5 ways for a Balance Druid to have fun raiding post comment

Last night we were having a small issue in that the last healer that we needed to get some quality time with Putricide was delayed, so instead of just cancelling the raid we headed back into Ulduar to mop up a few meta-achievements. During Freya I decided to have a bit of fun, and realised that there are a few things that Moonkin can do to break up the monotony of outgeared content.

At the risk of getting a slap from my guild officer when they next see me doing one of these, here are a few ways that you can have a bit of fun in your raids. I would not recommend doing these during anything that you have any chance of wiping on or in a PUG as it is liable to get you in trouble or removed from the PUG.

Naked raiding

This is an old one, and one not neccesarily restricted to Druids. Quite simply join the raid as normal, and once everyone is ready to go remove all items. The reason this is more fun as a druid is that so long as you still have a weapon equipped, there is no outward sign to show that you are naked. Other classes need to use a disguise effect to achieve the same.

There is of course the fact that you will have about 6000 mana and very little health. And the fact that your Gearscore (/spit) will be approximately equal to a level 10 player. Oh and when you do die (don't harbour illusions that you will survive for very long) you will be naked. It can be fun to have a side-bet with someone on how long you can continue without being noticed. My record is so far about 10 minutes.

Hurricane hoaxing

This is what put the idea in my head for this post. We were clearing trash on Freya, and as normal there were Hurricanes from the caster trash. Now when we used to clear Ulduar in the first runs I remember having to single target this trash. Now, 2 major patches on, they are all of course AOEable. The fun here lies in the fact that our AOE shares the graphic with the AOE from the trash.

If you are bored of watching that hunter standing back out of Hurricane, or feel that the healers need to move a bit more, then just start casting Hurricane at random positions in the raid. Most players will assume that, becuase it's not over the pack, it is a hostile Hurricane instead of yours.

Where this gets really fun is where they think they have got used to you doing this. When this happens, just start spamming Hurricane everywhere. If you really spam it every GCD then you can get 3 or 4 graphics up at once. Combine this with the Hurricanes that actually are hostile, and you end up with a raid trying hard to guess where they can stand.

The main negative point of this is that you will have no mana when you are done.

Druid DI (fun with Spell Reflect)

I first came across the Druid Divine Intervention when I was soloing one of the Outland raid mobs. It had an annoying spell reflect during which it did a nasty bit of damage. It occurred to me that if I cast a Cyclone then it would reflect onto me, rendering me immune. It worked, and so I was able to avoid the damage. It's not like I could really do anything else useful during that time anyway.

Now in places like Forge of Souls and Violet Hold there are mobs that also spell reflect. If you find yourself maybe a bit over-aggroed, or if you just feel like having an excuse to do nothing for a few seconds, then just throw a Cyclone at the mob with spell reflect. Sure enough you will find yourself up in the air, immune to damage and unable to perform any actions. Kind of like when you get a Divine Intervention, only for a shorter time period and without the need for Paladin sacrifice.

This is different to the other items in this post in that it does actually serve a useful purpose in some places.

Typhooning at inappropriate moments

If you don't want to annoy the tanks, ignore this. On the flip side, if you want to annoy everyone, Typhoon is your friend. It can knock mobs out of LoS from casters. It can knock them out of the AoE target zone. You can knock them behind the rogues and you can knock them in totally the wrong direction.

I love typhoon, but of all the things listed here this is the most likely to get you kicked out of a group. From a tanking perspective there's nothing more annoying (apart from maybe a hunter that doesn't know how to Feign Death) than some Moonkin (or Shaman) knocking all those carefully positioned mobs away.

Undersized vehicles

This isn't something that will cause problems, but is plain comical. My favourite vehicle for this is the trash before Mimiron. A moonkin sat in one of those tanks just looks comical. It looks as though the whole vehicle should fall over.

Other good options are getting into the sidecar of a chopper, or sitting on one of those Spectral Tiger toys. Moonkins should probably stick to the larger vehicles. I'll get a picture up later on to illustrate this.

That's all folks

Well I am afraid that's all from me for today. If any of you have any other ways to have some fun as a Moonkin in a raid then I'd love to hear them. If anything particularly good is posted up then I'll add it in to this post. I accept no responsibility for any player that gets kicked from a guild or group for doing anything on this list. If taht happens then your guild/group leader has no sense of humor. Happy raiding ya'all.