Planes Ready
 

Hey all, I have my druid approaching 46 (slowly), and am just curious as to if there is anything I should be doing to prepare for the Planes and actually raiding. Where should my Wisdom be at currently? Are there any quests I should be getting done for keys or what-not? Are the ports for the bigger places like WL + CS worth making the run for the teeth worth getting done now? Any advice would help, thanks in advance!!!

I haven't done a legit planar raid for awhile, but there isn't much you need to do for prep. Sadly, a lot of people don't seem to expect much from druids in this game, but you do have a few tools at your disposal that make you very useful in the planes. Unless they changed it with the Hate revamp, both Fear and Hate are considered outdoor zones, which means you can use your unresistable harmony spell to calm mobs. Any puller who doesn't take advantage of a smart druid willing to coordinate with harmony is dumb, because if done correctly it makes pulls much easier and faster.

Additionally, in Fear, druids can be excellent crowd control once a corner of the zone is clear enough to give them some room to kited snared mobs. Back in classic when I played a monk, I remember two druids specifically (original Snifs and Appollo) who were awesome at tagging mobs from my pulls, and queuing them up in a kite until the raid was ready. It made my job as a puller much easier since they could assist with maintaining a constant pull rate by always keeping a couple mobs queued up in their kites. If you're going to be kiting at all, investing in some resist gear - specifically MR, would be a good idea, although with current resist tables I don't know how well a 46 druid is going to be able to handle the fear from those frogs.

The best way to get up to speed is to just get 46, go on a raid, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Find the druids who actually seem to be doing something and ask them for pointers.

Edit: also learn the zones. There is a ton of info on the wiki, and having a general idea of the layout of each zone is really helpful. Learn the common terms (e.g. West Wall in fear, maestro/organ room in hate, etc). Learn about the mobs and their abilities. Don't be like the bard app in DA who thought it would be a good idea to charm a scarling in fear because he didn't know the scarling's abilities.

Charming too once you're higher level. In Hate you can charm rats, and in fear I want to say you can charm the spiders, but I could be mistaken about that. The pet will do more DPS than you ever could with your spells, so that can be a huge help to the raid.

Druids can charm Shiverbacks (gorillas) in PoFear, Revultant Rats in PoHate, and Pegasus in PoAir.

At level 46 though, you're honestly mostly dead weight on the raid unless you're being CC by kiting mobs. If you have single pulls there isn't much you can do. Your charms won't stick, your roots will break quickly, it's difficult to pull at that level due to increased aggro radius, you can't egress, your heals are 290 HP, etc.

I'd focus more on leveling before worry about planar raids. At level 52 you pick up your best charm, egress and you'll have a better heal spell, at 56 you'll have picked up your best root and chloroblast.

Druids are great in the planar zones if they're capable of holding a charmed pet, and performing CC roles through rooting / Harmony / kiting. But to do those things you really need to be 56+

Thanks for the advice!

I think Plane of Sky is a good plane to get started on.

My alt is a druid, thanks for the informative posts Loke and Dald, always good posters