New abilities at level 8; Branching out with Entangling Roots
New abilities at level 8; Branching out with Entangling Roots
At level 8, the new skills you’ll get are Entangling Roots and Healing Touch (rank 2).
Entangling Roots adds a much needed crowd control aspect to Druid warfare. So far, you’ve been suffering through as a pure offensive caster, trying to get your spells off as fast as you can before your opponent forces you into melee combat.
With Entangling Roots, you now have a spell that has the same range as Wrath and Moonfire, with the same 1.5 second casting time as Wrath, that not only applies damage over time for 12 seconds, but also roots your target into place so he can’t run after you.
Now, damage applied to a target that is affected by Entangling Roots will, more often than not, break the root early. And it happens often enough that some Druids neglect using Entangling Roots at all when soloing, except when an additional mob joins a fight. And that’s a shame, because rooting targets properly is fun and makes leveling as a caster a lot easier.
Being animals at heart, adding Entangling Roots to our combat sequence lets us have a lot more fun ‘playing with our food’.
Let’s see what happens when we add Entangling Roots to the solo mob combat sequence we’ve been using up to now;
* We move to extreme range, use left-click (auto-attack disabled) to select the target, and engage with two Wraths.
* Instead of casting Wrath a third time, we begin the casting of Entangling Roots. It should go off just as he reaches us. Since we are not auto-attacking, we do not risk accidentally breaking our Root with melee damage.
* The target is rooted in place, and begins to take damage from the DoT. This let’s you maneuver yourself back to extreme casting range from the target.
* Wait for the Entangling Roots duration to be at or around 3 seconds left, regaining a little Mana outside the 5 second rule, and then continue your attack by casting Wrath.
* You should easily be able to cast Wrath twice more, and still have time to decide whether you want to cast Entangling Roots again, or simply finish the target off with Moonfire/Rejuvenation/melee.
There is always a chance that your target can break the root early, but since you were maneuvering to extreme range, if he does you can begin casting Entangling Roots again right away, and have it activate as he reaches you.
You can keep rooting your target, getting to extreme range, recover some Mana and hit him with Wrath for as long as your Mana holds out. If you get impatient, then as soon as you reach extreme range, you can begin casting Wrath immediately; the damage only has a chance to break Root early, it’s not always guaranteed to happen.
Tip: Higher ranked versions of Entangling Roots have longer durations as you level up. However, if used against other players in PvP, it will always have a maximum duration of 12 seconds, and each subsequent application against the same target has it’s duration halved (12 seconds on first application, then 6 seconds, 3 seconds, and finally the target is immune).
The other, and much more common use of Entangling Roots is to deal with additional mobs.
There are always going to be times when you are engaged in one fight, and you pull a second mob accidentally. That’s a good time to hit the new mob with Entangling Roots, back off a few yards so he can’t hit you anymore, and focus on burning down your original target as fast as you can.
If you are a Tauren, the perfect time to use War Stomp is when both targets are in melee range. A fast .5 second cast War Stomp and the targets are stunned just long enough to let you get Entangling Roots cast on the add without interruption.
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