens of the same one. You can only accept and complete the quests associated with them one time per Faire, so the desire to farm them is somewhat lessened. They do sell decently on the AH considering how easy they are to obtain, but that could change for either good or bad in upcoming patches.

At this point in time there is no level cap placed on who can farm these, so you can find even the lowest of the low in a level 15 dungeon on your level 85 character. The tooltip on the artifacts say that they drop from level appropriate content, but apparently that means anything level 15+ can drop it and they don’t take into account the level of the character that’s doing the farming. That may or may not change, but if you’re looking to farm a lot of these for pet/mount/heirloom farming in the DMF, then you might want to take advantage of farming them on high levels now just in case.

The rest of this guide is directed at showing you exactly where you need to go in order to farm any given artifact. Since you can only do one of each artifact’s quest each time the DMF rolls around, it doesn’t do you any good to have 30 of the same artifact, so you want to diversify your farming to get all of them.

DUNGEON DROPS
Imbued Crystal
“Strange threads of power swirl within this rare crystal. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would probably be interested in acquiring it.”

This artifact seems to drop from bosses who are “unnatural”, or those whose power could be stored within a crystal. Demons and Undead are the most common, with a few elementals sprinkled in for good measure.

Known Bosses:
– Taragaman the Hungerer, Ragefire Chasm
– High Inquisitor Whitemane, Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral
– Princess Theradras, Maraudon
– Balnazzar, Stratholme
– Ras Frostwhisper, Scholomance
– Nexus-Prince Shaffar, Mana Tombs
– Kael’thas Sunstrider, Magister’s Terrace
– Ormorok the Tree-Shaper, The Nexus
– Asaad, Vortex Pinnacle
– Queen Azshara, Well of Eternity

Monstrous Egg
“Who knows what creature lurks inside this egg? It would make a great addition to the Darkmoon Faire’s collection of rare and amazing creatures.”

This is the artifact of monsters, dragons, insects and those related to them. If you find a boss that’s somewhat closely tied to animals or insects that are born from eggs then there’s a good chance they can drop this artifact.

Known Bosses:
– Mutanus the Devourer, Wailing Caverns
– Plaguemaw the Rotting, Razorfen Downs
– Nerub’enkan, Stratholme
– Princess Theradras, Maraudon
– Gahz’rilla, Zul’Farrak
– Ambassador Flamelash, Blackrock Depths
– Aeonus, The Black Morass
– Nazan, Hellfire Ramparts
– Ghaz’an, The Underbog
– Harbinger Skyriss, The Arcatraz
– Keristrasza, The Nexus
– King Dread, Drak’Tharon Keep
– Skadi the Ruthless, Utgarde Pinnacle
– Eregos, The Occulus
– Anub’arak, Azjol-Nerub
– Cyanigosa, The Violet Hold
– Lockmaw, Lost City of Tol’vir
– Murozond, End Time

Mysterious Grimoire
“The pages of this ancient book are written in a language you don’t recognize. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would probably be interested in acquiring it.”

This artifact seems to drop from bosses who would keep a diary or record of their dealings. It’s kind of hard to nail this one to any one boss just from looking at them, so think of leaders or people who are intelligent or otherwise related to books.

Known Bosses:
– Lady Anacondra, Wailing Caverns
– Lord Godfrey, Shadowfang Keep
– Bloodmage Thalnos, Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard
– Arcanist Doan, Scarlet Monastery: Library
– Charlga Razorflank, Razorfen Kraul
– Darkmaster Gandling, Scholomance
– Jammal’an the Prophet, Sunken Temple
– Hydromancer Velratha, Zul’Farrak
– Emperor Dagran Tharissan, Blackrock Depths
– Exarch Maladaar, Auchenai Crypts
– Grandmaster Vorpil, Shadow Labyrinth
– Archbishop Benedictus, Hour of Twilight

Ornate Weapon
“This weapon seems as beautiful as it is deadly. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would probably be interested in acquiring it.”

This is the artifact of military leaders. Look for people with military titles, or ones that you know from questing or lore who fit that profile even without a title.

Known Bosses:
– Admiral Ripsnarl, The Deadmines
– Randolph Moloch, The Stockade
– Commander Springvale, Shadowfang Keep
– Mekgineer Thermaplugg, Gnomeregan
– Herod, Scarlet Monastery: Armory
– Archaedas, Uldaman
– Lord Aurius Riendare, Stratholme
– Overlord Wyrmthalak, Blackrock Spire
– General Drakkisath, Blackrock Spire
– Talon King Ikiss, Sethekk Halls
– Maiden of Grief, Halls of Stone
– Lich King, Halls of Reflection
– General Husam, Lost City of Tol’vir
– Queen Azshara, Well of Eternity
– Asira Dawnslayer, Hour of Twilight

BATTLEGROUND DROPS
Banner of the Fallen
“Proof of your valor in combat. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would be interested in this item.”

This artifact is looted from enemy player corpses in battlegrounds. It has not yet been confirmed which battlegrounds you can and cannot loot this from. Most people seem to think that you can get any/all of the PvP artifacts from all battlegrounds. I have looted both Insignia and Banners from the same BG, so I tend to agree with this statement.

Captured Insignia
“Claimed from a defeated opponent. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would be interested in this item.”

This artifact is looted from enemy player corpses in battlegrounds. It has not yet been confirmed which battlegrounds you can and cannot loot this from. Most people seem to think that you can get any/all of the PvP artifacts from all battlegrounds. I have looted both Insignia and Banners from the same BG, so I tend to agree with this statement.

Adventurer’s Journal
“The jounal containing stories of a fallen enemy’s epic exploits. Someone at the Darkmoon Faire would be interested in seeing this.”

This artifact is looted from enemy player corpses in battlegrounds. It has not yet been confirmed which battlegrounds you can and cannot loot this from. Most people seem to think that you can get any/all of the PvP artifacts from all battlegrounds. I have looted both Insignia and Banners from the same BG, so I tend to agree with this statement.

CATACLYSM HEROIC DUNGEON DROPS
A Treatise on Strategy
“Anduin Lothar’s ultimate compendium of battle strategy. This tome would be of interest to someone at the Darkmoon Faire.”

This artifact is tied to polital/military leaders, or pretty much anybody who has a title in level 85 heroic dungeons. This is a unique dungeon drop because of its requirement for the dungeon to be a level 85 Heroic.

Known Bosses:
– Commander Ulthok, Throne of the Tides (Heroic)
– Commander Springvale, Shadowfang Keep (Heroic)
– Rajh, Halls of Origination (Heroic)
– Slabhide, The Stonecore (Heroic)
– Grand Vizier Ertan, The Vortex Pinnacle (Heroic)
– High Prophet Barim, Lost City of Tol’vir (Heroic)
– Asaad, The Vortex Pinnacle (Heroic)
– General Umbriss, Grim Batol (Heroic)
– Ascendant Lord Obsidius, Blackrock Caverns (Heroic)
– Jin’do the Godbreaker, Zul’Gurub
– Daakara, Zul’Aman
– General Husam, Lost City of Tol’vir (Heroic)
– Admiral Ripsnarl, The Deadmines (Heroic)
– Ascendant Lord Obsidius, Blackrock Caverns (Heroic)

CATACLYSM RAID DROPS
Soothsayer’s Runes
“An old set of ccarved fortune-telling runes. Professor Thaddeus Paleo, of the Darkmoon Faire, would be most interested in these.”

This is the only artifact that drops solely in raids. Research so far shows that the bosses who drop this have a 100% chance to drop it. Also, unlike all of the other artifacts, when this one drops everyone in the raid who has the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide can loot their own copy of it instead of rolling Need/Greed.

It also appears that the Looking For Raid feature does not allow this to drop. I’ve seen one report of someone finding this artifact in Dragon Soul, and several saying that the LFR version did not drop it (which I can confirm from my own experience in LFR).

Known Bosses:
– Shannox, Firelands
– Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Bastion of Twilight
– Magmaw, Bloackwing Descent
– Argaloth, Baradin Hold

POTENTIAL CHANGES IN FUTURE PATCHES
With how easy it currently is to farm these and to do so in mass quantity, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Blizzard nerf something. Whether that’s decreasing the drop rate, putting a min/max level cap on each one, cutting back on the number of bosses that can drop each one, or removing the ability to farm them when the Faire itself is closed. Right now these are so incredibly abundant that there’s almost no reason to have them be drops in the first place.

Since the DMF is supposed to be one of those fun little vanity kind of things, it is possible that they won’t bother with a nerf and they just don’t mind having the artifacts available at every corner store for 5g per dozen. I smell a nerf coming on though, as I think they’ll quickly see that their new time sink is going to fail if they continue to make the farming so incredibly easy.

I did all of the artifact quests except for the Heroic and Raid ones on two characters, I sold 4-5 on the auction house, and I’ve still got over 30 of these sitting on a bank alt. I find a whole lot more of these in PvP than I do in dungeons, but part of that has to do with the fact that I can do more than 5 BG’s in an hour without getting locked out, and every single player that you kill in PvP can drop an artifact where only certain LFG bosses can drop them.

If you’re looking to farm these for profit on the AH, I suggest you focus a bit more on dungeons than PvP strictly because of how much easier the PvP ones are to farm than the PvE ones. I joined an EotS battleground that was going to end in less than 10 minutes, and I found six of the PvP artifacts in those 10 minutes just from killing people at one of the flags and looting all of the bodies.

 

Druid Leveling: 1-29 Feral

Playing a Feral Druid
Feral Druids are an odd class to play at low levels. It’s almost like Blizzard tried too hard to make us viable with a limited tool set early on and then slowly trickled in all the other abilities that we actually need to be more than mangle-spammers. In short, if you’re new to playing a Feral Druid be prepared to relearn how to play your class every ten levels because our spells are scattered all over the place.

Feral is also somewhat unique because it’s both a tank spec and a DPS spec at the same time. That also makes your talent choices interesting because some talents benefit both roles while others do only one or the other. You’ll need to decide whether you want to focus more on DPS or on tanking, or if you want to play that middle ground as much as possible.

While playing as a Cat you have the option of using stealth to move around undetected in PvE and PvP, though you don’t get any direct benefit from being in stealth right away. As a Bear you just run up to things and smack things in the face until they’re dead. For most of the leveling process Cat damage is based on bleeds and burst while Bear damage is based on steady, repeated blows that utilize the Bears added survivability to be able to live long enough for those steady blows to win you the fight.

Important Spells & Abilities
I’m going to do the spell breakdown a little bit differently this time around than I have in the past. I’m going to break down the important spells based on which forms you have available to you (Caster/Normal, Cat, and Bear) and also which type of spell it is. Druids are the ultimate hybrid class and even though a LOT of the spells you learn aren’t important to being a Feral Druid I want to cover the ones that are worth noting so that you have a firm grasp of what you’re capable of.

I’m still not listing every single spell (though close to it) as not all spells are useful to every spec.

Note that all numeric values are taken from the level 29 version of the spell for the purposes of this post.

Caster Form (Levels 1-8)

• Wrath (1): Deals 45-49 Nature Damage to the target.
• Moonfire (4): Burns the enemy for 11-13 Arcane damage and then additional Arcane damage over 12 seconds.

I list these spells primarily because this is what you’ll use to level until at least level 8 since you have no forms to choose from until then. However, it’s also important to be familiar with these if you’re going to PvP. As a Feral Druid there’s a lot of crowd control that you can shrug off, but being rooted in place is not one of them. In cases like those, you need to be able to pop out of your feral form to attack with spells. Even as Feral I keep Moonfire keybound an in reach for just such an occasion. I’ll get into more detail on when using Moonfire and other caster spells is a good idea as a Feral even though using these spells pops you out of your Cat/Bear form in a later post directed specifically at PvP.

For leveling from 1-8, you’re basically going to spam Wrath and/or Moonfire until your targets are dead.

Cat Form (Levels 8-29)

• Cat Form (8): Shift into Cat form, causing Agility to increase Attack Power (2:1). Also protects the caster from Polymorph effects and allows the use of cat abilities. Shapeshifting frees the caster of movement slowing effects.
• Claw (8): Claw the enemy, causing 100% of normal damage plus 38. Awards 1 combo point.
• Ferocious Bite (8): Finishing Move causes damage per combo point and consumes up to 35 additional energy to increase damage by up to 100%, and heals you for up to 1% of your total max health for each 10 energy used.
• Rake (8): Rake the target for Bleed damage and additional Bleed damage every 3 seconds for 9 seconds. Awards 1 combo point.
• Mangle (10): Mangle the target for 354% normal damage plus 3 and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 minute. Awards 1 combo point.
• Prowl (10): Allows the druid to prowl around (stealth), but reduces your movement speed by 30%. Lasts until cancelled.
• Ravage (22): Ravage the target, causing 664% damage plus 3 to the target. Must be prowling and behind the target. Awards 1 combo point.
• Skull Bash (22): Charge and skull bash the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds.
• Tiger’s Fury (24): Increases physical damage done by 15% for 6 seconds. Requires Cat form. Does not break prowling.
• Cower (26): Cower, causing no damage but lowering your threat by 10%, making the enemy less likely to attack you.
• Dash (26): Increases movement speed by 70% while in Cat form for 15 seconds. Does not break prowling.
• Feline Grace (26): Reduces damage from falling.

In case you haven’t noticed, Druids get a crapload of spells. And these are just the ones that you use strictly in Cat form.

As a leveling Cat the most important spells for you are: Mangle, Rake, Ferocious Bite, Prowl and Ravage. Prowl (stealth) and Ravage are used as openers and with decent gear you can one-shot a lot of quest mobs with Ravage. Especially if you buff your damage with Tiger’s Fury first. Mangle is your spam-attack, Rake is your primary Bleed, and Ferocious Bite is your finisher. We’ll get into more detail about how to use these in the sections below.

Claw is mentioned SOLELY because it’s your only decent attack from level 8-9 in Cat Form. At level 10 you’ll take this off of your bars and never look at this worthless piece of garbage again. This spell only exists to give non-Feral Druids an attack to use while in Cat Form, it’s not meant for you. It costs more Energy than Mangle and does a fraction of its damage, so don’t use this ever again once you reach level 10.

While Skull Bash won’t see much use while you’re leveling, it’s good to stay familiar with it and keep it somewhere easily reachable. You don’t need to interrupt spells from quest mobs, but if you develop that habit now you won’t have to worry about trying to get into the habit when you reach max level where dungeon and raid fights demand interrupts.

Bear Form (Levels 15-29) [jump to tanking]

• Bear Form (15): Shift into Bear form, increasing armor by 120% and Stamina by 20%. Significantly increases threat generation (500%), causes Agility to increase Attack Power (2:1), and protects the caster from Polymorph effects and allows the use of bear abilities. Shapeshifting frees the caster from movement slowing effects.
• Mangle (10): Mangle the target for 88% normal damage plus 93 and causes the target to take 30% additional damage from bleed effects for 1 minute.
• Demoralizing Roar (15): Reduce the physical damage caused by all enemies within 10 yards by 10% for 30 seconds.
• Growl (15): Taunts the target to attack you, but has no effect if the target is already attacking you.
• Maul (15): An attack that instantly deals 35 physical damage. Effects which increase Bleed damage also increase Maul damage.
• Swipe (18): Swipe nearby enemies, inflicting 51 damage. Damage is increased by attack power.
• Enrage (22): Generates 20 Rage, and then generates an additional 10Rage over 10 seconds.
• Skull Bash (22): Charge and skull bash the target, interrupting spellcasting and preventing any spell in that school from being cast for 4 seconds.
• Faerie Fire (24): Decreases the armor of the target by 4% for 5 minutes. While affected, the target cannot stealth or turn invisible. Stacks up to 3 times. Deals damage and additional threat when used in Bear Form.
• Challenging Roar (28): Forces all nearby enemies within 10 yards to focus attacks on you for 6 seconds.

Did I mention Druids get a crapload of spell? Here’s the list of the ones strictly used in Bear form.

Bear form is most often used for tanking, but it’s also a strong option for leveling; especially for those of you who enjoy using AoE and fighting multiple mobs at once. All of these spells are important in one way or another. For boss tanking Mangle, Demoralizing Roar, and Maul are your primary spells with Growl getting an honorable mention in case you’ve got some strong DPS in your group. For questing or fighting trash your major spells are: Mangle, Demoralizing Roar, Maul, and Swipe with Challenging Roar and Growl being mentioned again for those DPS that might draw agro in dungeons.

We’ll talk more about Bear tanking later on. For now, know that if you’re going to be bear tanking you’ll make use of basically all of these spells. The least likely spell for you as a tank is going to be Skull Bash since you usually have DPS focused on interrupts, but if you can add yours to the mix then you only strengthen your group.

Healing Spells (Levels 3-29)

• Rejuvenation (3): Heals the target for 70 every 3 seconds for 12 seconds.
• Regrowth (12): Heals a friendly target for 182-202 and another 57 over 6 seconds.
• Revive (12): Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 35% max health and mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.
• Rebirth (20): Returns the spirit to the body, restoring a dead target to life with 20% health and mana. Can be used during combat.
• Remove Corruption (24): Nullifies corrupting effects on the friendly target, removing 1 Curse and 1 Poison effect.

I wouldn’t ordinarily bother listing healing spells on a guide written specifically for a Tank/DPS spec, but Druids are special.

There’s a method of healing that we call pre-HoT’ing, which is casting Heal over-Time (HoT) spells on your tank before they pull so that you nullify or greatly reduce the amount of initial damage that they take once combat begins. Bears operate off of a Rage mechanic which starts at 0 and fills up during combat. Because of this you can take great advantage of pre-HoT’ing yourself while questing or during dungeons to lessen the load on your healer. If you’re always out of Rage between pulls then you can also make use of your talents for a free 10 Rage after casting your HoT’s to give you a head start in the pull.

The most likely spell for you to use in a pre-HoT is Rejuvenation because it has a longer duration and a cheaper mana cost. Regrowth only lasts for 6 seconds and it’s a front-loaded HoT as well as expensive, so only use it when you know there’s going to be a lot of incoming damage or when you need to top yourself off from the last pull.

Rebirth is mentioned because being able to resurrect someone mid-combat is pretty stinking useful. Revive I mention only because I can’t believe how many times I’ve had people die in pugs and nobody in the group has or has bothered training a resurrection spell. Learn it. Use it. Love it.

Remove Corruption deserves special mention because you can’t use Prowl (stealth) while you have DoT’s on you because taking damage removes you from stealth. You can enter prowl, you just won’t be able to stay in it for more than a second or two. Removing curses and poisons that deal damage can save you a lot of problems when playing as a cat.

Utility Spells (Levels 4-29)

• Thorns (5): Thorns sprout from the friendly target causing Nature damage to attackers when hit. Lasts 20 seconds.
• Entangling Roots (7): Roots the target in place for 30 seconds. Damage caused my interrupt the effect.
• Teleport: Moonglade (15): Teleports the caster to the Moonglade.
• Aquatic Form (16): Shift into aquatic form, increasing swim speed by 50% and allowing the druid to breathe underwater. Also protects from Polymorph effects. Shifting frees the caster from movement slowing effects.
• Travel Form (16): Shift into travel form, increasing movement speed by 40% and protecting you from Polymorph effects. Only usable outdoors. Shifting frees the caster of movement slowing effects.
• Omen of Clarity (20): Your damage spells, attacks, and auto-attacks have a chance to cuase you to enter a Clearcasting state. The Clearcasting state reduces the Mana, Rage or Energy cost of your next damaging or healing spell or offensive feral ability by 100%.
• Faerie Fire (24): Decreases the armor of the target by 4% for 5 minutes. While affected, the target cannot stealth or turn invisible. Stacks up to 3 times.
• Innervate (28): Causes the target to regenerate 5% of their maximum mana over 10 seconds. If cast on self, you regenerate an additional 15% of your maximum mana over 10 seconds.
• Sooth (28): Soothes the target, dispelling all enrage effects.

Yep. Crapload.

Thorns is a really cool spell that actually puts out a surprising amount of damage. The bad news is, it kicks you out of bear/cat form to use it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cast it, but it does mean you should generally avoid doing so mid-combat. This is another spell you should be casting in between pulls for extra damage. If you’re not the tank, cast it on your tank between pulls instead of yourself.

Entangling Roots isn’t used much by Ferals in PvE, though it’s pretty common in PvP. In terms of leveling and questing I like to use this when I’m gathering mostly so that when I don’t want to fight a mob I’ll just root them in place, gather my node and then leave. If you’re a Bear that’s pretty much the only time you’ll cast Roots in PvE.

Teleport: Moonglade is a free ticket to your class trainer any time you want it. Moonglade also has a couple of professions trainers (Herbalism and…something else, I think) and a couple of vendors that sell items that often can be flipped on the AH for a decent profit.

Aquatic Form and Travel Form are both great for mobility, and they can both be cast while you’re in combat. They’re fantastic for PvP, and occasionally useful in PvE.

Omen of Clarity is worth mentioning because you’re going to see those two bars of green leaves pop up on your screen from time to time and you might as well know what it means. Omen of Clarity (OoC) essentially makes your next attack or heal free, so you generally want to make use of the OoC proc by casting a spell with the largest Rage/Energy/Mana cost that has the most benefit. For Feral that’s almost always going to be Mangle or sometimes Ferocious Bite in Cat form, though you may also want to use it for a quick Regrowth if you need some emergency healing.

Innervate doesn’t mean much to Ferals since you almost never use mana, but your healers will love you for casting it on them.

And last is Sooth. Sooth is very often overlooked by Druids because you get it at such an early level and yet have virtually no reason at all to use it. For leveling purposes this spell can pretty much be ignored since anything that does enrage on you will likely die within a matter of seconds if you’re attacking it in Cat form. In dungeons you’ll occasionally run into a boss that you can use this on where it’s useful, but it breaks Cat/Bear form so doing so is risky. The main reason why I mention it is because it does have some definite uses in PvP against Warriors and some class pets that have enrages.

Leveling a Feral Druid

• Questing Single Mob Stealth: [Cat Form] Prowl, Tiger’s Fury, Ravage, Mangle, Rake, Ferocious Bite, Mangle spam
• Questing Single Mob No Stealth: [Cat Form] Tiger’s Fury, Mangle, Rake, Mangle x1-3, Ferocious Bite
• Questing Multi-Mob: [Bear Form] Mangle (mob 1), Demoralizing Roar, Maul, Swipe, Maul, Mangle (mob 2), Swipe, Maul

Questing Single Mob
The fastest way to kill things 1v1 is to use Prowl to sneak up behind them, pop Tiger’s Fury for added damage, and then use Ravage for big burst damage followed by Mangle for even more burst. If the mob manages to survive, you follow that with Rake’s bleed effect which is 30% stronger thanks to Mangle’s debuff, and then Ferocious Bite as a finisher. If the mob still isn’t dead, switch to spamming your Mangle attack until the mob is either dead or has 5 combo points on it at which time you Ferocious Bite again and then return to Mangle spam.

Rarely should you ever have to worry about normal mobs surviving through that full rotation as a Feral.

While using stealth is often looked at as the “right” way to play a Feral, it’s not really necessary. It’s perfectly acceptable to just run up to something and Mangle it’s face a bit before using Ferocious Bite to finish them off. This is most effective when you’re in heirloom gear or other good gear for your level rather than a hodgepodge of whites and greens that don’t add Agility.

Questing Multi-Mob
Using AoE to take down groups of mobs is my favorite way to kill things. This rotation is also what you’ll use when tanking dungeons. Those four spells are the key to tanking form level 15 up to level 69. For that massive stretch of levels there’s virtually no change at all to your rotation for taking. You can assign Mangle, Maul, Swipe and Demo Roar to your 1-4 keys and after hitting Demo Roar once at the beginning of a fight you can spam 1-3 without even looking at your monitor for the rest of the encounter and you’ll do just fine.

The reason why I mention using Mangle on multiple targets is two fold. First, Mangle is your hardest hitting attack so spreading out that big damage will help bring all of the mobs down faster and more evenly time-wise. Second, because Mangle increases Bleed damage by 30% which Maul takes advantage of even though it isn’t a Bleed effect. By default Maul only hits a single target, but with a Major Glyph you can make it hit two targets which is why it’s great for AoE situations.

How to Tank: 29 Feral Druid
Tanking on a Bear Druid is easy while you’re leveling. Before patch 4.3 it was a little bit tougher because Bear Form didn’t get its full defensive bonus until higher levels, but now you get it from level 15 on. To see which spells you’ll be using as a Bear, refer to the Bear Spells section above for a list of all the spells you’ll need to have ready in this level range.

Tanking as a Bear is incredibly simple at early levels. It can be a little bit boring since you’ll be using the same three attack spells over and over as they come off of cooldown, but tabbing through multiple enemies to keep threat spread out over all the mobs can keep it a bit more interesting.

Pulling
There are three methods of pulling that you can use: body pull, feral charge, and faerie fire.

Body Pulling is simply running into the group of mobs and letting the presence of your toon draw the agro. This is the simplest method of pulling, but also the least effective since it generates no threat at all.

Feral Charge is a bit more effect since it’s a gap closer, meaning you rush right in quickly and get started with combat and threat right away.

Faerie Fire is much like Feral Charge except that the range is longer and you’re not closing the gap any faster than with a body pull.

The most effective way to start a pull is to combine those last to. You do this by casting Faerie Fire on the target furthest away from you, then casting Feral Charge on the mob closest to the center of the pack you’re about to pull (any mob in the cluster will work, though).

Once you’re in range of the mobs your first priority is to cast Demoralizing Roar to reduce the damage of all of those mobs. From there you move on to your damage rotation.

Damage Rotation
Until you learn Lacerate at level 66 there are only three spells you’ll need to worry about for your damage rotation: Mangle, Maul and Swipe.

Mangle is a solid burst of damage on a single target, with a 6 second cooldown.
Maul is reasonable damage on a single target, with a 3 second cooldown..
Swipe is an AoE attack that hits all enemies within 8 yards of you, with a 3 second cooldown.

You want to try to use Mangle on each target in the pack at least once so that Mangles +30% Bleed damage debuff is on as many targets as possible. The reason for this is that Maul benefits from Mangle’s debuff even though it’s not actually a Bleed effect. Another reason why we’re spreading it around instead of just focusing one target is because you also want to use the Glyph of Maul which makes Maul hit two targets instead of one, so being able to increase Maul’s damage by 30% on multiple targets is just free, extra damage.

Since Maul and Swipe both have 3 second cooldowns, you’ll alternate these a lot, with Mangle thrown in when it’s available.

If you’re facing a boss or a single mob, you can leave Swipe off the list and just use Mangle/Maul as they’re available, filling in the empty spaces with Faerie Fire until you have 3 stacks of it (the max).

Taunts and Drawing Agro
Bears have two taunts, one that’s single target and one that’s area.

Growl has a single target, and an 8 second cooldown.
Challenging Roar hits all mobs within 10 yards, forcing agro (not threat*) for 6 seconds, and has a 3 minute cooldown.

Growl is going to be your primary taunt because of it’s significantly shorter cooldown. The main thing you need to know about taunts, if they’re unfamiliar to you, is that terms of threat a Taunt puts your threat equal to the person who currently has threat. So if their threat is 500 and yours is only 300, your threat meter immediately jumps up to 500 to match theirs. This is important to remember because taunting something doesn’t just instantly guarantee that the problem is going away. Unless you do something to generate more threat on that target than whoever had threat before is continuing to generate on them, you’re going to lose it again.

For example, if a Mage pulls threat on one mob and you taunt it, but don’t do anything else, if that Mage continues to cast spells against that mob he’s going to steal threat again as soon as he reaches 130% of your threat level (assuming he’s at caster range and not melee range, or else it’s only 110%). The way you combat that is to use attacks on that specific mob to generate a significant enough threat lead that you will not lose threat again before the mob is dead.

If you taunt a mob and they’re not close enough for you to just hit them right away to reestablish agro, use other means of generating agro such as Faerie Fire or use your Feral Charge to close in with the stray mob, followed with Mangle to boost your threat back up.

Challenging Roar forces everything in its radius to fight you for 6 seconds no matter what the threat levels are. Even if your threat level is 300 and theirs is 3 million, you’ve got agro for those 6 seconds. The key issue here though, is that this isn’t an actual taunt. A taunt resets your threat level to match whoever had threat at the time, where this spell leaves threat levels where they are an instead just makes the targets ignore everyone else until the spell ends.

In order to use this spell effectively you need to follow it up immediately with as much AoE as you can. That means hitting Swipe, Maul, Demoralizing Roar, and anything else you have to throw at them (like Engineering explosives). As a Bear you generate threat at 5 times the amount of damage that you put out, and no DPS classes near your level should be able to put out 500% of your damage. Certain spells, like Faerie Fire, also generate threat which is not based solely on damage, but you don’t need to know all the math behind those so I’m not going to mention it.

[Note: I've had some trouble finding the exact percentages that are used currently for pulling threat. General consensus on twitter was that 110% is correct for melee range threat, while there's some confusion on ranged being 120% or 130%. I'm not an expert on threat, so if I got the numbers right just let me know and I'll get it corrected.]

Talent Spec: 29 Feral Druid

• Feral Swiftness 2/2: Increases your movement speed by 30% in Cat Form and increases your chance to doge while in Cat or Bear forms by 4%. In addition, your Dash and Stampeding Roar have a 100% chance to remove all movement impairing effects from affected targets when used.
• Furor 3/3: Grants a 100% chance to gain 10 Rage when you shift into Bear form, allows you to keep up to 100 of your Energy when shifting into Cat form, and increases your maximum mana by 15%.
• Fury Swipes 3/3: When you auto-attack while in Cat or Bear form, you have a 15% chance to cause a Fury Swipe dealing 310% weapon damage. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.
• Primal Fury 2/2: Gives a 100% chance to gain an additional 5 Rage anytime you get a critical strike while in Bear form and your critical strikes from Cat form abilities that add combo points have a 100% chance to add an additional combo point.
• Feral Charge 1/1: Teaches Feral Charge (Bear) and Feral Charge (Cat). Bear – causes you to charge an enemy, immobilizing them for 4 seconds, 15 second cooldown. Cat – causes you to leap behind an enemy, dazing them for 3 seconds, 30 second cooldown.

This is the spec that I would recommend for level 29, regardless of whether you want to be a Bear tank or a Cat DPS. I have some alternative suggestions down below, in case you like the sound of some of those better for your early leveling. The Feral tree is packed with lots of really cool talents, and depending on what your focus is in game you may prefer one over another.

Feral Swiftness is one of the more iconic talents of the feral spec, allowing you to move faster in Cat form and granting an extra 4% dodge while you’re in a feral form. Increasing your movement speed is often considered a trait of PvP, but it’s a quality of life thing that does have uses in PvE as well. I suggest you spend both of your first points to max this out.

Furor is a stable for every Druid, regardless of spec. For Ferals the main thing is free Rage when shifting into Bear form and not having your Energy drained when shifting into Cat form. It’s a big time saver, and it’s especially useful when tanking so that you’re not constantly having to body pull and start from scratch every time.

Fury Swipes is free damage. Whether that free damage is helping you deal more damage as a Cat, or it’s helping you deal more damage (and thus, more threat) as a Bear, it’s helping no matter what.

Primal Fury is the most changeable talent on my list. It gives you free Rage as a Bear and free combo points as a Cat, which both serve to make you more effective in combat. This is more important for Cats than it is for Bears as oftentimes you can end up with excessive amounts of Rage as a Bear and nothing to dump them into, where a Cat can often end up starved for energy and get better damage on their finishing moves from free combo points without having to spend the energy to generate those points otherwise.

Substitutions:
If you’re going for a straight Cat build and you know you have no interest in tanking, then there are a couple of other choices you might want to consider.

Predatory Strikes 2/2 is a good substitute for points from Furor. It will give you an extra 50% crit chance when using Ravage on targets above 80% health, and give your finishing moves a 20% chance per combo point to make your next Nature spell an instant cast and cost no mana. This is very much a PvP talent, but it also adds survivability in PvE by giving you access to free and instant healing or crowd control spells.

All four of the talents on the 2nd tier of the Feral tree are good. Infected Wounds 2/2 causes your primary attack skills to slow the target’s movement by 25% and their attack speed by 10% which is great for survival and PvP. Feral Aggression 2/2 increases your Ferocious Bite damage by 10% and causes your Faerie Fire spell to apply all 3 stacks of FF in a single cast.

Glyphs

Prime Glyphs

• Glyph of Mangle: Increases the damage done by Mangle by 10%.
• Glyph of Tiger’s Fury: Reduces the cooldown of Tiger’s Fury by 3 seconds.

There’s really no question of which glyph is better for you here. Mangle is your primary attack for both Feral forms. The only time I would settle for Tiger’s Fury is if you can’t find or can’t afford Mangle.

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Maul: Your Maul ability now hits 1 additional target for 50% damage.
• Glyph of Ferocious Bite: Your Ferocious Bite ability heals you for 1% for your maximum health for every 10 energy used.
• Glyph of Thorns: Reduces the cooldown of Thorns by 20 seconds.

If you’re going to participate in Bear tanking, use Maul. If you’re a crazy cat lady, use Ferocious Bite. If you don’t have heirlooms, use Thorns.

Maul gives you no benefit as a Cat, and FerBite gives you no benefit as a Bear, so if you’re going to specialize in one or the other then don’t go for a glyph that does you no good.

Thorns does a lot of damage for a cast-and-forget spell, but only if enemies have enough time to hit you. If you have fully enchanted heirlooms and you’re slaying things in a couple of globals, then Thorns isn’t useful to you either.

Minor Glyphs

• Glyph of Unburdened Rebirth: Your Rebirth spell no longer requires a reagent.
• Glyph of Aquatic Form: Increases your swim speed by 50% while in Aquatic Form.
• Glyph of Dash: Reduces the cooldown of Dash by 20%.

I’m going to leave the minor glyphs up to you. Personally, I love the Aquatic Form glyph because I hate moving slow and I love taking advantage of water areas in PvP that my opponents cannot. Dash is another favorite of mine since I’m all about moving faster and doing it often. Unburdened Rebirth is first on the list because in practical terms it’s got the most benefit in the long run if you play with other people in your group.

Gearing Up Your Feral Druid
When choosing your gear your top priority is Agility regardless of being a Cat or a Bear. If you’re a Bear tank then your secondary stat is Stamina. If you’re a Cat, then your secondary stat is Agility.

No, that wasn’t a typo.

Other stats that interest you are: Hit, Crit (Cat), Haste, and Dodge (Bears).

You can get some pretty decent Agility gear from the Leatherworking profession at all levels. It’s the one profession I have never maxed on any of my characters, so I don’t wish it upon anyone, but if you know a LW or have on already then you can get yourself some decent upgrades in advance.

If you like to run dungeons, you can get some pretty nice upgrades.
Ragefire Chasm: Chest, Cloak
Deadmines: Cloak, Weapon, Legs
Wailing Caverns: Chest, Belt, Boots, Legs, Gloves, Shoulders
Shadowfang Keep: Shoulders
Blackfathom Deeps: Legs, Bracers, Weapon, Gloves
Stormwind Stockades: Helm (Alliance only), Boots, Legs
Gnomeregan: Rings, Bracers, Chest (Alliance only),

Macros
At Cynwise’s suggestion, I’ve decided to put the macros for each class on their own page. For Druid macros, simply click on the following link, or look under the Macros menu at the top of this page: Druid Macros.