Tips for solo Torghast as druid?

Classes Druid
1

Hey peeps,

So I’ve basically always had a druid somewhere in my lineup. When it’s not my main, it’s usually my main-alt. Last few years, I’ve been playing it as balance+resto, both of which I got fairly competent with. It’s currently ilvl 209, so not great, but not trash either.

Trouble is, Torghast L9 is absolutely kicking my tail. I took 3 runs at it last night, and ragequit the first 2 because it just kept handing me powers for barkskin or 60% more moonfire or permanent heart of the wild. I hardly get to cast Starfall because I’m running Treants, and I have to work up for it through several long Starfire casts. By the time it’s active, the Treants have gone, and the mobs are in my face.

It is uncomfy.

Reading wowhead’s guide, they suggest 5-6 powers none of which I actually saw… In the end, I managed root build, went horribly slowly, and barely survived the end boss because he apparently decided he didn’t feel like being rooted for more than 2 seconds at a time and just threw them off and sent stun-waves at me from across the room.

Honestly, it felt bad in Torghast in 9.0, but now it feels even more horrible. What do you folks do to get your druid through alone? How can I get a 4-star run done at antisocial times when nobody else is online to group with?

2

I just play feral… That’s kinda it, kite and kill, not really anything else than that.

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Solo torghast is a terrible experience as a druid. We have boring powers and the ones we need are rare (several 50% dmg increases). However, if you play feral and have good enough gear you can just stealth through and kill the bosses only. I have not tried it yet on layer 9 though.

Guardian is very good, but it is hard to state just how incredibly boring it is to play and it does pathetic damage. You will have a hard time dying though.

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That’s one of the strongest powers there is, if you’re running resto or guardian. Permanent HotW with a feral/boomie affinity is so, so, so very sweet.

That can also be strong if stacked. Permanent barkskin with Thorns, pull an entire floor, and let them kill themselves while you stand in Efflo, refreshing your HoTs. Good stuf.

This can also be great when stacked. And if you get the power that calls down a big moon on every 20th tick? That hits like a… like a bigass moon would. It hurts.

There’s also convoke CD reduction, doing more damage after exiting Prowl, faster dots, and so on and so forth.

It most definitely is not.

I’ve been running 6-minute wings prior to 9.1 as resto druid, though my gear was 224. But even at ~200, it was pretty fun and straightforward both as resto, and as guardian.

There are multiple viable builds, too. I tend to go with feral affinity, mostly because I don’t like playing balance, but balance can work fine too. With a resto + feral combo, doing more damage for 5 seconds after exiting Prowl is godly. So is permanent HoTW. So is having all affinity bonuses (and their effect increased). There are plenty of other useful powers out there, but as a druid, you can just stealth through most of the wing and kill the end boss (+ any true sight mobs on the way). Won’t net you much score, but lets you finish quick.

Guardian is great too, because you have an interrupt, and you’re pretty much immortal, and can pull big. Real big.

Seems to me y’all just playing the wrong specs. :wink:

2 Likes
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Yes it is, play absolutely anything else and you will realize, even if you play it without gear equipped.

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It wouldn’t work you need atleast 4 Gems to unlock the next floor and killing the last boss is not enough anymore, check this:

I checked the root build on wowhead, well I have to say it doesn’t seems great.

For root I only take the power " Curious Bramblepatch ", when I root a pack I let them died and I go kill other mob meanwhile.

Good powers in Torghast for me are:

String of Fangs and Talons
Lycara’s Bargain
Coalesced Spirit Droplet
Energy Focusing Crystal
Leaf on the Water

Don’t take any power that create explosion like " Rootwood Scarab " or the rat explosion, usually you aggro other packs …

And an epic or rare power doesn’t mean it’s good, most of the time a white or green power are better. ( Oh and now you have more points for not taking epic power )

For big pack with élite wait for you cd, convoke + Incarnation you can kill big pack, when convoke is done use mass root and finish them one by one.

And don’t forget to use Typhoon / Ursol’s Vortex / Tough as Bark.

I used empowerment by killing big group of élite next to jars, 100 % more points.

And don’t worry about the timer, if you kill everything / jars / saving souls/ open chests, you will have enough points to unlock the next floor.
For one wings I rushed a little and managed to get 5 gems, but the other wings I took my time and got 4 Gems by killing everythings in 43 min.

Was it Warden Skoldus ? because it’s an easy boss if you pull him and run to a corner, the first alcove on the right when you enter, he can’t bump you.

Don’t hesitate to check comment on each boss, it help

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I did. I played druid, paladin, dh, warrior, priest, shaman, and hunter through at least layer 8. Druid is the most fun, though VDH comes close. Shaman can be fun if I manage to obtain a permanent earth elemental, or the damaging healing rain power. It’s kinda dull and boring otherwise.

For what its worth, I went into Upper Reaches Layer 9 shortly after posting my previous reply to record a footage of a random chill run. I ended up 5-staring it:

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Thing is, Torghast being Torghast, I didn’t see any of those. Literally not one.

With my alts I tend to be able to get something to work, but druid seems really vulnerable to a bunch of mundane powers that don’t have any synergies. Maybe you get 300% damage before roots break, and 60% more moonfire on single target; but also a damage bonus when MF is on multiple targets.

I certainly appreciate it and will watch it. I doubt it will change my mind that sometimes the game isn’t giving you any useful synergies however :slight_smile: 1 of everything tends to be a lot worse than 3 of 3 things.

(Also, tbf, you go in as resto/feral where I’m going balance/resto because that’s the only combo I know how to play :joy_cat:)

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Thing is, the druid powers are quite versatile. One of everything is still good. I didn’t have perma HotW, had a couple of useless ones too. Almost any combination of powers can be made to work wonderfully.

You have all the defensives and no offensive one? Go and pull big, sunfire 'em all, and let that do the killing. You have no feral synergy powers with feral affinity? No biggie, you still have access to sunfire and moonfire as resto, and they can do quite a lot of damage. You only have root powers? At the broker floor, spec mass root. Pull the entire fourth floor, root them. Finish it in 15 seconds.

Roots have DR on bosses, though, it’s not very useful for that. It’s amazing for trash though. Keep in mind that rooting a mob does not put you in combat with it, if you root out of combat. So you can root an elite, pull another, and finish the pulled one while roots kill the other, while it’s not even in combat with you. Or root an elite and pull all the smallies. So many uses for it! It lets you easily kill casters too, as feral: just root them, and finish the melees meanwhile!

Yeah, that’s probably the root of your problems. Resto + affinity is considerably easier, and much more fun than boomie/feral + resto aff. Resto + feral is pretty easy to play, mind you. If in trouble, use a combo of Overgrowth, Swiftmend, Barkskin and Cenarion Ward, and you can also vortex stuff to get away and heal up. When you’re in cat form, start off with Rake out of stealth to stun the mob and apply a bleed, then follow up with rake or ferocious bite: rake if the mob is gonna live for most of its duration, bite otherwise. Fill in with shred or swipe.

If you have the full moon anima power, then it’s worth popping out into caster form to put out some moonfires, otherwise I usually skip it.

That’s about it on a basic level. No eclipses to pay attention to, no hard casts, just instants for both dps and healing for the most part.

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I mean, maybe, but the last time I played feral was TBC so… it’s basically asking me to learn a new spec, purely for Torghast :joy_cat:

I might futz around with it later, but honestly, I’d rather every spec actually… worked. It galls me that players are expected to compensate for Blizzard’s inability to balance things. Torghast powers were the great opportunity to say “ok this spec is weak here; so this is a common power that closes that hole”.

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You literally need the following buttons:

Prowl, Rip, Rake, Ferocious Bite, Swipe. Shred is optional, you can just swipe single target too, doesn’t matter much. Oh, and a button to go in and out of kitty form. As long as you see your energy and combo points, you can’t go very wrong. :slight_smile:

Then again, when I started doing Torghast, I did it as resto/boomie, that worked just aswell. I just like feral more, but boomie works fine too.

I haven’t done the current Torghast as anything but resto and guardian (on druid, obviously), but I had sub-10min runs as feral too. Not as boomie, because I’m absolutely terrible at boomie - no fault of the game, it’s me being bad with the spec.

I’m reasonably certain every druid spec works, you just have to learn how to adapt to the powers you end up with, and perhaps run a different build in torghast than you run in other content. Eg, my Torghast build has Feral affinity, Overgrowth and Germination, while my normal resto talent set is Balance, Spring Blossoms and Flourish. Even on other classes, I usually adjust my talents a little to perform better in Torghast.

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I skimmed through your video and resto for sure looks better than guardian, but there are still no fun powers and like another guy pointed out there is lots of variety and many powers do not synergise at all or are completely useless.

Guardian simply doesn’t do enough damage, feral dies while doing lackluster damage, resto doesn’t die, but still seems to be doing lackluster damage and… well… you’d have to play resto. Having to target every mob to get off dots on them… Not for me. Not fun in the slightest.

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I suppose our definition of fun differs. I like powers that make me more… powerful. I had plenty of those in the video. In fact, the very first power I picked is one of my favourites: a full moon coming down on every 20th tick. That helped me out during the run a lot.

I also had multiple +dmg% after exiting prowl stacks, which made floor end bosses a joke.

I also had multiple barkskin powers, which were very nice when I pulled bigger.

I also had all affinity bonuses, with +100% effect.

Most of these are fun in and of themselves, and they all play quite well together. Granted, I did get a few useless ones, like that mawrat one which I didn’t even read, but there are plenty of good ones.

Variety is good, makes every run a little bit different, and keeps you adapting to the powers you have. There are very few powers that are completely useless, or powers that don’t synergize well with others. Usually, you can choose something else then.

Nah, most of them play pretty well together. You may have to adapt your playstyle a bit, but most power combos work real nice.

It does. I’ll happily record another video next reset when I go in as guardian. My first Torghast run in 9.1 was on Guardian, 4-starred it without even knowing what I was doing or aiming for.

It does enough damage to do a 5-star run without even trying. I could’ve done twice the damage if I timed my CDs better. I’ve nuked down floor end bosses within 10 seconds:

  • 1st floor boss: ~11 seconds, 8.5k DPS.
  • 2nd floor boss: ~20 seconds, 5k DPS. This is slightly skewed, because I was in combat with the mawrats before, so my damage meter considered the fight to be mawrats + boss.
  • 4th floor boss: ~7 seconds, 26.1k DPS. I wouldn’t call that lackluster.
  • 5th floor end boss: 6.4k DPS. Considering I didn’t have Convoke up for the boss, that’s pretty darn good, and far from lackluster.

I rarely do that. I usually focus on an elite, and swipe the rest. I apply a rake here and there maybe, if I see a mawrat, or when I have multiple elites. I’ll sunfire when in caster form, and moonfire when I have the 20th tick full moon power. There’s not much target switching involved, pretty much only when my main target is low enough for the dots to kill it. Or worst case, when fighting multiple elites, I rip and rake both of them. Not the end of the world.

When I play guardian, I thrash and swipe, and moonfire my target. Maybe switch targets if my current one is about to die, or if I want to interrupt something. Otherwise no target switching involved.

When I play feral, I use Primal Wrath to apply bleeds to mobs, and keep focusing on one.

Fairly sure I didn’t switch targets all that much as boomie either, but that’s been a while.

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I prefer going as guardian. People say it’s boring, but I find pulling the whole floor, running round a corner to LoS it, and then cleaving it all down is kind of fun.

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15

Did a Layer 10 as Guardian today, 4-gemmed Fracture Chambers pretty effortlessly. Barkskin and thorns powers are <3, so is anything convoke related, they play amazingly well together.

Video:

(At the moment, it’s processing, but should be HD ready by the morning, when normal people would come around and click.)

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If you’re really geared I prefer Feral, especially with convoke increasing powers or bonus dmg after stealth.

With lower gear, Guardian is safer but it’s so boring when Incarnation is on cooldown as you do no damage.

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You do quite a bit of damage with thorns & barkskin powers, don’t even need Incarn to pull it off. Heck, I don’t even run Incarn when in Torghast: most of my damage will come from thorns usually (uncapped, unlike Incarn’d mangle, and on a considerably shorter CD), supplemented by convoke and the full moon on every 20th moonfire tick (something which galactic guardian helps with more than Incarn). The thorns power is pretty darn common, too.

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But thrash is uncapped, and with the Ursoc legendary, you literally can pull everything as long as you can spam thrash.

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Yeah, but Incarn is on a long CD. Brambles isn’t, and if you can stack up the barkskin reduce power 'till you have perma-barkskin, it’s going to do way more damage than Thrash during Incarn.

Thorns is also good against casters, where Incarn is quite useless until you can pull them behind LoS.

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They’re RNG dependent, though, because they rely on getting the right anima powers. Incarn (with ravenous frenzy in my case) is guaranteed massive AOE every 3 minutes. And it’s way more fun than running round and letting your automatic damage kill everything you brush past (although that may be because I’m tired of that, having done it on my DH for most of 9.0).