Heh, that seemed like it was so long ago.

The one thing that completely shocked me about last night was that the numbers i was seeing on SCT from the damage incoming was that they were remarkably familiar to the numbers I saw as a heavily armored bear.

With strategically placed blues, I dinged 70 two days ago and got keyed yesterday, literally minutes before the raid was scheduled, and hopped right in where I left off, with little to no drop in performance. I had 15.5k health with comm shout/imp/fort/mark and about 12k armor. Yet I had all of this utility in the form of cooldowns. It was just so fun to see all the different little subtle things you can do as a warrior. and God I love intervene.

I think it was our fastest clear of the place yet.

I will say that tanking 5 mans was really, really difficult as a warrior compared to a bear. Bears are literally swimming in rage. I had to adjust my tanking style to deal with such a low rage environment on my warrior.

God, I'm severely depressed about the state of the druid, and very sad that I picked it from my 60s to take to 70. I tried to be optimistic about the nerfs, but I'm coming to realize that we sucked before them, let alone after. PvP is just my latest area of defeat. I'll one-up you though, I've tried balance as well.

Druids have absolutely zero of the things that are good in PvP. No fear, interrupt, silence, mortal strike, stuns, snares dispel, etc, etc. Actually they have some of those, but not to any useable degree. But if you look at the classes that are gods, like the warrior, they have all of it. Shield bash, pummel, 3 sec stun with insanely low cooldown and long range and closes range, mortal strike, insane damage, survivability, fear, insane damage. Look at something like hamstring vs entangling roots to see how poorly designed druids are. Hamstring might as well be roots, only no diminishing returns, doesn't break on damage, can't be dispelled, and has NO CAST TIME. Mages, rogues, warlocks, and warriors basically have not only the best dps options but the best and most other options as well.

A brief assessment of one of the things that causes all this misery is how much stats have changed to the detriment of playing multiple roles. Healing in feral gear is basically retarded. You'll have 10k hp, be taking 800 dps, and lifebloom is ticking for 45. Similarly, bear form with only 9k armor in caster gear isn't even worth the global cooldown. Even shapeshifting out of snares has lost a lot of its strength, thanks in part to the insane mana cost. Basically druids lost all the survivability of the level 60 days, and gained essentially nothing in return, except for the ability to stop paladins for 5 seconds. I can dish out some massive damage with balance, but then again, every single class can do just as much, even paladins, but all those classes still maintain relatively huge utility in comparison. And as for healing, you pretty much covered why druids are the pits: slow and/or dispellable heals, easily sabotaged by only minor harassment, all good spells locked out from the same school.

I know this is a whine post, but... I seriously posit that everything that could possibly be wrong with class balance, is. Before the expansion I remained pretty much abstinent from any concern over class balance as I thought WoW had done a better job than any other MMO at balancing characters. Now I feel almost like the opposite. Not even just at PvP, but the whole thing is rotten to the core. Certain classes have the best of both worlds, and others the worst.

I've come to pretty much the same conclusions about PvP. My main was a rogue until TBC, when I switched to a feral druid. I PvPed a decent amount on my rogue and on a warrior pre-BC. Pre-BC if I got the first shot off in PvP on my rogue, I won. My gear advantage over most people meant I usually won even if I didn't get the first shot. I'll tell you a little secret - as guild leader nothing keeps the scrubs in line like stacking the whole guild up like cordwood dueling in front of onyxia's lair.

I feel druids are great in PvE. I OT, cat DPS, and can heal if needed. Along with a combat rez, innervate, and the absolutely great LoTP I bring way more to the table then I ever did as a rogue. With threat buff I still generate about 800 TPS according to KTM - I can still pull aggo off our best prot warriors at will, who seem to do about 500 TPS in full mitigation gear. Rogues, on the other hand, are only useful on a couple fights where interrupts are key. They really are a liability in PvE now.

PvP, on the other hand... I've tried both feral and balance. I feel like I have to work 3x as hard (way more micro, and I use a nostromo to help speed things up) as on my rogue, and I am still WAY less useful. When each shift takes 1/5 your mana shifting (1/7 if talented!) to escape snares or get off a bash is often not practical. Cat form is incredibly squishy, and bear form is now just a way to not die quite as fast. Moonkin was even worse - I was basically a giant genderless space turkey with a bullseye on my chest. My funniest encounter was with another oomkin where we just ran around spamming moonfire on each other - strangely, this is pretty much a moonkin's best shot at winning a fight. For all the whining about cyclone, it has a 1.5 second cast time and only lasts 6 seconds. Most good teams will silence and focus fire the cycloning druid instantly.

The arena numbers bear this out - we are just flat out weak in PvP. Unlike prot warriors who can respec to be group PvP gods, druids have no spec that enables us to be even average.

The only way to offset this is with some serious PvP druid buffs. Restore some damage to bear form. Allow direct shifting from one form to another, and SLASH the mana cost. Give the balance tree a silence/counterspell. Give bear form a version of intimidating shout. Improve cat form survivability somehow, like a mini-CLoS or mini-evasion.

I'm not saying all of these need to happen, but something does. We are bringing claws to a gunfight.

Heh, our prot warriors felt worthless on Leotheras incomparison to the druids (which we tank with 2 druids and 1 prot warrior). Basically our snap aggro is often much better for dealing with the whirlwinds.

Great staff isn't it Heh, yeah we've seen 3 trash epics total. Trinket, Pally Boots, and that staff (which I got).




I have to say I particularly love Lurker after killing him now. I end up tanking multiple adds and getting to DPS all in one fight (and its nice while running around still being able to do specials).


Agreed it pisses me off. Especially if I was to open up with a Ravage and it crits I'm dead. I keep doing pounce occasionally just hoping Blizzard magically hot fixes it.

The issue here is that I have yet to see a fight with phases that requires different roles.

ie.
First phase alot of tanking
second phase Alot of singel/ few target DPS
Third phase alot of healing

As is now its just stack the class you need. Need dps? bring mage and rogue
need tanks? bring warriors
need healing? bringa palas/ priests

I am over doing it i know. but I hope you get my point. There is no need (as stated above) to bring the lesser for the gain of utility when utility is not needed.

Wow, what an endless cycle of whine. Randomly bringing up X ability, comparing it with completely different Y ability of other class and then complaining it's not as good and that Z class don't have. Sad to see here and something usually seen on the official Whine forums. In a PvE environment that is.

I really have no idea how druids do in PvP nowadays after the nerf. I have a balance druid in the guild who constantly pvp's with a MS warrior and seem to like it, constantly bragging about his huge starfire gibs while the other teams teammate is cycloned. We have a feral druid and a rogue pvping aswell. Haven't heard them complain about anything. Besides the rogue getting beaten in utility and backstab damage.
I think bearform is still incredibly strong against most melee and especially warriors, especially with an added ability to heal besides running/bash+heal. Cat form can put out some pretty nasty burst aswell.

I still love druids, we opt to take feral druids everywhere because the amazing utility (which I've no doubt said several times). It's not a niche, it's not cause we feel sorry for the class, we think it's an amazing class and it is the best OT currently, without a doubt and if played right they can do so much things. Our feral MT/OT/Raidleader/Leader didn't notice much difference from the nerf, and he still does great and still is in the position of mocking my threat generation and damage output.
As for gear balance, I also think it's sad that we can't stock up more on avoidance and make that viable since stamina still is king.

Zyla, Intervene is divine, I love it to death, both for heroics, raids, regular 5mans, anything. Cooldown is a bit hefty though, but as long as it's not on a shared cd it's all dandy.

Sorry Juno, I'm just trying to figure out where I'll be in 3 months. Blizzard hasn't come out and made any statements along the lines of "we want warriors to be the primary choice for main tank in every encounter" for my class yet.

It is quite literally as Zyla and Monsanto have said, I'm very tired of working my furry butt off to be a good player and still spending 200g a month to fill the various roles my guild happens to need when raiding. I want the same damn thing I've been asking for the past 2 years, some form of intelligent design or purpose for the Druid class. Even if it's a statement of "In the majority of raiding encounters, with a class-balanced raid group, Druids will be needed as healers." so I can tell my guild to recruit warriors that don't suck and I can just go resto.

Innervates, multiple HoTs for abilities like Reverberation, Swiftmend, and sort of Tree-form aura. Warriors out-tank you (and me for that matter), and I don't know your abilities enough to know if you bring enough to the DPS group table (just LotP + your personal DPS?).

It's not all doom and gloom but we are exactly back to the point post patch 1.8. We are good tanks with the gear available before MC. We have superior threat again, but we lack the mitigation.

Honestly do you think we'd be sort saved if we had a set like the heavy Clefthoof that gave a 3 piece bonus like 10% more magic mitigation or do you think it's all in the crushing blows nowadays? I hate to put in gear but I lack some faith in the druid class designers.

Well to me this is just the part of the cycle where the god class comes in and tells a few stories about how his weaker friends do something heroic and save the day and therefore don't nerf me plz.

There is a fundamental problem in class balance that has exploded in TBC. Let me put it to you this way: druids basically don't have ability X Y or Z. And in addition, aren't the best at any of the base functions such as tanking, dps, healing, or CC. The classes with top-teir X, Y, and Z are the classes with top-teir damage, tanking, healing, and/or CC. I have to compare abilities because abilities are class balance. I can't tell you why maim is terrible without comparing it to abilities with a similar function such as kidney shot.

It's about the *quality*. Intercept is a long range, low cooldown stun, with an insanely low cooldown and closes the range gap which is otherwise the warrior's only weakness. The ability could not be better. Hamstring is a high percent snare with a maximum length, low cost, instant cast time, no diminishing returns, no break on damage. This ability could not be better. Counterspell, rogue stunlocks abilities, many kinds of fear, polymorph, iceblock, pally bubble. These are all perfect abilities. And they are all on the best classes. The best classes aren't only the best because they have those abilities, but they also do more damage or better healing than lesser classes like the druid.

Roots has a cast time, diminishing returns, breaks on nukes, dispellable. Bash takes a million mana, not ranged, requires cooldowns to shift. Freezing trap has a long cooldown with instant breakage and high resist, no range, and is more dependent upon the trappee than the trapper to determine if and when he's CCd. Whereas the good classes have abilities that are virtually free benefits for merely being present and alive, these bad abilities have every possible drawback and cost tacked on.

But forgive me for discussing bleak truths rather than throwing around flowery fairy tales about how I know a guy from class N in my guild and he's just fine, or the usual god class platitudes about "anyone can accomplish anything with enough skill and knowledge and teamwork." That's the useless discussion that belongs on WoW class forums.

Wow. Wow. God class? Lesser classes?
Bleak truths? Incessant whine. I know several druids that are incredibly happy with their state minus a few things like every class. But that's just fairy tales .. ?
Sorry that I don't get your complaining because from what I've seen, most do fine, and I generally try to keep an open mind about these things and refrain from using words like "god" "lesser" to try to amplify the magnitude of my arguments. No offense, but it's really sad to see.