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I'm not sure he's wrong. Sure, the Druid can move at 130% speed normally, but they can't break any but one of those roots. And Mages can toss one out every 8 seconds or so, not counting Ring of Frost, during which the Druid cannot get close to them.

Add in Cold Snap, Shattered Barrier, Blink, Spell Steal, Time Warp, Ice Block (which drops bleeds and makes them immune for 10 seconds, so they'll have 2 roots available as soon as it breaks.)

Even assuming the Druid can get some uptime on the Mage, they're just doing way less damage in all that time.

I don't see any way to really counter any of it. You can dash every 3-5 minutes (and with another smaller one if you are Worgen). Sure, you do run at 130% speed when in cat form. But it doesn't seem to me like that's a huge consolation. The mage is firing instant spells, which means they are running away nonstop. So it is not clear to me that a Druid is guaranteed much of any uptime, considering the Mage only needs an 8 second window (averaged) to get another root on you.

[EDIT]

The Druid can use Cyclone to get back into range, yes, but by the time the Mage lands, they WILL have another root off CD.

I just don't see any way for a Druid to get anything but completely mediocre uptime.

[EDIT]

I'll admit I forgot Feral Charge, which will increase uptime. But that's not helping when Barrier is up.

Now, I have to admit, having mained a Mage in Wrath, part of me smiles with vindictive pleasure at the idea of a Druid having to suffer through EVERY LITTLE BIT of my CC.

But that's probably not the constructive line of though. Probably.

:(

Edited, Feb 8th 2011 12:35pm by idiggory

Lately it's all I've noticed you posting. Doesn't mean it's all you've been posting, just all I've noticed.


To be fair, I've spent some time browsing the Oboards lately, so I've been seeing a lot of whining. It's enough that seeing any complaints about mages bothers me lately.

There are a million things that can happen in a PVP battle this endless back and forth wont really go anywhere I'm just giving you ideas.

You act like shifting out to heal while you're in a root is sooooo stupid but what else are you going to do? I know I'll see a million ferals just SIT THERE for an 8 second root literally doing nothing but sitting in cat taking damage doing absolutely no casting. At least you can pop out, root, juke a CS, cyclone or heal a bit rather then doing NOTHING. All of those things help a bit, sitting in cat for a full duration root is worthless. So your pick really.

Getting polymorphed really wont happen I assume your shapeshifts are keybound and there is about a microsecond where you are actually in caster. You see the mage casting polymorph so its not like its going to happen, and even if it does your root expires and it heals you to full. Not the end of the world.

I admit its a hard fight now. The more I think about it, the more I think you are more then partially right, but I still wont go so far as to say hard counter. Oh well guess I'm just arguing semantics now.

Mages need nerfs to some of their wide array of roots and snares I think they have too many. I think they did get their damage nerfed except during procs, that seems like a Blizzard thing to do and I kind of agree with it, reward the smarter ones who watch for procs and unload during them, but nerf overall damage. I might be reading it wrong but I think they took a 15% frost damage nerf but a 15% ice lance buff only while FoF is active which is at most 2 ice lances, but usually one charge is used on a deep freeze. Still there could have been more nerfs there imo. Then again nobody really got massive nerfs imo, holy pallies which I play, also I consider OP as does everyone else. Besides some mana efficiency nerfs I really felt we got nothing, in fact we even get rebuke now (a melee interupt) which I consider a buff. Ferals got a glyph nerf and a mobility nerf but nothing I consider crippling. It hurts you MOST in 1v1 against frost mages when you dont have a dispeller/healer on your back but they dont even balance around 1v1 anyways. Put me on your team (holy pally) and you will still wreck any mage team with my dispells and freedom, I used to do heavy amounts of 2v2 with a feral, hundreds of games played, they pair well. Balance is generally made around team game anyways.

The problem with 2v2's is that no one would want to bring along a Feral instead of, say, a Death Knight.

Death Knights will have better mobility (anti-snare, anti-stun, anti-magic) and thus better DPS. Ferals will need non-stop babysitting, like a Warrior, except we can't unload the kind of burst a Warrior can.

Maybe Druids won't get obliterated, but they'll fall low enough to not get picked anymore. Why run with a sub-par class when you can run with someone who isn't a sitting duck if they get rooted?

Of course, there'll always be the minority of excellent players who will keep doing well, even against a Frost Mage, but the vast, vast majority of Ferals will just get roflstomped now.

Oh well, I guess they'll figure out their mistake around patch 4.1.

I don't have any high level Hunters, Rogues or Druids, though. I do hit the DK forum once in a while, since that's going to be my second 85, and the paladin forum since that'll likely be my 3rd.

DKs don't have an anti-snare ability. Anti-stun, anti-magic, yes; but not anti-snare. Ferals have better mobility by far than DKs.

Also consider that ferals have better CC than DKs and warriors, too.

Though I'm not sure how many go that deep into Frost for DK PvP.

Chillblains + Hungering Cold + Howling Blast (glyphed) sound better than Roots and Cyclone. If only for the ranged AOE snare that is Chillblains + Howling Blast (glyphed).

But if Death Knights go Unholy for PvP, I'd say you're right about the CC.

Edited, Feb 8th 2011 10:30pm by Mazra

Well, yeah, if we can get out of the roots. Like I said before, movement speed while rooted is zero.

I think I said this before, but it probably bears (roflpun) repeating here. Druids breaking snares makes more sense in a Vanilla world. We've probably just received to many buffs over the years to make it viable to keep our root-breaking around and keep PvP balanced.

Take away cyclone, skull bash, and make roots unusable indoors again, and we're back to a place where being hard to CC/snare makes sense; as we couldn't really snare/CC anyone ourselves back then. Of course then we're back to being "rogues without any of the utility spells" in PvE; which I don't think many people really liked much.

My download was only around 35MB today, nothing major, new fishing icon, and when I got on a vehicle my actual toolbar buttons changed until I was off the vehicle. Maybe it's done that for a while and I just noticed as this was my first vehicle quest in a while.

It's still about time that Bears got some tanking utility though. It's been keeping me from rolling a Druid for years.

As an aside to all the class mechanic changes, there's also this little tidbit for people who were complaining that they couldn't go back for the Argent Tournament with their goblins/worgens before:

Haven't played my DK much to really know how tanking and Unholy DPS has changed (probably do that tonight), but the changes to Fire Mage spells has been a Godsend. No more Scorch Weaving in order to keep up mana in just heroics.