Almost any buffs can arguably be replaced by consumables. That's always only true insofar as you aren't already potted up to the maximum.

Many people argue that world buffs get you margins on fights such as Sapphiron and it's quite true. On my guild's first Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad and 4 Horsemen kills I believe combat resses were used. While it might be a buffer against messups, that doesn't mean that it might not be instrumental on getting that first kill that much earlier. It's that much more margins on those fights where recovering from some deaths is possible. I'll agree though - there are fights where combat resses aren't really that useful (Patchwerk).

Well true, but if the choice is between one combat rez for a battle or an extra blessing, whether that be Kings, Salv or Might/Wisdom or a groups worth of Shaman buffs, I'm pretty sure most will take the blessing/buffs. I think it was smart that Blizzard made Paladins and Shamans so stackable. It encourages raids to bring them along, even though they might not be as good pure healers as druids or priests. And even better they can synergize the raid group while being healers. Druids synergy other than ToL requires them to be in a non healing role, whether that be in moonkin or feral forms. That's the problem. Most would forsake the synergy by those for the healing they'd bring in resto.

Im going to make an assumption here, you are a cat-druid. You didnt even bother to make the right comparisson.
Try comparing a MOONKIN druid to a shadow priest, oh look they have about the same amount of healing power when either should shift out of their dps form. I could rewrite your argument as "A balance druid in +600 spell dmg and mana regen gear will be a pretty decent healer". When you make the effort to draw the right comparisson you find the situation isnt as clear cut.

Let me ask you this;
How does a cat druid compare to paladins in warrior kit for healing ?
Enchnacement shaman ?

All three have the same issues. A fully dps specced paladin, in full dps gear will be no more able to suddenly start healing that a druid in feral gear. Lets not start arguing over who has it worse, its a waste of time and breath. All three classess have the exact same point, and to start arguiing that somehow druids have it worse is a waste of time for you, me and anyone reading this thread.

As the game stands all the hybrids are being pushed down the road of "spec and gear for one job and suck at everything else", to me that isnt real hybrid gameplay, and it will lead to greater disillusionment from the playerbase as a whole. People are going to pick a hybrid class for one role, and increasingly find themselves being asked or forced to fill another because Blizazrd has porely defined class roles.

Thank you for replying without reading my post and putting words in my mouth.
I did not at any point suggest what any class hsould have as a role, I simply stated that each class should have a clearly defined role. You are assuming Im talking about making eveyrone a "healbot" but those are your words not mine. The clearly defined role could be "buff everyone in a 25 man raid with 5 minute buffs" it doesnt matter provided that a player knows what that role will be when they pick the class.

You did get one thing correct, guilds will still want people to heal, and as all the healing classess in WoW are hybrids (yes even priests) that means hybrids will end up healing.

You are turning this into a "OMG druids need a buff, eveyrone is more powereful" thread. Please stopp it, these whines have been posted a thousand times already in different guises.

I would argue that enchantment shaman in enchantment gear heals significantly better than druid in dps gear. Consider fights such as Maiden of Virtue: it's easily possible for shaman to melee while conserving enough mana to keep MT alive during repentence. Similarly for at least Little Red Riding Hood event at the opera house. I don't really see a feral druid doing that to nearly same effect - with 1k shapeshifting mana cost it's just not feasible to pop out to heal.

It is conceptually much easier for shaman and paladin to heal during certain phases of a fight than it is for druid since druids will always end up paying 1k extra mana for getting back to DPS form after the heal. Druid also forsakes his group buffs when he heals.

DPS shamans retain the ability to among other things purge and earth shock while in DPS role. Paladins can still cleanse. As general rule I'd say druids suffer far greater drop in efficiency if they do any healing at all: group instantly loses lotp, ilotp and there's 1k mana cost to getting back in shape. Totems and blessings stay up fine even when shaman and paladin switch roles. Some might argue different merits of course, but I'd say druid is much more specialized once dressed for a feral role.

Reposting in here after a few pages, just wanted to say, I didn't mean to be the jackass saying, druids can heal so they should suck at everything. However, I was referring to some of the early posts that indicated that the druid oriented arena weap was like 5dps inferior to the "normal" weap taking into account catform base dps, and why it was that way. The fact is, in PvP, switching out of form to land some heals is pretty viable. Sure it's a waste of mana, but who cares really, 3stack lifebloom+rejuv and go back into cat. You'll run oom, however it's better than not healing at all and having 100%mana at the end.

On this same line of thought, when comparing paladins and shamans to druids in melee specs, I agree druids are at a disadvantage if you try to morph in and out to heal. However you can start DPSing, then switch out and take another healer's spot for a short period of time by going all out on heals, and switching back when oom. It's not as flexible as being able to heal when needed like paladins and shamans can do, but it's still viable since you'll give maybe 15secs of pure regen to another healer. In the end, everyone will be oom pretty fast if they heal and as such, melee oriented hybrids should really be considered melees more than hybrids, especially since you need to use mana to maintain dps(which was the first role you were supposed to fill anyway).

I don't really think the problem with hybrids is with how well they can fill an offrole when speced and geared for another role, it's usually terrible and should be. What matters is how well they can fill an offrole using a different set of gear. Like, it doesn't matter how well can a druid heal when he's in feral gear with a feral spec. It'll suck, and it should suck. Same for other hybrids. The "problem" comes when you have to try to define the treshold for efficiency when speced for dps but using a healing set, or the contrary. How do you set this treshold, what is balanced and what is not. At which point do you figure it's worth more taking druids than taking rogues for flexibility, or taking dps wars instead of prot wars. However, how do you balance it so feral druids can be as good as prot wars(who suck at dpsing) when they can switch gear and fill healing role. They should really be as bad at it than prot wars are at dpsing.

And there you have the balance issues and problems. Since you can't really make the resto tree so good that it would make up for the difference between a feral or a resto druid in pure healing, and because of how itemization work, you have to nerf the other end. Not sure that's very clear, but I assume(and rightly so I suppose) that a feral druid, in full resto gear, will be much more efficient at his current role(healing) than a prot war, in dps gear, at his current role(dpsing). One way to balance this is to make resto more powerful, and nerf druid healing. However, that'd make resto too good to pass up, or druids too bad at healing. Another way would be to add healing nerfs into feral talents, but that'd be a retarded way to put it. So the last way is, nerf feral so you're not as good as a prot warrior tank.
So you can say, ok I can't fill my main role as good as a purist, but fill my offrole much better when switching gear.

However, this brings other issues. What of the druid that don't want to heal, or don't have a healing set. His main spec and main occupations always put him behind prot warriors. You could argue that it's because prot warriors can only do this, but it sucks if you're on the druid side from a "gameplay" and "fun" point of view.
Same deal with prot paladins, but since, with a holy/prot build and healing gear they can heal decently, they might not end up as good as prot wars for tanking, making 3/4 of their talents wasted as long as there's a prot war in the raid.

And then, you have ANOTHER issue. If you're feral spec, you're almost speced for 2roles at once. Feral DPS and Feral tanking. There's another whole tree for healing, and another for caster dps, but feral is pretty much 2 roles in one tree(albeit the talent point usage to fulfill both role is pretty high). The gear isn't exactly the same, but you could probably get pieces of gear that fit both roles perfectly(I'm not a leather gear specialist tho, so I'll leave this out).

So, imo, it's really hard to tell where druids should stand on the dps charts, where they should stand on tanking efficiency and where they should stand on healing comparison. They're probably the most hybrid of the hybrids. You can make it so they suck at everything, but that's definitely not fair. But then, you can make it so they're good at one thing, but not too good in other things(even if speced into them), and it forces druids into one role. So the balance is really hard, if you make them too good at anything, you'll see specialized classes(mainly dps classes) lose their spots for druids, if you make them too shitty, then it's druids who lose their spots(huntlock syndrome!).

Oh and as a final note, to make this even harder, you have PvP balance to consider. What is not viable against a raid boss can be against players(see first paragraph). However for this, it's also a bit easier, pure dps classes have specificities that make them different from each other, be it survivability or CC. It's still a factor to consider when balancing dps tho.

True Boevis, i'll happily wipe this

I'd argue that feral druid going for a healing role on a boss encounter is generally about as efficient as protection warrior doing damage. I imagine both will end around 60% efficiency compared to someone specced for it assuming they had equivalent gear which they probably won't. While protection warriors mostly DPS with buffing weapons (nightfall in 40 man raids, will see if there's something new in expansion) feral druids would most likely heal by healing touch. In any case, compared to restoration druid healer in typical fight feral druid is at following disadvantage:

15% less spirit and hence 15% less spirit based mana regeneration
no tree of life aura: no +healing to self or party, no group buffs whatsoever and no discount to options to hots
no +healing talents: only 66% gear benefit to rejuvenation, 80% gear benefit to lifebloom and regrowth, ~70% gear benefit to healing touch as compared to restoration druid. Base healing values approximately 90% of restoration with 10% higher cost on healing touch
no pushback resistance except with barkskin
no nature's swiftness or swiftmend for saving heals

It's not hopeless, but certainly not an option one should commonly resort to.

Which then raises the question, why are we creating a game where hybrids... are not hybrids ?
If a cat druid cannot reasonably do anything but be a pseudo-rogue, surely that defeats the point of being a hybrid ?
If the game is such that a non-resto druid cannot heal effectively, what purpose does the druid class serve other than:
"Well you can do XX% of a 'pure' class, and you only need to respec rather than reroll when you get bored !!"

Let us assume (a daingerous game I know) that blizzard designers have the view that in order for a druid to tank an encounter they MUST be full bear-talents with full bear-gear. We quickly reach the situation where itemization and encounters are balanced around talent builds; tanking gear has less stamina because it is assumed you will have HotW for instance.

This then becomes self-perpetuating, and under this paradigm of design druids find themselves funneled into a single role due to their talents; much like the current holy priest or protection warrior. Do we really want all hybrids to work like this ? A situation where hybrid simply means if you change all your gear and respec you can do a different job, but otherwise you are a stripped down version of a "pure" class with a few unique buffs or abilities (Blessings, Totems, Rebirth).

I dont believe that it is healthy for hybrids to be viewed this way by either the players or the designers.

To steal a quote from kitty-lol-druids.
"Why should druids only perform 1/4 of their potential roles in a raid"

Of course they use it to specifically refer to "heal-botting", but more generallly, why should a hybrid be confined to a singular role ?
Why is a druid who never leaves catform, or bearform, or mooonkin any better than a druid who does nothing but heal. From a purely phillosophical point of view each of these posibilities are equally bad, and yet increasingly it seems blizzard is pushing hybrids in this direction because of increasing depth of specialization through talents and items.

The opportunity cost for any spec, for any of the hybrids, is becoming increasingly large.

Since people seem to insist on continuing this thread with a different topic ...

Off the Off-Topic: a Prot Warrior in full wrath with TF/Iblis and other tanking gear (ref: http://ctprofiles.net/4432911 ) can pull off 500 DPS on a fight like Patchwerk.

OT: To me, Hybrid means this, During a fight a Hybrid can take on any role needed for the encounter - Healer, Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, AoE, Crowd Control; and can do so to a reasonable degree such that a well geared/skilled hybrid can perform as well as the average specialized class. At any point during the fight, a Hybrid can change roles and perform at the same level. A Hybrid can also, if he chooses, specialize in one of the roles available and be able to perform as well as (if not better/worse depending on circumstances) a specialized class.

Problem 1. All classes are 'hybrid' to some extent, even rogues, there are no "I can only do 1 thing" classes in this game. We have to leave it to Blizzard to determine what level of performance we're capable of.

Problem 2. Idiots. I've heard the same person say "Feral druids can't tank, lol" in one thread, and then say "Just go bearform noob" as an argument against druid DPS. "Off-specs" will almost always be seen by some people as threats to their status in game simply because they flat out suck and don't want everyone else to notice. Sadly, Blizzard has to take these people into consideration since they are paying customers.

Problem 3. PvP vs PvE. Shadow Priests, SL Warlocks, Elem Shamans, and Subtlety Rogues are generally seen as the gods of PvP, yet are considered by most to be jokes in raiding. The Balance issues between both aspects of the game are difficult to manage. How do you make it worthwhile to have a Hybrid on a raid without either making them overpowered in PvP, or making the raid encounters so complex (or simple) that the enjoyment is removed?

The answer to problem 3 is to have PvE and PvP only stats like weapon skill and resiliance play a larger part in itemization.
At least in my opinion.

I think I am fine with having Hybrids specialize. While I don't agree with the FAP and HotW requirement garbage, I do agree that Druids should not lag behind other specialist classes by design. If you water the designs down so the requirement of raid mitigation/DPS/Healing is so low that hybrid can get by without specialization you trivialize it for those that can/do specialize. Here is where I would like to see the Druid and the respective forms/jobs.

Bear Druid

This should be the spec that should basically be as good as the specialist - or atleast sufficient to do the job. For example, every or nearly every boss should be tankable by a Bear (apart from gimmick fights that Bears would get as well) without gimping the raid. Why is this? Because a) if you water the bosses down a crappy Bear can tank them, a Prot Warrior will have a way easier time doing it which trivializes the encounter and b) a Bear Druid is a tank first and foremost. This spec is the only one of all other Druid specs that cannot shift out at will to use his mana for healing or ranged DPSing. If you shift at a boss that hits like a truck, you die (this is also the reason people are happy with Bears in 5 mans; there you CAN shift out and Rebirth/Innervate someone without risking a wipe because the mobs just don't hit hard enough). So you are locked in that form until the fight is over, just like a Prot Warrior can't DPS while he is tanking a hard hitting mob. Admittedly, there are times you can leave Bear to do stuff because the boss is either tanked with two tanks that rotate tanking (Fankriss, Twin Emps and such) - but then again, so can a Prot Warrior swapping to a 2h for a while. However, as much as fun that is, it is not sufficient. Who wants to be only second rate and only shine in extremely situational fights? I for one don't want to in the realm of tanking, but I understand that a Prot Warrior should be slightly better because of that - but the margin should be so low that you pick your tanks by the criteria of skill and gear - and not what class they are playing.

Normal boss fights?
Choose a Bear or Prot Warrior on the criteria of gear and skill.

Heavy physical fights where mitigation is better than avoidance?
Pick a Bear but have it still be doable with a Prot Warrior (just slightly worse).

Heavy physical fights where avoidance is better than mitigation?
Pick a Warrior but have it still be doable with a Bear (just slightly worse).

Heavy magical fights?
Pick a Warrior but have it still be doable with a Bear (just slightly worse).

Aggro sensitive fights?
Pick a Bear but have it still be doable with a Prot Warrior (just slightly worse).


Cat Druid

This spec should be beaten by Rogues (not by much, just as much as so the utility of the Cat Druid makes up for the loss of the DPS). Mainly because Rogues only got DPS going for them, and secondly a Cat Druid can offer some (I know it is not too much after blowing CR and Innervate) utility by shifting out. With that I do not mean that a Cat Druid should swap roles mid fight completely. I am talking about staying in the DPS role but doing some auxiliary healing and decursing (which is completely different from saying having a Cat go DPS at part 1 of a fight, then go healer full time at part 2!).
An example for clarification:

Faerlina: You start in Cat and DPS stuff. If someone dies, you CR him. If someone is close to OOM, you Innervate him (well, ideally you do it earlier so your can use Innervate twice on long boss fights). If your boss mod announces the Poison Volley, get ready to help decursing then shift back and proceed DPSing. If you see someone's health dropping slowly, considering healing him once, then shift back.

That is the theory anyways. With the humungous shifting costs and the extremely low Feral mana pool, you cannot do this endlessly. I have about 4-5k Mana in Feral DPS gear (buffed). Shifting costs me roughly 700 mana, a "Healing barrage" (Max HT rank + Reju, heals for 3k HP and takes 5 seconds of my time DPSing, sometimes I use Regrowth instead of HT because it's faster and I can get back to the other job earlier but obviously it heals for less for more mana so you need to find a balance) roughly 1000 mana, decursing 200 and Rebirth 1000 mana. So if I am doing any of those jobs, I lose the mana cost of the ability I use plus 700 mana.

I listed the mana costs so you can atleast partially imagine the dimensions we are speaking of.
A Cat Druid saying he has no utility is full of shit. A person saying a Cat can Heal and decurse effortlessly between DPSing so he doesn't deserve Rogue DPS, is full of shit too. The truth is somewhere inbetween, and a Cat Druid definitely provides more utility than a Bear Druid overall because he is not the target of a big bad ass boss instagibbing him when he leaves his feral form.

To sum it up for Feral:
I was trying to avoid the use of percentages because I frown upon stuff this subjective usually, but in this case it helps me illustrate my point. Just don't take the values at face value, think about the thoughts behind them:

Bear: 90% Prot Warrior tanking ability + 10% Utility for the times you are free to shit.
Cat: 80% Rogue DPS ability + 20% Utility because they can shift more freely BUT are limited by mana (and if they get a bigger mana pool, they lose DPS ability).

I was going to do this analyzation for Balance and Resto Druids as well, but I am running out of time atm so I'll do it when I get back from Uni (I'd welcome fellow Druids to try that part actually since my experience with Restoration and Balance is quite limited).

Here is the short version of what I had in mind for the other parts anyway:

Balance should get pretty close to Mage DPS (closer than Cats to Rogue DPS) because Mages are not a one dimensional DPS class themselves. They offer the utility of AoE, buffs, water/food etc.

Resto Druids are interesting. They are pretty much like Priests, so they should be extremely close to 100% of their healing capability. Why? A Druid can DPS as much as a Holy Priest in raids. Going Bear to help OT something as hard hitting as raid mobs usually ends pretty ugly (aka, they die too fast). Cat DPS is a form in Resto gear.


Anyways, gotta get running now :P

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to say here? Are you saying that feral/balance couldn't have been balanced without making innervate trainable?

I think innervate was made to be the problem, but it never really was. The problem was quite simple: balance and feral didn't bring enough to the table. It would have been perfectly possible to make druid viable without innervate: surely out of the 26 talent trees that never have had innervate many were viablle for raiding.

I have a crazy hypothesis, but am dumb, so intelligence check it for me please:

What if Vengence Staff is the *form equivelent to a white weapon, but because FAP is a mod, it mandates a green item?

I find it more likely that Vengeance Staff has a random modifier applied, I.E. Vengeance Staff of the Bear.

Not exactly,
Im saying that content like huhuran could not be easily balanced about the difference between a raid with 5 innervates and a raid with none. It is an idea first put forward by Gurgthok (sp?) and one with which I agree.

I dont believe you can easily balance bossess about the idea that some feral druids will have HotW and some wont. Either they work on the basis you dont have HotW and then taking the talent makes the content trivial, or they assume you do have HotW and then that talent becomes "required". The same was true of innervate when they were designing Naxx and AQ for those fights that pushed sustained healing to its limit, the difference that innervate made was not one they could readily balance conetent about without making a 31 point talent "required".

Frankly I still don't see what you are saying. Are you suggesting that druid is such a critical class on Huhuran that the encounter balance is somehow seriously affected by whether a raid brings 1 or 5 druids?

Maybe this is Blizzard's way of placating the other classes while giving Druids some buffs. In effect, they're saying:

"Ok Druids, if you put talent points, here, here, aaaaannd here, you'll be just as good as a warrior at tanking stuff. If you put talent points here and here, you'll be able to be as good as a rogue at killing things. On the other hand, if you decide to point points here, here, and here, you'll.... etc. However, if you put your points in the wrong spots, you're not gonna like what happens..."

However, this also has the effect of something like the following:

"Ok all of you non-Druids, we're making Druids just as good as the rest of you at your job if they put their talent points in the right spots and wear the right gear. If they don't spec for it, they're gonna suck pretty badly though so you mages dont have to worry about the cats and bears blowing things up with their orbital laser cannons. Those owlbear things though, they should bother you."

At least, that's my take on it. I just see this as a case of Druids no longer being able to have their cake and eat it too, if Resto is good enough. A Feral Druid in healing gear shouldn't be able to compete with a Balance or Resto specced Druid in healing just like a Balance or Resto shouldn't be able to compete with a Feral in melee damage or durability.

Stupid comment.
Your answer is "Fine give every druid 10% more melee dps instead of just those who take the talent for it"

Equally stupid repercussions of your stupid comment:
Remove HotW
Remove NS
Remove +10% damage
Remove Thick hide
Remove feral charge
Remove OoC
Remove all talents...

The whole shift of druid talents is pushing them into a singular role, to the detriment of all else. The itemization is a natural result of what you are arguing for (specialization), because itemization has to be generated to balance against those members of your class who take such talents.

I will keep saying it.
If a Boss is designed to be tanked by a bear druid, then the boss design AND the supporting itemization must assume you have HotW. You CANNOT design a boss that is trivilized when your MT picks up MotW and Thick Hide.

The options are thus:
1) Design the game such that MotW is "required"
2) Remove MotW as a talent

Exactly the same as innervate.

No offense, but are you even reading what I write?

These are not comparable at all to NW and the FAP system. The FAP system gives you a Weapon with 90% of the DPS it should actually have item budget wise. This is not even fucking close to Feral Charge, Thick Hide, NS, Hotw, OoC and what else you want to list.
Here is a question to you: Would you love it if Paladins can only use 90% of their Weapon's DPS because they are a hybrid? They'd have to take a 5 point talent to boost it to 100%. Now what? Note that the 100% still is relative to their max DPS which might not even be 80% of a Rogue.

What? Did I just understand this correctly? If a Feral Druid takes a +10% dmg talent, his gear should be balanced to do 90% damage? If a Druid takes HotW his gear should have 20% less Stamina? Umm? Do you even see where this is going? The status quo stays the same, but the Druid loses hybridity. And I am sure that this is not the way it should be and the Druids are not to blame for that either: (Smart) Raiders are. Figure out yourself why.

Quick, let's tell the designers! All of their endgame is trivialized due to the Bears! /sarcasm
Again, do you even try to read what I say?

People didn't ask Druids to spec for Innervate because it was mandatory. They asked them to do it because the other two trees were garbage and Innervate helped more than them.
If you fixed Balance and Feral while letting Innervate stays a 31 point Resto, it would be a much tougher call what to ask your Druids to spec - since now all specs work.

EDIT: Forum Rank ding >_>

But that is already the case for Live, isn't it? The item changes are just an additional hindrance which is fine if it gives Druids the ability to be better at their specced role than they are now. But I am pessimistic, I think Blizz won't compensate for that. :(

Not nearly enough; I end up on the higher end of healing meters way too often. Yeah, I know that this should be taken with a grain of salt since all that means is that I manage to output a large volume of heals but wouldn't you think that the Resto druids with better healing gear, better mana regen, faster heals, and more healing talents would heal more HP than the Feral guy wearing his 3/8 T2 with only +350 healing? (granted, they have much more flexibility with NS & SM than I have with HT & Rejuv spam but I still outdo most of em handily)

My healing set is up to date in my profile and it's pretty bad considering what I could have right now if I didn't pass healing gear along to those who were going to use it in every raid as their primary role.

I'll assume you mean HotW and not MotW.

OT yet again, but I take offense to this. Fights like Patchwerk WERE designed such that all 4 Tanks had either BoKings and Devotion Aura or excessive health buffs (rumsy rum, elixier of fort, chokerok steaks, superior defense) in addition to a flask/stoneshield. There was nothing preventing alliance from using both Kings/Devotion and all the consumable buffs to trivialize the boss. Blizzard didn't bat an eye when it was mentioned that Horde had to spend several hundred extra gold a week on consumables to be capable of defeating the same encounter Alliance could do with standard buffs using the same gear.

It's the same old consumables debate, Blizzard designs an encounter to be defeatable when raid stats = x where x = best gear possible. It's unreasonable to assume the entire raid has X, however the fight is defeatable by Actual Gear (y) + buffs (B). When Y + B > X raids begin to decrease the value of B.

If an encounter is designed with the idea that a Feral Druid does NOT have HoTW, but has amazing gear, then the fight will be possible with a Feral Druid in standard gear that does have HoTW. The fight may be Trivial with a Feral Druid in amazing gear with HoTW, however, a fight like Patchwerk is just as Trivial when you have tanks in 4/9 Dread, flasks, and world buffs.