The Enigma Order

Talmira rerolled?

You are probably right though

xzar wrote:

Beardstorm wrote:

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) .

Exactly.

We are meant to use a mixture of "pure feral" abilities and our other abilities, such as Cyclone, Roots, Innervate and even heals. The problem is that the punishment for shapeshifting - the loss of all energy/rage and 600+ mana each time makes the price too high for it to be part of a feasible pvp playstyle.

That is why I suggested a talent to reduce the punishment of shapeshifting.

Although theres nothing to stop you from unloading all your energy (yeah rage dumping is harder) then shifting out, and casting whatever. There should imo always some sort of "punishment" associated with shifting, just like how a warrior being focus fired will shift to def stance, intervene and lose a buttload of rage. Also a feral druid has innervate to regenerate mana (albiet not as much as a resto) to help supporting more shapeshifts instead of supporting heals or offensive spells like it would for a resto / balance druid.

Druids have been much improved since I last played them with being able to shift between forms and natures grasp being castable in animal forms, and the way that casting a spell shifts you out and starts casting instantly. I think the fact that the "feral" set comes with +healing and +int is a clue that even if you're feral, you don't ignore something just because it's not castable in cat/bear form.

I would say that a talent offering a free shift once every 15-30 secs would be welcome.
Tactical mastery type talent would be welcome.
Mangle buffing raid damage slightly would be welcome, similar to a warriors blood frenzy.
Yeah an OOC res would be nice, but this would cement your role as healer even more.

But the last thing blizzard should do is to dump the first 2 ideas into feral, and instead tag them onto other talents like intensity (in the resto tree). That Sakhroth post was imo very narrow minded, especially when you go calling cyclone a "resto/balance skill" it imo shows that you really aren't thinking like a proper druid. Shifting out to cyclone that rogue bashing your healer is better than anything a warrior can hope to acheive, likewise shifting out to cyclone an enemy healer and letting your teammates finishing off the main assist target isn't "a bad thing".

And c'mon Fury warriors DO NOT bring that much utility. Blood frenzy is a proc, battle shout is refreshed every 2-3 mins, imp demo shout every 30 seconds. Faerie fire, MotW and LotP are comparable to those in terms of actual DPS gain. Especially FF because of the way armour reduction works.

I really hate people like Sahrokh since for all his bloody whining he really offers no suggestions.

For your information, "utility spells" from classes with less than 1 min refresh time that are active casts and not procs that will be used in raids:
Mages: AOE, imp scorch (helps ONLY other mages), sheep (lol)
Rogues: Kick (lol).
Hunters: Scorpid sting
Warlocks: Nothing.
Paladins: Judgements.
Warriors: Imp. demo shout, thunderclap, pummel (lol).
Shamans: 3-4 totems.
Priests: Pain supression (what?), power word shield, prayer of mending (but wait thats just healing?)

Breaking news: Raiding is not about twitch reflex skills or even a vast array of abilities, its about coordination, group setup, positioning and movement. You do one job and you do it well. I'm quite sure that most end game guilds do take 1 feral 1 moonkin and 1 resto on raids.

You feel like half a rogue when dpsing and half a warrior when tanking? That adds up to 1 dude. One class. If you want to feel like a whole rogue roll a bloody rogue. If you want to feel like a whole warrior, roll a warrior (with regards to raiding).

Yes itemisation sucks, but the class itself is generally O-K with regards to PVE. WWS parses of Illidan kills below.

edit: maybe druids don't scale well at T6, but they do good upto at least T5 levels. This WWS parse of an illidan kill puts a feral druid at equal dps to a mage.
http://wowwebstats.com/zbdnsyjbh246e?s=135-403

edit2: heres another WWS parse of a feral druid with a 1189DPS output, yes its a bit lower than the 1200-1300 dps of pure classes and he died mid fight or was otherwise disadvantaged (65% presence). So yes I'd say feral druids can hang with the best.
http://wowwebstats.com/3tgp1iii3f5kg?s=13941-14625

edit3: druid healing tanking and DPSing at illidan(Dew), shifting out to use tranquility and some lifeblood stacks
http://wowwebstats.com/gidvakgonxxn3?s=10775-11504

edit4: another feral off tank / dps again throwing a couple of heals here and there for good measure.
http://wowwebstats.com/q16dlgrses2mg?s=207-967
Also note lack of DPS warrior.

edit5: druid MT on bloodboil ( or at least tanking the majority of the damage)
http://wowwebstats.com/w4edbtk5vixlm?s=7284-7559

Yeah a 0/21/40 shadowbolt lock can use Immolate, Incinerate, Corruption, but only Curse of Doom/CoA are worth casting at all. If you used all available skills, you'd be a stupid warlock and you're only gimping your own DPS.

On raiding: Yes balance druids are heavily under represented (so are DPS warriors in general), as are affliction warlocks, frost mages, DPS paladins, tank paladins, dps shamans but theres is a good representation from feral druids.

Final Edit about arenas: Yes ferals are gimped in arenas in general (esp in 5v5) but destruction (and affliction to a lesser extent) locks, rogues, ret paladins, holy priests, prot and fury warriors, arcane and fire mages, resto and enhancement shamans are all considered to be weak so these classes are all broken too. Ferals and Balance druids have problems, but so do other classes. If you really want to play a druid that can do it all in one form then well...we disagree about how druids should work. I'm resto and I swap to bear to feralcharge -> bash a paladin heal at the end after a cyclone lock, hell I may restealth and throw a pounce onto a healer too to break up his healing, that doesn't make me any less resto. It makes me a druid. Yeah this is less viable in 5v5 but so are many things.

Like when I PvP with my warrior, its not just about landing executes and MS spam (unless youre a crap warrior), its about throwing up hamstrings to help healers kite, fearing to disrupt a DPS assist, interveneing to get out of danger, popping defensive stance to disarm to stop mortal strike or execute and let me get healed or to stop another warrior from re-hamstringing a healer. To only use skills in the arms tree would be stupid beyond belief. And it does cost rage to swap, but its usually worth it.

When I PvPed with my lock as affliction it's not just about throwing DoTs on everything, its about CoT on shamans / paladins, Fearing DPS off my healer, CoEx/CoW on warriors, spell lock at the right time, making deathcoil count, draining mana off shadow priests etc.

Last edited by Beardstorm (2008-01-06 16:59:02)

Beardstorm wrote:

That Sakhroth post was imo very narrow minded, especially when you go calling cyclone a "resto/balance skill" it imo shows that you really aren't thinking like a proper druid.

I disagree.

If we were referring to one of the other hybrids then I would agree, because they can use the entire scope of their class abilities without any punishment. A dps paladin can stop dps and cast a heal/cleanse/whatever and so can a shaman. This makes it much easier for them to blend abilities that they are not specced for into their playstyle.

A feral druid is punished every time he wants to use an ability that does not involve the shape he is currently in. If I am in catform and I want to remove a debuff from my partner the cost is:

Loss of all energy/rage
Remove Curse
Global cooldown
Shapeshift 580 mana
Glocal cooldown

For a shaman/paladin the cost is:
Cleanse or something
Global cooldown

This is why feral druids refer to cyclone as a balance/resto skill - because their price for using the skill is similar to the price a paladin/shaman pays, making it more feasible to blend in with your playstyle.

Beardstorm wrote:

Ever seen a shadow priest or ret paladin try to heal something?

Yes, many times - explain further?

EDIT:
I agree that you can compare a shadow priest leaving his form to cast a holy spell to a feral druid leaving his form to cast. But a shadow priest can still cast all his discipline spells in shadow form, and if he decides to cast a healing spell, then this spell will still benefit greatly from his +spell damage.

If you refer to the fact that their heals will be weak compared to a holy specced player, then I don't see that as a punishment. That's just lack of boost, so to speak. A punishment is when you have to pay more mana, more global cooldown, more whatever to cast a spell that normally does not cost this.

You play a warlock now, right?

As a rough example:
Let's say that summon demon was instant cast, but whenever you had a demon out you are unable to cast affliction spells. The punishment for alternating between having a demon and using dots/drains would then be similar to the punishment ferals get for using non-shape abilities.

Last edited by xzar (2008-01-06 17:23:47)

You have omen of clarity, which can be used to gain free heals.
You do have + healing that gains a % of your strength.
You do have Naturalist which buffs damage in feral and gives a quicker HT.
You do have Heart of the Wild which increases your mana pool.
More talents like these would be great.

I don't think it's unreasonable for a ferals healing to be slightly under what a shadowpriest, ret paladin or elemental shammy pays.
Shadow priests are punished by hugely inefficient heals.
Ret paladins have to stand still, which lets their melee target escape
Elemental shamans I'm not sure about, other than they run OOM fast.
- All these classes cannot continue to DPS once they are OOM. Feral druids can, which is a great strength imo.

Yes they do lack those killer talents like Mortal Strike and Kick and CCs in feral forms and this makes them weak in 5v5. But if they did get skills approximating these then the core classes would need something else to set themselves apart. I recall some druid called Spoh, who did very well in 2v2 as a feral resto hybrid. And if youre going to limit yourself to feral only then may I ask why? It's like if i was to only limit myself to resto spells when I arena. I think part of the feral druid problem is that you see a cat and expect a rogue, you see a bear and expect a warrior, when it's not the case.

What I dislike is that he (Sakrokh) uses bugs as a reason for why druids are broken, while this is partly the case I really think be blows the whole thing out of proportion. And I'm more trying to put into perspective that every class has strengths and weaknesses as a whole which seems to have esccaped the feral druid community as a whole, thats why there are no top tier destro locks or holy priests or ret paladins or prot warriors or arcane mages. It would be awesome if every spec was viable at PvP but thats just never going to happen and it's unrealistic to expect it.

You play the class how it the most effective, the class is not designed to play exactly how you want it to (because everything expects different just as is obvious here). Sadly for you resto druids are the arena spec of choice with the feral charge / control of nature / resto build. I have to admit it is a fun spec in 2v2 and 3v3, not been able to play 5v5 properly and I enjoy it much more than being a feral during levelling and at 60, and the nature of feral pvp (based on level 60) has remained similar to a grind them down slowly approach which just translates very poorly into the 5v5 DPS burst strategy which is more common.

Shapeshifting could be made easier, I won't dispute that druids are among the hardest classes to play really really well, but it can't be made so easy to the point where you can just shapeshift willy nilly and not have to think about whether its worth it.

But heres one, if you could have one rogue "utility" skill to give your cat, what would it be and why?

Beardstorm wrote:

But heres one, if you could have one rogue "utility" skill to give your cat, what would it be and why?

Personally, I don't want a utility skill from another class. I just want to be able to use the ones we already have efficiently in PVP - but I can't - unless I spec away from what made me roll a druid.

Last edited by xzar (2008-01-06 18:39:50)

xzar wrote:

Talmira rerolled?

You are probably right though

Yeah rerolled priest Wanted to try something else when raiding. I still think the druid is an awsome class despite the short commings and bugs that never seems to get fixed.

The biggest problem is our survivability, switching form has become our greatest vulnerability, compared to ie. shamans and paladins who got everything in one "form" and greater survivability too.

I really hope that blizzard will look at some of the issues that druids have in pvp atleast, they did it for classes which didn't really need it like hunters and rogues (yeah yeah start the flaming).


"Problem is, that everytime i have to support my raid, i loose my feral role, i stop dps to do something wich i arent specced for."
Mojo, innervate and rebirth etc. are core class skills. Most classes have to give up on something to support the raid, the difference is that feral druids can end up being stuck in casterform with nothing to do. Catform->bear to taunt mob off->catform->"ress the noob"->catform->"omg innervate or we all die"->nice thats how my tier set looks like.

xzar wrote:

Beardstorm wrote:

Like i said, most classes only really have one viable arena spec and while this doesn't make everything right, I'm just pointing out that every class has to deal with it so we are really all in the same position and it's not just a case of "OMG DRUIDZ IS BORKEN BUT EVERYONE ELSE IS SO HAPPY".

Well, if an arena set exists for a given spec, then that particular spec should be viable in arena. If it isn't then I don't consider it whining to point out that something is not right. I'm sure we are not alone in this - which other arena sets are aimed at specs that aren't viable?

The warlock set with crit on it, clearly aimed at destro locks.
The paladin set with spell damage.
The shaman enhancement set.

Warriors, and Mages only have one dps set, since the stats they need are the same for all specs, but are forced into cookie cutter builds to maintain arena viability. hunters and rogues I'm not sure about since I've not touched them for a while. For example the warrior set works for fury and MS warriors but fury is rubbish in arena.

Hunters can go BM or marksmanship (from what I've seen) but not too sure.
Shamans can play resto (quite gimped tho) or elemental.
Warlocks tend to be SL/SL or FG or affliction
Warriors only spec for MS
Mages can only spec frost
Rogues i'm not sure about.
Priests can play disc or shadow.
Paladins can only play holy.

So theres actually no class that has a viable arena spec for whatever they want to do. And from what I understand the currently popular AR/prep rogue spec is in for a nerf soon.

Barkskin and innervate in animal forms would be great (as I think I already suggested), Natures grasp can already be cast in animal form, Feral Charge is a great evasive skill with a well positioned healer, omen of clarity can be used to gain a "free" heal which would offset the mana cost of shifting. Bringing Tigers fury in line with Zerker rage would be good too (30 sec CD, 10 sec fear immunity, can be used while feared) and I would say a form of mana regen from doing damage in feral forms would be nice too, maybe tagged onto mangle or an effect of mangle. I'd say Shred could have 2x pushback on spellcasting too just to encourage a bit of thinking as to when you use it.

I honestly think cyclone in animal form is OP since no other melee class has any form of reliable CC.

My main beef with Sakrokh is he makes things sound a lot worse than they actually are. Yeah several tweaks are needed (as with holy paladins and resto shamans). Yeah the way things are not there probably arent any top rated feral druids (or destro locks or ret paladins) but I'm not sure that the S3 weapon is completly out of reach. I'd love to give it a go as feral but farming that 100k honor for a feral set is just grrr but I'm probably gonna 3v3 with a feral druid on my warrior so we'll see how that goes.

Mojorising wrote:

Kelt, dont turn this into a mage post, its still about utility in forms we are talking about.

I wasn't, at least not with any intention of doing so. I was just comparing the issues being discussed between classes to show you that it's not only ferals that apparantly are "broken". And seeing as I've played a mage the most, it's only natural for me to use this class as the comparison, since it's the class I know best.

Mojorising wrote:

i dont have the answer to what the missing utility should be.
Some sort of way to protect the onslaught, like you know: blind or vanish as an ohh shit button. i just dont want to have blind or vanish.
barskin in cat would solve alot of problems.

A revamp of tigers fury would be great as well. Changing it to something like fear immunity for a small amount of time. Right now, its hard to kill a good geared / well played warlock, since shapeshifting removes DR.

Another way of making us more viable to heal, would be to set some sort of cooldown on shapeshifting, and in return remove mana costs.
The current talent who reduces mana costs on shapeshifting could be changed with a reduction on the cooldown. Im not talking about 30 sec or anything crazy, which would ruin feral gameplay, but something much lower, making the druid not able to travelform his way out of eg mages frost novas. Maybe the cooldowns shouldnt be shared, so it was possible to shift cat>bear>cat, but not cat>cat>cat

Are you seriously whining over the fact that there's a class you have problems in killing ?
Don't think that the poor druid is the only one who have problems killing certain classes. If you do, you're downright delusional.

Imo, a chance of tiger's fury to some fear immunity could be a viable change. Tho it'd have to be on a reasonable cd or else it would be OP with a spamable fear immunity whether it was the intention or not.

Changing the shapeshifting from having mana costs to having a cd instead wouldn't solve the problem imo. And you'd have to start from scratch with balancing shapeshifting, since it'd be either damn OP or seriously gimped the first 2-3 major patches after such a change.

Mojorising wrote:

Shred spell pushback would be really nice too, but untill they fix the range bug totally, its to hard to use, and since most players face you to cast a spell, you would have a hard time getting it off.

Are you saying that you can't get behind a caster that's channaling a spell and can't cc you while doing so ?

Mojorising wrote:

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.

Mojorising wrote:

You hate sahrohk because you do not understand where this is comming from. You havent experienced the playstyle we had in 2005, because if you did, you could see it from our side, and not the "ohh druids are whining again".
We have asked for this since 2005, and we have gotten fixes, true, but not the fixes we needed.

did YOU know that one of the really nice specs for a mage in preTBC was a mix of fire, arcane and frost tree ? Now that spec would be laughed at since it a deep spec in either fire or frost is far superior. Druids aren't the only ones whose playstyle and good specs have change since TBC launched. So yea, i DO KNOW where it's coming from.

Mojorising wrote:

What game are you playing? resto druids might be good in arenas IF they have a ton of resilience.

Could you name me ONE class and spec that is good in arenas with 0 resilience ?

Holy priest was like that pre-tbc too apox. and afaik, it still is. I can't confirm it, but I dont think Obscure has a bottom tier talent.

But priest is still the coolest class I have played by far. I never read the wow class forums, but there's always someone whining about their class, and if they are so unhappy, they can easely just try another class. Or another game. Like Aquaria!

@Kelt

im not talking about a spamable fear immunity on tigers fury, something with cooldown or whatever. Im no game designer.
I know we arent the only class who has trouble killing others, thats not why i wrote it. But the truth is, that with a DR that resets everytime i shapeshift, kinda remove the reason why DR was implemented in the game to start with.

Im not saying its impossible to get behind a player than is casting a spell, i say that it is hard, and even harder with the range bug you experience in cat.

And i know that resilience are required in arenas. Problems for druids is, that ferals still dont perform well, just like enhancement shamans and alot of other specs. And the resto spec does work really nice in arena, if you have enough resilience to outlast the burst with the nifty hots druids got.

It's true. A raid can do without a druid. But then again, a raid can live without a rogue or a holy priest too - Two classes with pretty much on role (I guess I see holy and sahdow priests as two different classes).
On the good side: A raid can have room for a bunch of druids with various specs, while there are room for one or two rogues. And while there are TONS of wow gamers playing druids, I don't think there's any less playing rogues.

So.. If you have a thing only druids can do, you will have to lose some of the versatility. And that will maybe leave less druids spots in a raid.