The Write Up!
Main Spec: Guardian.
Main Gear: TBC Gem Gear, Ghost Iron Dragonling, Classic off-sets as I won them. I did not use the Legion Artifact weapon. I used an epic ilvl 26 staff. I built two sets of main gear for this run, a tank dps set for clearing trash and easy bosses, and a survivability set that boasted huge critical and haste to clear tough hard hitting fights.
Gems: Combination of Steady Talasite (4 armor, 6 stam), and Deadly Pyrestone(2 Agi, 2 Crit).
Enchants: I used +4 Weapon Enchant on my staff due to the interaction of base damage alterations for the largest dps and healing gain. I experimented with other enchants as well, like Unholy. Unholy provides 5 physical damage reduction and seemed to have about a 50% uptime during actual gameplay. Bosses tended to hit me (on the high end) for about 200 on average though this is just an average. This would represent a 2.5% damage reduction while active, but ended up being about 1.25% in my book. Was fun to try but not worth it in the long run. Other enchantments are run of the mill though I opted for simple plus critical enchants in most of my slots this time around for offsets.
Off-set Gear: As with my paladin Meatbawl, I used a huge variety of off gear since that's where the largest amount of side stat alterations can come from. As I earned better gear from Classic dungeons in these slots, I moved towards my preferred setup of critical and haste for this character. My initial gearing was for critical and versatility to get started however. This is good in the long run b/c some fights prefer different setups, so having the flexibility to make the adjustments was key.
Stat Prio: Armor, Stamina, Agility (Dmg & Heal), Critical, Haste, Dodge, Versatility in that order.
Armor Threshold - I recommend shooting for a minimum of 40% damage mitigation from armor. Strive for at least 45%. With Iron Fur going you will end up around 54-55% physical damage mitigation. There were absolutely some fights where Iron Fur is the game winner.
Stamina Threshold - My survivability threshold was set for around 4,300-4400 Health. I found I needed this large amount for some key fights where I would get blasted by huge amounts of quick or spike damage.
Agility Threshold - I recommend at least 125-135. It may seem like you want a good value on this for damage, but I assure you while that is good, what you really want it for is your one and only heal spell Regrowth.
Critical Threshold - To be frank I do not think you can have too much of this for most of your fights. I ended up with almost 37% critical and would hit about 43% on my trinket proc for huge chunks of boss battles. Critical is of course great for damage, and helps end fights faster so you're survivability doesn't have to be quite as high for most encounters. The truth though is that you want the critical to be huge because you really need to bank on critical heals off of Regrowth. Some fights the value of Regrowth vs incoming damage is not good, you will get an even trade. This is bad b/c you take more damage if you get hit while healing in natural form, or worse, get spiked by a critical boss hit or a series of smaller trash criticals. To offset this and gain tempo you absolutely need to always be outpacing damage and critical is where it's at to boost that base heal. You do get critical ticks from Regrowth as well. The other big thing is Moonfire. Moonfire represented the most damage on most of my fights by far and away, so you want the moonfire to critically hit as much as possible. You have so few abilities that moonfire often ends up as your filler in between Mangle/Thrash. I will talk more about this later.
Haste Threshold - I recommend enough haste to get your Regrowth down to 1.4 seconds at a minimum, but 1.3 is the preferred. This gives you an excellent window where you can often sneak in a regrowth without too much issue in between boss attacks. Even while getting pounded it is fast enough to fire 2 or 3 in clutch, and land that important critical regrowth. With this much haste your basic melee attack should end up around 2.2 seconds and global cd about 1.35. This may not sound huge, but is amazing in actual gameplay. You will notice a tremendous difference in what you can and cannot do or get away with in a fight with these values.
Dodge - I recommend a fair amount of Dodge, I ended up with around 18-19% during battle. Negating 1 out of every 5 hits approximately is a massive improvement to survivability. You can go higher but it's tough to squeeze it in when trying to get some of the other secondary stats to a nice threshold.
Versatility Threshold - This one is interesting because I usually start with a large amount of versatility which helps with both damage and survivability, however the longer I played this class the more I realized it was less and less valuable compared to critical and haste. My recommendation is to stack it high to start and keep the pieces (Arm's Master Locket and Electrocutioner Lagnut come to mind) so you can juggle them. There are times where being able to fend off a bit more of a big hit is good, but the end result was I gained much more survivability from critical heals and faster casts to mitigate spell damage and damage spikes, as well as from stacking more Armor for physicals. I recommend starting high on it for easy dungeons, but swapping it out as your gear improves.
Stat Weights: 5 Armor = 1% Physical mitigation normally, Critical, Haste, and Verse are all about 4 = 1% gain, and Mastery is about 9:1. A sidenote here about mastery, although this is great in groups and at high level, it is very difficult to take advantage of at low levels and I almost completely disregarded it. I experimented with higher values early in the run and they were lackluster.
Trinkets: I ran only two trinkets for 95% of my fights - Ghost Iron Dragonling socketed for Mastery, Verse, and Dodge. Having done the run in hindsight I would recommend right out the gate to socket for Critical and Haste. I would keep the Dodge b/c you really rely on avoidance even if you don't notice it. Remember you can't parry or block, so every bit counts. My other trinket was a rare procced Coin of Blessings to push that critical up.
Talent: Brambles was the no brainer. It makes sure you are getting free damage at all times and is excellent for keeping the damage going while stunned, incapacitated, or for clearing weak trash without detracting attention from more important mobs.
Professions: Engineering as always. I primarily used this for the Potion Injector, although I also used the Cardboard Assassin to cinch a win here and there when the going got tough and I needed to heal in clutch. I went with Embosses from LW. Any second prof is negligible, you can put in whatever you want like Alchemy. The potion injection belt was such a constant part of my play, it was essentially a mini-cd.
Consumables: I went with the +5 Mastery food and +3 all stats as my second choice. Dense weight Stone for +3 weapon damage, Darkmoon Elixirs for a few clutch fights and +9 Agility Elixirs for the rest. I used +5 Armor elixirs (1% mitigation) as well. Drums of Haste are part of my toolset, however I only needed to pop the drums on 3 fights to pull a win out that I may not have otherwise gotten during this run through. The most important consumable listed is the Dense Weightstone due to its unusual interactions for druid stats. It also effects your heals as well (+50 to regrowth). It's extremely important.
Quality of Life: I used mount shoes (20% speed boost when mounted), Goblin Glider, and Water Walking Potions quite frequently to help get around. Playing a druid is quality of life compared to paladin however
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DPS and Damage Set: I noted earlier that I built a DPS set that I used while in bear form (and yes cat when I could) to do some fights. This was a huge boost and enabled me to clear even faster than I did on my paladin run. There are a lot of weak bosses, and having a damage oriented set provided quick wins until I got to the real bosses, saving me a lot of time. There are also a few bosses where you actually want a dps set instead (Roogug comes to mind), as they have permanent stacking buffs that will maul you if you don't down them fast enough. If you play tightly you can definitely take down some monster hard hitters as well (Rammstein attempt 1, 3% in my dps set) if you play very tightly. I ran an average of 150 dps on some fights in pure tank up to over 250 dps in my dps set with good procs and such, just to give you an idea.
How did druid stack up compared to paladin?: Druid does not have emergency buttons like a paladin. Basically you must really be attuned to your damage intake, dps output, and boss mechanics so you know when to use regrowth. I generally recommend healing early, even earlier than paladin since you don't have Word of Glory for that instant heal. Spinal injector tinker was solid throughout all my gameplay, a true support hero item. Paladin is better at preventing and reducing damage of all kinds. It sounds like paladin is the superior class, but rest assured there are some shininig moments for the druid. Being able to get rid of curses (in normal situations) was nice, being able to switch forms was incredible on many fights. Immolthar's bounce mechanic was trivialized by cat form switches. Roogug, Guard Moldar and his adds, as well as a few other bosses would have surely killed me if it wasn't for a timely sprint through areas that I made sure to clear so I could heal and gain control of the fight. Also, most trash is subject to Entangling Roots. You are often able to take a mob out of action that would probably kill you if it was allowed to beat on you with other mobs or with bosses. Some mobs have a terrible +20% damage buff, usually getting 3 or more of them on you especially early in your gearing is sure death. Cat forms movement bonus is hard to beat. Stealth made it so I didn't have to clear nearly as much trash and helped me move even faster.
Final Thoughts: As with my Pally run there are still a few bugged fights that are incredibly hard for non-pet using classes to bypass. It took me 35 attempts to down Jammal'an this time compared to the 65 on my paladin. I Did Baroness in two tries compared to 20+ from the last run. These fights are just bugged very hard. There are a few fights that due to mechanics I didn't need to throw a single regrowth, which was fun and a nice change of pace.
I hope you all enjoyed this read, if anyone is ever interested in a guide write up for this or paladin for Classic Dungeonmaster runs, I'd more than happy to write one up in the future.
God bless, Good luck, and Happy Gaming guys!
PS. Shout out to my crafting buddy Optimus. This guy is a legendary crafter of every profession going all the way back to vanilla days, for those tough to find craftables and keeping me in shape for these runs!
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P.S. just a few ss's of some of the kills
