And, unless I'm missing something huge, that is the only difference. There are a lot worse ways they could have nerfed druids (putting cancelform back on the GCD comes to mind first) and it is appropriate that the class that currently rules the 2v2 bracket gets a counter. They did it to pallys in Season 2, is it any surprise they are going to keep doing it to the next big thing?

Then it's more like a single target, ranged psychic scream that only affects one class, sometimes, than a warlock fear. And with no talents or pvp gear to reduce the cooldown.

The real issue, IMO, is that Scare Beast also works on shamans in Ghost Wolf form. And didn't Blizzard just buff GW form to be instacast with 2 talent points, and say that they wanted Enhancement to be a viable Arena spec? I even see some elemental shamans going 7 into enhance to pick up imp GW.

This buff just feels wrong. Surely there are other ways to nerf resto druids other than this.

For the sake of correctness, /cancelform was never on the GCD. The old situation was that your client waited for confirmation that the animal form buff was removed before allowing you to use a caster form spell (shifting back to the same form, for instance). You had to wait for a latency round-trip but it was a much shorter amount of time than waiting for a GCD. Now, your client lets you use your caster form spell before the server tells it that the buff was actually canceled.

just curious, but what did they do to pallies in s2?

and 30yards range

Nerfed the hell out of situationally useful PvE/BG abilities that were mildly overpowered in Arena. Thanks again Arena for ruining the rest of the game!

More specifically, added a 30 second cooldown to blessing of sacrifice and increased the recast/reduced the duration of blessing of freedom. Destroyed Illumination.

Also don't forget that while those nerfs were rough, Pallys weren't truly viable in small bracket pvp in the first place as healers to begin with. We just were in S1/S2 because Druids and Priests hadn't closed the armor gap until they hit 400+ resilience, while pallys could just wear PvE gear and functionally be okay.

A Druid with no resilience is a squishy target. A druid with 450++ resil is a sherman tank.

Well, I wouldnt say Bos&Bof were mildly overpowered in arena, they were _very_ strong, especially in the dominant setup warr+pally
And illumination was worst in pve wasnt it? I just seem to remember our pallies laughing whenever healers whined about pot-usage, and usually ending fights with a bountiful amount of mana, holypriests getting marginalized in raids etc.

Though it should be noted the only experience I have with holypallies is a good rl friend of mine having one, and him and our warrior friend did insane win/loss ratios in arena

The illumination nerf was certainly motivated by pve as much as pvp. This was back before the spirit change, the mana spring and water shield buffs, the large indirect buff to shadowfiend healing=> spell damage caused etc of course.

As mentioned earlier in the thred, if this is really the counter they want then the best solution now is to add Fear immunity to a Feral skill. The suggestion was Tiger's Fury, but I think for true restriction the immunity should be added to Tigers by a deep Feral talent. Probably Primal Tenacity makes the most sense and being only available in Catform would prevent it upsetting balance elsewhere.

So... how exactly does this address Ghost Wolf being fearable?

Are hunters really such a big bad threat that this addition warrants two plus pages of complaints? Maybe I'm a bad player, but aside from a few tricks in BGs/Arenas to TWO classes that have advantages vs hunters in the first place (sit on hunter druids, enh shamans, resto shamans, LOS after dotting) I fail to see the big deal.

From a Warrior/Druid 2's perspective, since that's what I know best:

Hunter/Druid already beats Warrior/Druid unless the hunter/druid screw up badly. This makes it even easier for the hunter/druid to CC the warrior indefinitely - hell, the hunter can easily CC the warrior now, by himself, if both the warrior and druid are on top of him (fear druid, scatter shot/trap warrior since druid can't eat trap for the warrior).

Meanwhile the hunter's druid can be drinking margaritas behind a pillar, or, alternatively, /dancing as the hunter solos the warrior/druid team.

Conclusion: Gives a buff to the side of this matchup that already has the advantage.

The only 'advantage' a resto shaman has versus a hunter is the ability to heal (and to somewhat mitigate your mana draining mechanic). In an arena with the presence of pillars, we can hide with your pet triggering water shield if can't micro it for a balance between keeping us in combat and unable to drink, and having it on us full time.

I will tell you that in open BGs, a hunter is my worst enemy, because without even consciously choosing to, arcane shot removes the one thing that actually lets me cast heals in pvp (earth shield), and they generate absurd amounts of spell pushback through their pet + just shooting at me. I'm effectively disabled without them even trying to shut me down. Sure, I can ghost wolf and try to sit on the hunter (usually triggering a snake trap which applies mind numbing poison, to add insult to injury), but if I'm doing that, I'm not healing myself or anyone else.

That is simply not true.

I also played Dru/Warr until last week and I can tell you that a good resto druid can nullify any meaningful hunter CC while also making him try to escape the druid while the warrior has free reign to damage who he pleases.

It's as simple as having the druid sit in bear form on top of the hunter for the duration of the match. In fact I looked forward to playing hunter/druid teams because I felt they were easy wins. As long as the druid doesn't get caught in a trap in caster form he's not gonna run into any mana problems and can actually do a fair amount of damage to the hunter.

This helps hunters in that regard and it's help they needed. And it certainly doesn't break druids. It's not a nerf to druids. It's a slight buff to hunters in small scale arena pvp and one they needed.

From everything I've experienced and read, Druid/War is definitely not a counter to Druid/Hunter. What rating were you playing at?

Anyway, it's irrelvant. Making Hunters a giant rock to the scissors of Druids isn't good for balance. Counter-comping has been a huge issues in arena recently, and this doesn't help.

I agree with you that creating counter comps isn't the correct way to balance but I strongly disagree that this change makes hunters a giant rock to the scissors of druids as you put it.

As for the rating I'm referring to it's not the upper echelon of arena play but it is where a larger majority of people sit. 1750-1850. As a druid, unless the hunter is exceptional, it is very easy to stay on him and avoid stings and outheal the damage a hunter puts out. Even hunters in s3 gear. Watch any of Sonny's videos. Granted the latest are of him with a rogue but he plays it the same way.

He sits on the hunter in bear form and eats traps which allows his rogue to basically roam free. It's not much different for a warrior in that regard.

Funny thing about most hunters, even at higher ratings. When a druid is in their face they tend to focus entirely on trying to kill the druid which is very hard when they are chain rooted/feral charged/cycloned and when the druid is in bear form. Once they realize they aren't going to kill the druid they tend to try to get away, which is also almost impossible unless they start wasting traps on the druid. A warrior can kill a druid before a hunter can.

This doesn't make Hunters the bane of druids UNLESS it is a Hunter/XXX double dps team. And those were hard enough to handle as a druid to begin with. Luckily very few of those teams exist.

That might be true in 2v2. But a feared Druid is going to be the target of a train fairly quickly in any other bracket. I guess I should clarify that the 'giant rock' comment also includes Feral (and Shaman to a lesser extent).

I also don't think Blizzard should balance the game at the average levels. Ideally, you want the game to become more skill based and balanced as you move up ratings (where rewards are greater).

Healer/Hunter/Hunter teams are going to absolutely roll around laughing at anything with a druid on the other side. Hunter's were fine before this change....they should have just kept up with the minor nerfs to druids. They were becoming balanced pretty quickly and one more round of nerfs probably would have been enough.

Blizzard has stated in the past that they think of rock paper scissors match ups in pvp as a good thing.

I searched the thread and didn't see any posts regarding sweeping strikes and blade flurry.

Has anyone tested the "range change"? I'm hoping SS might actually be useful now (in 2's/3's where there's rarely a super-tight cluster)