The Enigma Order

Well if it goes anything like BC we will have atleast 1 month in WOTLK where druids will be equal with other classes

Btw leather gear with defense http://www.wowhead.com/?items&filte … rs=1;crv=0

Talmira wrote:

Well if it goes anything like BC we will have atleast 1 month in WOTLK where druids will be equal with other classes

Hmmm i would say overpowered for an month? didn't the druids were pretty imba for an longer time?

And whats the big fuz about druids now then? did they nerfed you? cant you solo tbc instances anymore?

cruzes wrote:

Hmmm i would say overpowered for an month? didn't the druids were pretty imba for an longer time?

And whats the big fuz about druids now then? did they nerfed you? cant you solo tbc instances anymore?

This is exactly the point... - thats all every non druid sees.  -  so i can stealth my way through an instance, and then go bearform and kill a boss. Big deal. That dont help us in pvp nor 25 mans.

Solo play, druids are excelent.
As soon as you start pvp as feral/balance or 25 man raiding (or heroics for that matter) we lack utility.

About the owerpoweredness talmira talks about, he says:

Sahrokh wrote:

Ferals were given "DPS god mode" (quickly removed) to annihilate opponents without showing the blatant insufficiency within.
Balance and restos got given Cyclone to brutally stop 1 opponent without showing the blatant overbloating of lackluster resto talents.

When we complain about survivability, everyone else screams: you got cyclone, its OP, druids are OP. And you just go bear else!! NERF!!
as Sahrokh mentions:

Sahrokh wrote:

The other classes are right that cyclone is not fine. They only see the "imbalance" part of it, you should see the band aid part of it.

Why don't healers come with strong CC? Because they don't suck. That simple. Despite their limitations, they take it like a man and don't die. And no, I don't talk of 2v2, 5v5 is the bracket to look at.
Armor, shields, talents, emergency buttons, utility spells. They got it, we don't.

What can a resto druid do without cyclone? Or a balance druid? Bend over and die. Or go bear and die.
What will a resto or balance druid do if they i.e. put cyclone and roots on same DR? Bend over and die. Restos would still survive at 2v2 at much less viability, but would be plain dead at everything else.

What do feral druids DO right now since they cannot really cyclone and root (bar some seldom times a match)? Bend over and die.

Because Cyclone costed us one of our already just four new TBC spells (all the others got 5, flight form took the 5th spot for us) slots and yet it's a broken B A N D A G E.

Anyone with a brain cell can see a CC spell that needs no CD and to be perma-spammed to enable a whole class to work is STUPID, it's FAKE. It's just a quick workaround that all hate because it's a cheap workaround.

It is broken because it's the extremely enormous patch put over an ill working class, it's the visible Ferrari engine slammed on a Ford Fiesta to make it competitive with a top line Audi. But you see, it's evident a Ferrari engine Fiesta is just a Fiesta pretending to be a great super car and all see it, and many will protest for that "budge" that make it look like a dragster.

Cyclone is the same, added with resilience it gives resto druids a turbo boost into viability, by raw power. It's like "cheating" a lesser grade class into the "big guns" due to a capricious god imposing it by divine intervention.

I would go around and post it in every single post on the EU forums if i had the time to do it. It really describes the problem really really well.

I also think he hits the nail by saying:

Sahrokh wrote:

The developers need to put their act together and learn to stop pretending to downright adapt an RTS concept of class balance (where classes need each other to be a "one" and be effective) and finally make all specs working and viable, delete the bastard red haired stepchilds off WoW.

STOP mindlessy BUFFING US. We don't need buffs, we need to work without artificial and fake staples

Later on in the post, he again nails it right to the ground:

Sahrokh wrote:

All know how the situation can be fixed, and all know that it won't.

A class needs to be given a role in game and no, forcing PvE into having druids by adding adds left and right is not giving a role, it's just another artificial bandage at forcing you to take a class, look at vanilla WoW and tranquillizing shot, to artificially give hunters a reason to be taken.

A class needs to bring utility, to *feel missed if not present*. What feeling of missing do you have in your default tank + mage + rogue + healer + random when the druid is the single class missing a 5 men viable ress? Yes, you'll miss... having taken another healer!

ill end by quoting:

Sahrokh wrote:

Making our class have a reason to exist would be a GREAT buff (because they'd be forced to make us viable at that needed role and rework talents in an effective-to-the-target way). Our original, tentative reason "forms can be considered less versatile but as strong as their counterparts" has been deleted and not just off the class description page but in game as well.

So we are the "basic" general tank, basic general DPS, healer in an evolving game demanding more and more of utility and specialization. The one role we do well *because we are unique at it* is HoTs healing.

I really hope blizzard wakes up soon, and smell the roses. Not only for druids, because i know other classes, like shamans need heavy buffing too (even tho this isnt as much PvE wise, but more Arena wise)
I dont care that i can solo some encounters others cant. I would gladly give it up to get more utility.

So because i can spec caster, melee or feral im balanced? As soon as i spec one of those, the 2 others become usless. This meens that i cant heal, dps and tank in 25 man instances.

True, feral druids brings both dps and tank to the raid, but it offers nothing but standard dps, or standard tanking so ill quote again:

So we are the "basic" general tank, basic general DPS, healer in an evolving game demanding more and more of utility and specialization.

We have nothing uniqe to bring to raids. Sure i can heal, but not while im tanking, and if im not tanking, and im in dps gear, my mana limit me to cast 3-4 heals which, due to lacking resto talents maybe will heal me to full, but then ill be useless, since i dont have enough mana to get back into a form to continue dps.

Did you know, that in the really old days (when T 0.5 was the shit) the best spec for a druid was a mixture between balance, feral, and full resto tree. We needed to depend on our shapeshifting to play well, and that made us uniqe. It was fun and it really gave us a feeling of beeing hybrid.
If i did that today, i wouldnt be able to keep agro, so you could remove me as tank from the raids. Since i probably would spend alot of time in catform to do dps, but had to sac alot of talents to do the other roles (and gear too), i wouldnt benefit the raid in any way, since my dps would be under tanks. I wouldnt be able to take over healing for a very long time if a healer died, again because of the mixture of gear i had, so my heals wouldnt be anything impressive, and i would go oom really fast, if i didnt waste innervate on my self instead of an healer, who could actually gain 10 times the stuff i would from it.

Its narowminded to think, that because i have 3 different trees, the raid will benefit 3 times as much if they bring me. Sadly my class doesnt work that way. We are designed to specialize in 1 tree, and perform like that. once we specialize, we give up the remaining 2 aspects of our class, making the uniqeness of shapeshifting nothing but a joke.

Mojorising wrote:

So because i can spec caster, melee or feral im balanced? As soon as i spec one of those, the 2 others become usless. This meens that i cant heal, dps and tank in 25 man instances.

Prot Warr - PVP, DPS, Grind? No no no, only tanking
Fury Warr - PVP? Poor, Tanking? Poor. Basicly PVE dps in raids (only with really good gear)
Arms - Shit Grinding, Shit Tanking, shit dps. PVP.

Same goes with Priest (shadow got shit healing, holy - no dps).

And any other class.

Drood got 1 build for dps and tanking. (like prot and fury warr at once). So you expect blizz to make drood able to imba dps/tanking/healing in one build?

not at all.
and you are comparing warriors and other classes to druids. Thats not what we are talking about.
im just answering your post about druids beeing a balanced class since we are not. We got balanced trees in comparison to preTBC, but thats not the same as beeing balanced as a whole.

This posts isnt about beeing able to dps and tank within one spec, this is a post about what can be done to improve the way the druid is played, since it lack alot of stuff.
Besides, you can offtank as a dps warrior in full prot gear. Same goes for druids.
You cant tank when you are in your fury gear. Same goes for druids.
I switch gear, just like everyone else, depending what i do. The major difference from me and you is, that i can only limit myself to 1 tree fully, meaning that i cant heal like a healer, or do ranged dps like a mage, if i choose to spec into feral combat.

Having 1 tree that benefit both dps and tanking is a must. I have none of the key skills like blodlust, MS or devistate or last stand. Feral tree is choosing to simulate melee combat in form of the other melee classes. I have none of those skills, that makes the other classes unique, and thats what we need. Else we are just a warrior without shieldwall, last stand, MS etc etc etc, and a rogue without his utility.

I need a skill thats different from what you got, instead of just a "base" of skills simulating your standard anarsenal before you spec into different trees to gain different abilities. - Thats where the concerns are, not if im able to tank/dps within one tree.

Victims of your own versitality. When you look at your useful raid skills, you have it pretty good

Ferals already seem to do decent dps - at least based on naminos performances in ZA, certainly comparible to a rogue given that they bring combat res // innervate // LotP to the raid and the ability to switch between dps and tank roles in one talent build (useful in ALL encounters)

- innervate is an extra mana bar for priests / resto druids
- LotP is a buff to tank aggro and/or dps + minor healing
- combat res is..well a combat res.
- hibernate (yes hard for a feral DPS but can be done)
- faerie fire -> melee DPS buff / tank aggro buff (-610 armour)
- demo shout -> damage reducing skill (-336 AP talented)
- insect swarm -> damage reducing utility spell (2% miss chance)

*it would be nice if everything could be used from bear form, especially barkskin, but you certainly IMO dont need more utility.

Now what can a DPS / prot warrior do?
- last stand -> oh shit button
- shield wall -> oh shit button, not "needed" imo
- demo shout -> druids have this (-420 AP talented)
- thunder clap -> nice damage reduction skill (20% slower swing speed)
- devestate -> armour reduction dps/threat boost. Better than faerie fire armour reduction. OR mortal strike -> healing debuff (very situational in raids)
- battle shout OR commanding shout

VS a rogue
- sap (lol in raids)
- kick
- expose armour
- mind numbing poison
- wound poison (mortal strike)

VS warlocks
- CoE / CoS / CoR
- soulstone (lol)
- Healthstone
- fear -> very selective
- Banish -> very selective
- shadow embrace (talented) -> 5% less physical damage
- imp (if affliction)  -> tank HP buff
- Imp shadowbolt (talented) -> shadow dps buff

VS mages
- sheep
- water
- AI (almost useless)
- imp scorch

What more utility do you want?

Feral druids are good in raids. So are shamans. So are moonkins. Yes they need more planning with regard to setting up raid groups and you would rarely take more than one of each "specialist" build but they do all have their place. To say that a rogue or warrior has more raid utility than a feral druid is really pushing it IMO. Yeah you have less tank buttons to mash, thats why youre druids and not roguewarriormagepriests. What out of curiosity do you have in mind for this magical (feral?) druid defining skill?

From what I understand the idea of druids is that you never stay in rogue/mage/warrior/priest mode all the time but switch between them, yeah this is less effective in 5v5, but in 2v2/3v3 it's amazingly complicated playing a "resto" druid since you have so many tools at your disposal:
- hibernate
- roots
- cyclone
- feral charge
- bash
- pounce / maim
- barkskin (k a bit shit)
- instant big heal
- hots
- innervate
- abolish poison
- decurse

What can an arms warrior do?
- mortal strike
- hamstring
- piercing howl
- AOE fear (long CD)
- disarm
- intercept
- intervene

Yeah you suffer from poor itemisation, but thats not a sign of a class being broken. Mages had this issue pre TBC with spirit and crap being dumped excessively onto gear (iirc). From what I read hes mostly asking for bug fixes, balancing issues with current gear and skills rather than a revamp of how feral druids play as a whole.

Warsaw wrote:

So we only have reason to whine since warr isnt one and only tank anymore. Every few days i have wisp from warrior "do you need tank?" "we quite full, but you can try to aply" "fuck, why noone told me that choosing warrior as char you have to make your own guild"

haha that is actually true. warrior is the "default" class, but probably both the hardest class to master, and the hardest class to get a guild with.

to get back to Sahrokh.
This was one of his old posts, back at lvl 60, describing how to multirole in raids. I wish this was still the case
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.htm … &sid=1  its from 25/8/06.

He comes with this list of roles you can perform in raids, and its a very exciting read. (remember this is still from august 06 aka pre TBC)
I was looking for it, when i posted this topic, and i found it, when i read this post, where Sahrokh is responding to the discussion in the second post i linked:

______________________________________________________________

random druid wrote:

Last time i felt a true multitasker in a raid was back in the day with my 30 21 spec..
I'd heal in naxx, offtank adds on bosses if there was no warriors and be average at both but good enough to justify me being there.
and occasionally i dps'ed i guess when there was an abundance of healers

Who here still recalls of this?

Sahrokh's guide on playing multirole in raids
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.htm … &sid=1 (the one i linked ^^ "-mojo")

Ancient times. Good times. For those whose guilds that were open minded enough.


Nowadays you are "resto" or "feral" (balance is better at double acting). Not a "druid". When is the last time you feral killed someone with wrath spam? When is the last time you hid behind a bush and kept 3 people alive for 2 minutes till you captured Blacksmith? And this in your feral PvP set?
When is the last time you have been a druid and not a single task weaker pure class imitation?

random druid wrote:

I never really got to tank on any boss - if I did tank it was an add. I felt like half a warrior whenever I tanked, if I got no heals for a bit I could just bend over and take it... and whenever I did DPS I felt like half a rogue, only with less DPS and less scaling. Things just got mind numbing, doing both of the things I imagined myself wanting to do all the way back in the days - I was tanking, sure, I was DPSing, yeah, but I could've been replaced by either a DPS Warrior or basically any other DPS and they would do the same job or better. One day I just got so bored of it, of my character that I had been playing for over a year and a half and had loved most of the time, that I simply said to my guild "I'm switching mains to my Warrior, and if I get to stay in the guild that would be awesome, but if you don't like it I'm gonna try to find another guild.

You are not alone at this feeling. With a flattened role, you may as well roll warrior and be a better tank, better DPS and finally be considered a man, someone worth a loot table.
Right yesterday we have cleared MH again. First the Pillar of LOL dropped. None druid wanted it so a resto druid (our GL) got it for "offspec".
Then we killed Archimonde and

Cataclysm's Edge
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30902

drops. A real man drop, people congratulating left and right on the warrior who won it. A 2h weapon with cool looks and plenty useable in PvP, because warriors deserve 2h maces and other PvP weapons off PvE drops. Because they are a real man class.

An old druid posting on his warrior main wrote:

...this dude. It was tough gearing him up to SSC/TK level, since he had pre-Kara gear, but I did my heroics, I joined the Kara groups and I did it. I proved myself as a Warrior and ever since then I'm raiding with this guy - and we're currently working on Illidan.

Playing a DPS Warrior is both similar and at the same time vastly different from playing a feral Druid. I can still slap on a sword and board and taunt stuff mid fight, I can still tank trash, but when I'm doing my main thing - DPSing - I actually feel like I make a difference. I bring awesome melee buffs (470 AP to everyone in my party and 4% extra physical damage to the entire raid), I bring excellent debuffs (fully improved Demo shout so that our Locks can use CoR, Improved Thunderclap for a massive 20% attack speed reduction) and while doing this I do top notch DPS. I'm not just another DPS or another tank that anyone could replace, I'm a valuable asset that's wanted in a raid. But - and I have no shame saying this, just a sense of sadness - I miss my druid very much, because it represents how I really want to be needed by a raid... as a problem solver.

I apologize for taking up this much space, but I felt I had to write something. Developers, if you read this thread, please take into consideration everything Sahrokh said, he knows what he's talking about. Listening to him would make this game funnier to play for all druids that still remain.
Unfortunately I wasn't as strong.

You are perfectly on topic. Because you listed the tangible effect and utility you bring in a pure class, the single thing druids lack the most and hitting feral druids straight in the heart.

We did not bring a lot that the resto druid will not bring anyway (but better).
Mark? Nah, he got improved. Innervate? For who, the seldom shadow priest who forgot his pots home? I am asked to innervate someone *once* per MH + BT clear.
Combat ress? You are asked after the other druids did it, you are in melee and usual AoE / cleave range. TBC PvE when you lose two people you are quicker to just wipe and run back, or you are screwed anyway (Archimonde), or there's some wicked raid damage so you ress a guy and he dies at once.
LoTP? Who needs melee crit like in vanilla WoW? The dagger rogues with PvP spec or the 2h axe PvP warrior? Oh wait, you don't get any of them in PvE.
Meanwhile it is YOU asking to be put in the shaman + warrior group YOU can't viably DPS without them, while rogues ask if they can remove you off the group and put with mages, and get a warrior or shaman in your place.

TBC killed a LOT of what I liked of the game. PvE? Dead. Multiroling? Dead. Being the "raid saviour"? The one cheerished because of the incredible stunts at undoing a sure wipe? Dead. The PvP versatile good DPS-impassable defense-healer in a pinch asset in AB? Dead. The PvP spec? Dead. Forced spec in PvE but finally fun to be what you want for PvP? Dead. You are forced specced there as well. Asked to join at PvP? Dead, TBC's PvP = stfu and respec resto, noob.

I can't really blame those who gave out and rerolled.
See, vanilla WoW was not all rosy, but every issue had a solution: "let's endure, TBC is close!".
How many sincerely believe WoLTK is worth enduring up to, and is the heavenly mannah raining off the sky?

_______________________________________

I wish sahrokh was trolling our forum. He is so much better putting what we are/need to be/are lacking down, than i am

You can't make a class good at EVERYTHING.

ferals are good at tanking and as resto they can heal really REALLY well. I dont know much about the balance tree so I'm not gonna comment on that.

xzar wrote:

Speaking as a feral, I'm comfortable with our performance in PVE. Sure we don't do as much dps as pure dps classes, and we don't tank as good (we really don't) as a prot-specced warrior - but we have other options that they don't have to compensate for that.

My only beef is with arena, where we have to spec out of feral to do anything. The "unique abilities" we bring to an arena team all require us to leave our feral forms, so they are in direct conflict with the feral-playstyle. Every time we leave our form we lose all our energy/rage, we lose lots of mana, and we get a global cooldown when we re-enter our form.

Introducing a talent deep in the feral talent tree that removes the mana cost on shifting, does not reset energy/rage on shifting AND removes the global cooldown on shifting would be a good start.

Sure, you can give the druid such a talent and that would probably help them in arenas but I'm certain that they'll be even more OP in other situations than they are now, unless you need to sacrifice some other nice feral talents in order to get it.

Beardstorm wrote:

VS mages
- sheep
- water
- AI (almost useless)
- imp scorch

- sheep

- water
DEEP frost Talented, which is a dps nerf compared to fire specs. This means we either get an elemental we can use ONCE every few MINUTES or spec fire and get nice dps. and the only thing that does is throw a few waterbolts and during the 45 sec during it can cast 2 frostnovas due to cd. So it only benefits in arenas and other pvp related situations.

- AI (almost useless)
motw gives 14 to ALL attributes AND 340 armor + 25 all res (untalented) which leaves the AI to give 26 more int than motw. 26 int -> 390 mana + 0,5% spell crit.

- imp scorch
again, talented. so this only applies if the mage is fire specced. besides this isn't really that much of a raid utility since it only benefits mages (and the few locks who's fire as well).

This leaves the mages with one ( 1 ) raid utility, which we've had since lvl 8, so nothing new here since TBC, not even since we left our starting area.

Some might argue that we've gotten Invisibility and Spellsteal, so let's have a quick look at them.

- spellsteal
the ONLY encounter where it's needed is the high king fight in Gruul's Lair, making it EXTREMELY situational.
Yes, we can spellsteal other ppl's buffs and from mobs as well, but the duration is cut to 2 min if it was longer than that when stolen. But spellsteal costs 29% of base mana ~ 700 mana, so don't think we spam it, 'cause we don't if we want mana to cast a single fireball/frostbolt.

- invisibility
aggro wipe skill. uhh wow, we can reset our aggro every 5 MINUTES. and that's only if we don't do anything for 5 secs while it "get's ready", and that includes not getting hit by ANYTHING (even friendly spells). This means that it's only worth anything on the bossfights where we might grab aggro if we overnuke and even then only once each fight due to the cooldown.

So we're back to having 1 utility and 2 once in a raid spells.

mojorising wrote:

Vs the other classes lists.
Remember, im not talking about what we can do of abilities as a druid class, im talking about we need something to add besides a 2 button spam in 2 different forms. We need feral utility, not yet a resto/balance talent.

Yes we do good dmg (for t5 instances), but no one is asking for a buff.

We got all these abilities, and our class looks good on paper. But in the end, survivability is crap. Bearform is nothing but a 10 sec extra life (2 sec vs magical opponents.) catform is agressive only, with very little survivability in pvp. Bearform isnt a pvp form, and is mostly used as if we equipped a shield to counter melee burst, or to gain range on someone.

And you think this applies to druids only ?
As a mage you can choose to either spam fireballs (and an occasional scorch to keep the debuff up) or frostbolt. Arcane is just lol since patch 2.3. fire is the aggresive dps and frost is the survivability, you can't have both, gotta choose. So to compare:

Remember, im not talking about what we can do of abilities as a mage class, im talking about we need something to add besides a 1 button spam in 2 different specs. We need utility, not yet a fire/frost talent.

Yes we do good dmg (for t5 instances), but no one is asking for a buff.

We got all these abilities, and our class looks good on paper. But in the end, survivability is crap. Frost is nothing but a 10 sec extra life (literally since Ice Block lasts 10 sec) Fire is agressive only, with very little survivability in pvp. Arcane isnt a pvp spec, and is mostly used as if we actually thought we had a useful third talent tree except for the first few tiers for mana regen.

mojorising wrote:

Only skill i get when speccing feral is mangle (and its awsome, yes), but mangle hardly make it up for beeing able to spec 3 different ways to achive 3 different roles within your class role.

but you do have 3 different ways of playing your class.. 4 actually.
1) tank
2) melee dps
3) caster dps
4) healer

no other class has this many choices. Hell.. mages has 1, and that's nuking, the only choice we have to make is to reduce casttime on either fireball or frostbolt. ofc's there's arcane but since patch 2.3 it's not viable since you loose dps compared to fire and frost.
Actually tbh, mages don't have a choice when speccing. PvE = Fire, PVP = Frost. Fire is the best dps and anything but frost won't be accepted in an arena team.

mojorising wrote:

and you are right beard, druids are not supposed to stand in one role all the time. Thats one of the reasons the druid class is "broken" as a whole. Right now, druids either specialize into 3 very different forms of play. Ranged caster, feral combat and resto healing. But you never see a moonkin swap into catform to go dps. Why would he, since he wouldnt do _any_ dps at all vs a SSC boss.

like i said, mages spec for only tree and a few points in arcane for mana regen, or raiding frost which is 40 arcane / 21 frost, but that relies on having another mage with deep frost (winter's chill) to do good dmg.

This whole thing you're getting at would be the same as if the mages said they want to be able to spec so that they can do good dmg as both fire and frost with a single spec, or having a fire spec and still have the survivability of frost.
Imo, we have a problem you don't. Al'ar is immune to fire, Hydross to frost (in water phase). There's no boss that's immune to melee so you were forced to spec balance, mages is (at least till we have better gear to compensate for the spec).

Mojorising wrote:

beard, i find it funny how you say ferals have utility enough, yet you fail to list more than 2 (3 if you say feral faerie fire) feral abilities.

- innervate is an extra mana bar for priests / resto druids <- does nothing for feral utility, since it requires us to go out of our feral forms to use.
- LotP is a buff to tank aggro and/or dps + minor healing <- passive ability, and talented. If you count this, you remove your you need to spec in one tree card, since.. Hey.. we specced for this. If warriors want to be better at tanking, they spec for it. - this is also a 31 point talent.
- combat res is..well a combat res. <- again a non feral ability
- hibernate (yes hard for a feral DPS but can be done) <- non feral ability
- faerie fire -> melee DPS buff / tank aggro buff (-610 armour) <- feral ability, but both rogues got expose armor, and warriors have sunder armor, so listing this is the same as listing my ability to melee attack, since thats also a "core" melee ability.
- demo shout -> damage reducing skill (-336 AP talented) <- bearform ability. Doesnt stack with warriors, so isnt missed if not preset, like eg sunder armor.
- insect swarm -> damage reducing utility spell (2% miss chance) <- Hell yea!! balance specced feral druids, where are you? i guess travelform is our main dps shape, and all serious feral tanks use tree of life for tanking. This is as much a feral utility skill as moonkin form

This leaves us with:
Lotp: (if specced for it)
Demo shout
(feral) faerie fire

Vs the other classes lists.
Remember, im not talking about what we can do of abilities as a druid class, im talking about we need something to add besides a 2 button spam in 2 different forms. We need feral utility, not yet a resto/balance talent.

Yes we do good dmg (for t5 instances), but no one is asking for a buff.

We got all these abilities, and our class looks good on paper. But in the end, survivability is crap. Bearform is nothing but a 10 sec extra life (2 sec vs magical opponents.) catform is agressive only, with very little survivability in pvp. Bearform isnt a pvp form, and is mostly used as if we equipped a shield to counter melee burst, or to gain range on someone.

You mention the talent build and how we can chance from dps to tank in the same encounter. Not any different than a warrior. Hell, if the warrior didnt take any of the key talents from any of his 3 trees (like mortal strike, devistate, shield slam etc), but only took the dmg boosting talents etc he would still have all the skills a feral druid has when tanking (same goes for rogues when dps). Now, adding the stuff the protection tree offers, and he suddenly got a large range of utility, not just sunder armor/heroic strike, which with other names are the skills druids use. Why are you complaining that we only need to use 1 tree, when most feral druids would give up balance tree for another tree to specialize in.
And i would give my right arm to gain access to some of the stuff rogues have. Combat tree, sub tree. All the different ways of speccing to gain some killer skill. Only skill i get when speccing feral is mangle (and its awsome, yes), but mangle hardly make it up for beeing able to spec 3 different ways to achive 3 different roles within your class role. And this is where other classes go offtrack. We dont have 3 trees we can spec in, to  gain various stuff. We have 3 different trees, that all exclude the 2 other trees, making us have only the "basic" stuff when we are feral druids.

Yes ferals does great dmg in ZA/SSC/TK. - i got great dps gear, so does namino. But wait a few months. As soon as we are becomming a T6 guild, with the need of more utility, the druid scaling stops, and the same goes with the need for us, since bear druids still just got Heroic strike/sunder armor, and cat druids got backstab x 5 followed up by a bleed effect.

You talk about utility, but I don't quite understand what you mean by it. You say Shield Wall, Devestate, Shield Slam and Last Stand are utility but Innervate, Combat res and Mark or the Wild. Shield Wall is nice, but IMO it is not the reason you bring a warriors. The main buttons a tanking warrior are likely to use are:
Thunderclap (if improved)
Devestate
Shield Block
Revenge
Shield Slam
Demoshout (should be done by the DPS fury warrior)

-Last stand
-Shield Wall

Those last 2 are what defines the prot warrior in raids, thats it, one 8 min CD skill and one 30 min CD skill and if everyone is on their game they shouldn't really ever be "needed".

This is how T6 level warlocks raid
/summon Succubus
/sac succubus
/summon Healthstones
/cast  Curse of Shadow/Elements/Recklessness/Doom
/cast Shadowbolt

This is how T6 mages raid:
/cast fireball
/cast fireblast
/drink mana pots

At end game you bring one affliction warlock to the raid for malediction and 5/5 shadow embrace and imp buff who will do subpar dps. Seriously that Sahrokh post was full of bollocks imo, just like when people whined about fear or paladins being "imbah".

Druids by nature conflict with the way optimal raiding tends to work, which is that you take 25 people specialised into a specific role. For druids they seem to be capable or performing OT/dps (better than a prot warrior), caster dps (equal to mage?), healing. The idea of raiding IS TO SPECIALISE meaning that it will likely be a less interesting playstyle, much like the warlock casting cycle of shadowbolt-shadowbolt-shadowbolt. Raiding is made a bit more interesting with the way that classes synergise together (druids do this better than mages and rogues, which synergise with nothing - this means that they GAIN buffs but GIVE NOTHING BACK). Druids are fine in PvE IMO. It would be nice to innervate from bear form. Raids are not about using every ability your class has to offer, it's about choosing talents to maximise your potential (barring the gimmicky fights).

When was the last time the "utility" of a dps warrior was needed in a raid ever? Or the utility of a rogue or a hunter beyond a few gimmicky fights (tranq shot, supression room)?

If feral druids had the utility of a prot warrior, nobody would roll prot warriors. If druids had all the things you talk about wanting, nobody would ever play any other class because druids would be the blank template that you could turn into anything.

So in conculsion, yes druid itemisation is broken, the class as a whole is not. Yes druids are weak in 5v5 but they own 2v2 and 3v3 right now. Yes feral druids do have problems with shifting messing with rage / energy but if each form had uber "utility" then druids wouldn't shapeshift (in pvp) and they would be druids. They'd be fuzzy warriorrogues.

To reiterate my view on PVE: Druids are fine. Destro locks don't use dots, just like tanking druids don't heal.

Edit: Of course half your abilities won't be "feral" if you want more feral abities you really should've rolled a proper melee class like a rogue or warrior because just because you're feral, it doesn't mean you should spend your whole time in ONLY bear or ONLY cat (talking PvP here) . My point is to highlight that when you ONLY look at druid feral skills it WILL seem woefully inadequate, just like if you only look at warlock destruction spells you see how useless they are for pvp (which they are).

Last edited by Beardstorm (2008-01-06 02:21:31)

xzar wrote:

You cannot compare a mage having to spec fire/frost to do pve/pve to a druid having to respec. As a mage, you can respec without having to change  all of your gear, playstyle and purpose.

fire is crit dependant, whereas frost is more hit dependant, mean u need high crit gear for fire and high hit gear for frost. same for pvp and pve. there's a huge difference in the gear needed for the two things.

it's true that a mage doesnt need to change playstyle or purpose with a respec, but that's only because we only have ONE. the druids are lucky enough to get to choose between different roles. so what, they need different gear whether they tank or heal? well ofc. they do. the same goes for a paladin, or a priests (healing or dps'ing). wanting gear that fits all of a class's specs would be nice but u can't have it all.. collecting more than one set of items is what comes with a hybrid class if you don't want to be stuck with a specific spec.

Last edited by Kelthalas (2008-01-06 04:07:20)