Playstyle & Rotation
Playstyle in raids with Wildstalker & Keeper of the Grove
In raids, you will most likely use Convoke the Spirits paired with the Keeper of the Grove Hero Talents set, with all the synergies it has thanks to Grove Guardians, Cenarius’ Guidance, Power of Nature and Harmony of the Grove.
Since your Convoke the Sprits will have a reduced cooldown thanks to the Cenarius’ Guidance talent, the aim for the build will be to pair your Convoke the Spirits with Flourish every minute, to boost your ‘ramps’.
The basic cooldown plan will look like this, in an ideal scenario:
- Start by ‘ramping’ your Rejuvenations out on 8-10 targets.
- In between the last Rejuvenation’s before reaching 12 applications (Due to Abundance talent), use your Grove Guardian stacks during your global cooldowns.
- Once you reach 12 stacks of Abundance with Rejuvenation’s, use your Swiftmend to proc Soul of the Forest.
- Once you are under the influence of Soul of the Forest, cast Wild Growth.
- After your Wild Growth Cast is finished, make sure you use Nature’s Swiftness (This makes all your Regrowth casts during Convoke the Spirits to be affected by Nature’s Swiftness).
- Finish your rotation by casting Convoke the Spirits followed up by one Rejuvenation.
- Now you are ready to spam cast Regrowth with your 12 Abundance stacks.
Tip: Macroing Nature’s Swiftness into your Convoke the Spirits is a very helpful thing to do. This assures that you always have the buff during Convoke the Spirits.
In patch 11.2, Wildstalker Hero Talent Tree will be the go to play in raids and m+. In m+ the playstyle is not changing, you are still doing the same things. In raids there are a couple of small tweaks you need to be doing.
You are playing Undergrowth, so maintaining double Lifebloom will be essential to your gameplay. Every time you wish to start your ramping, you will double Lifebloom and pandemic refresh them to extend their duration. From here on you ramp as you would have in KotG. The other exception is that you do not Convoke the Spirits into Nature's Swiftness anymore. Since you want the Clearcasting procs to be consumed during Convoke the Spirits.
While doing this coverage, don’t forget the basics:
- Keep Lifebloom on a target with the highest uptime possible. Do keep in mind that you can refresh Lifebloom at 5 seconds and less to still benefit from its final bloom effect without letting it fade from the target.
- Keep Efflorescence down on a clump of players (ideally in melee, but this obviously can be swapped depending on encounters/healing set-up).
- Keep some Rejuvenations on targets before damage is incoming.
- You can use some Regrowth if necessary on low-health targets.
- Using support abilities such as Ironbark, utility abilities like Stampeding Roar and Wild Charge, or defensive abilities such as Barkskin and Bear Form is essential to use when needed.
- Don’t forget to cast some Wraths during downtimes outside of your ramp windows, to, in addition to the small DPS increase, gain some very valuable mana via Master Shapeshifter.
On top of this healing set-up, try to optimize your DPS a bit by maintaining your Moonfire DoT.
Don’t forget to use your Innervate during a ramp window, when available, and your Nature’s Vigil during a Flourish use!
Playstyle in M+
While playing with Wildstalker, you'll have to do some Cat-weaving (alternate some HoTs when your group needs healing + some caster DoTs, then morph and use your cat abilities with a full energy bar available, and repeat) for this build to fully work.
If you choose Keeper of the Grove, you can still use the same gameplay, although you won’t have as many drawback in term of talents value for not doing it. Your healing will be better during burst windows (at the cost of some DPS overall), but the healing set-up will still mostly be the same (you might want to use the whole 3 charges of Grove Guardians as much as possible though).
Whatever the Hero Talents set you choose, the overall desired set-up explained below will mostly be the same:
- Keep two Lifeblooms active as much as possible (This is possible thanks to Undergrowth).
- Keep placing Efflorescence on the ground.
- Add some HoTs on people before damage happens, and heal them reactively if needed. Most of the time, your HoTs will suffice, and you will be able to weave in your DPS abilities at this moment.
- Use Grove Guardians if healing is required (one charge for some rot damage, all 3 charges for burst healing).
Then, while HoTs are healing, and as long as you don't need additional reactive healing (or during a Heart of the Wild use/proc):
- Sunfire packs of mobs and Moonfire some of them.
- Auto-Cat Form via Rake/Shred (thanks to Fluid Form) and Thrash, then Swipe during AoE, if you have some spare GCD after your Sunfire and Moonfire.
- Otherwise, in Single Target, Rake (ideally in stealth thanks to Prowl before an encounter, but be careful on small mobs since it will stun them and can spread them from the rest of the pack)
- Keep going with Shred to grind your Combo Points.
- Apply Rip at 5 Combo, if not present, or if duration < 10 seconds.
- Otherwise, you can use Ferocious Bite at 50 energy!
- When your energy is depleted, and your Cat DoTs applied, time to refresh Moonfire & Sunfire, and maybe throw some healing abilities if needed before going back to Cat Form (via Rake/Shred).
If talented (as covered in the M+ - Wildstalker talent section), don’t forget to use Convoke the Spirits as much as possible, whether it’s mainly for DPS (use it after your first Ferocious Bite use to quickly gain another 5-combo points, then use Ferocious Bite another time), or when you need some healing.
As with the raid build, track your Reforestation stacks, in order to use your Tree of Life procs as a major cooldown when needed.