Druid fun anymore?Follow

I was curious how many of you druids have switched mains or stopped playing and how many are still having fun on your druid. I for one have switched to my Paladin because tanking and healing is way ahead of the druid. And just to make you bears cry Ill list some of the reasons.

Aoe damage is #1. With 3 AoE abilities (2 short cds and one that stays on ground) I don't have to worry about rounding up the whole group before starting. Good luck getting dps to wait that long on their aoe. Then add taunt- both classes have single target taunt on short cd. But as pally I have righteous defence- 3 targets and it is a short cd.

#2 Tools at my disposal. As pally I have 3 cds compairable to the 3 of druid. 20%/1min. Another 20% and heals me if I was to die on 3 min cd. 50%/3min cd. Now add in ability to use WoG on anyone and it gives me 10% extra block damage reduction (I've had 1800 hps in a heroic fight that healer couldn't keep up)yet they nerf druids self heal on 3min cd. Hand of freedom to get out of snares/movement effects, and I can cast on others. Druids can shape shift to get out of snares... till next patch. Of course druids can break fear with berserk... again till next patch. Not done yet- as a paladin I have access to spells that decrease damage by 20% for everyone in raid. I have access to spells that transfer damage to myself. Let's not forget Lay on Hands/Divine shield... both can save a fight.

#3 raid buffs. I have 1 buff I share with druids and 1 unique to the class. Then I have 4 auras that each can be useful depending on fight.

#4 Avenger Shield. A spell that does massive damage to 3 targets and silences them ( and does NOT hit cc mobs unless you target them). Way better way of pulling targets when using cc than anything druids have. Currently shield is only version of silence pallies have and is on 15 sec cd compared to druids 10 seconds- but with talents can proc ALL the time.
Plus reports are on beta all paladin specs can get the silence that ret has now.

The only thing I miss from druid is charge (which with eng I can fix)... but even then, with the amount of casters and cc needed, charging into a pack of cc mobs isn't brightest idea. I can throw my shield and make them come to me.

When I play my driud I feel like a shell of my previous self and have lost intrest in whole class... besides doing enchants I haven't played my druid in 3 weeks... but I miss what my druid was in WotLk. But when my paladin is better in every facet of the game (I amtank for pve and holy for pvp). On druid I was bear and resto for pve (niether fun) and I dislike dps.

I didn't mean to imply druids can't tank, but they are short on resources to not just survive themselfs but help the whole group. Paladins can be played with much more creativity and help twice as much when it comes to the group surviving. I hate switching from druid but when blizz. Tips me over and slaps a rainbow on my *** before nuetering me, I'm not gonna stick to class

#1) We have abilities to hit mobs before everything's grouped up too, they're called Mangle and Maul. People ***** but I have NEVER lost a mob to AoE (without it dying before it reaches the dps) unless it was one that hasn't reached me yet. And for those pulls that are tricky to hold onto for whatever reason we have Berserk. If that thing isn't always on cooldown you're wither CCing down to one mob, approaching a nasty pull where it WILL go on cooldown or you're doing something wrong.

#2) I'll see your 20% and a heal and raise you a 30% life boost and 60% heal. Frenzied Regen's healing was cut because in an infinite mana situation it came out to over a full life bar in healing and that was a ***** to balance around. So cut the heal and boost the tank's armor.

If you're gonna brag about CC avoidance don't count PTR changes until they actually go through. Blizzard has been reversing those things almost as fast as they make em. As a Druid I have battle rez, as a Druid I have Tranquility, and I'm savvy enough of boss abilities to use them while tanking.

#3) your "unique to the class" buff doesn't stack with other mp5 or AP buffs. You have a unique combination but a Felhunter's (int/mp5) more unique than you are. Only a mage can cover his int part while AP's done by DK tanks, Marks hunters and Enh Shamans.

#4) Ok, here's where Berserk comes in. You throw a shield every 15 seconds for good damage, I make at least three enemies explode every 3 minutes. Faerie fire pulls just fine (unless Avenger's Shield includes a fixate it's not going to be enough to stop a nova-ing DPS) and skull bash trumps the shield, as you said.


I haven't played a Pally but I did just get an IM from a friend leveling a druid for the first time about how much he's enjoying it compared to his, says he feels a lot more flexibility. Anecdote != data and he's not 85 yet, I just mention it to note that the water flows both ways in the realm of class preference.

No AoE tanking isn't hard when pulling mobs, however in boss situations where mobs spawn all around and each one is on a different person, having my extra AoE is very nice, added with Righteous defence and the transition is much easier. If you have time to run to each one of them, maul/mangle, go to next, maul mangle- more power too you. Im not saying its impossible to do as druid, but more of a pain.



Well maybe I was vague- I was saying my Paladin has 3 cool downs comparable to my druid. I have Divine Protection (bark skin) Ardent Defender (rivals Frenzied Regen imo) and I have my Guardian of Ancient Kings- 50% damage reduction. Now add into that my Word of Glory - can do a LOT of healing when needed if there is a damage heavy fight and a healer having trouble keeping up, or if there is a situation where splash damage is unavoidable (Such as when Halfus does his chain stuns and the meteors come down)
Then there is Divine Guardian which lowers damage taken by 20% for EVERYONE in raid (except the casting paladin.) There seem to be a LOT of fights with tons of AoE, in which these abilities can help big time with damage/healer mana.

I mentioned the PTR changes to point out how idiotic the changes blizzard wants to implement and how they are treating Druids since 4.0. So you have Tranquility- please give me an example of when its safe to pop into caster form while a boss is pounding on you in order to channel your heal like I am able to do with WoG. Rebirth is nice to have in raid, but can be tough to pull off in some boss fights as tank (Im talking from experience, My main was a bear almost all the way through LK)
Now add in the fact there is only 1 battle res per fight, we can easily fill the roll with a moonchicken/tree/kitty and invite a tank with more abilities to help the raid.



99% of the time, I have some sort of buff/aura that can help the group. Yes many classes may be able to cover some of my buffs, but more often than not, not everything is covered in 5m (or even 10m sometimes)



My shield isn't really the biggest part of my damage rotation- many fights I do not include it in rotation, I save it for the timed interupts on the healers/casters. My point here is it is a ranged silence that silences 3 targets and still does damage. My druids Berserk does nothing but increase damage and maybe gain some agro in emergency situations- something Paladins have more than enough tools to handle the job explained in part #1.
I never said skull bash trumps shield, yes it is a slightly shorter cooldown, but with Grand Crusader I often get it to proc to where i can cast it within 3-5 seconds of eachother. They are just different.

Now we come to the pull, 3 casters 1 melee and you have 2 cc's available, I'd say this situation happens a lot. Druid- You can cast FFF and just have the casters stand there and laugh at you. You can charge in on the non cc targets and skull bash them, only take a few gcd. Or fight them where they stand and see if your dps can stay off spells that have splash damage. Of if its available, you can use Line of Sight and let casters come to you/the healer.
On Paladin. we CC 2, I throw my shield and it hits other 2 (since it doesn't hit CC mobs unless I target them) and they run to me, we take them down fast. Move on to other 2. So I feel its safe to say that when casters are in the equation, paladins are faster on the pulls, which makes the instance goes faster when its all added up.
This was never in issue in wrath because it was aoe zerg fest- just charge in and swipe. Maybe this was too easy, but at least the druid could keep up with other tanks.

Sorry for the long post, but to add it all up, other tanks seem to have tons of utilities not available to the druid to make some aspects of the game easier and more efficient where druid tanks are getting all of their tools and features nerfed in pve because of pvp.

This is not a thread to hate on druids, its a thread to point out the ludicrous changes blizzard wants to make to the bear. I am not advocating that every tank have a tool for every situation, but druids are WAY behind paladins (and I'm assuming other classes as well, but I have never played a warrior or DK tank)

In WotLK I had extra health, high armor/dodge/advoidance. Very sweet AoE ability to pick up all the mobs when they spawned. Now my armor/health/avoidance is mostly on par with other tanks, but without any of the tools and abilities.

Call it Egotistical, as a Tank, I want to stand out. I want my class to have a reason for a group to pick me and want me to tank for them, I want to have the ability to make as much difference as I can by playing my class as efficient and cleaver as I can. On the druid, I feel short changed and wish blizzard would make them stand out again. Not calling for druids to be OP- but each of the other tank classes seem like they have abilities that make them stand out in their own way.

In almost all the cases you stated, You are really playing with fire. Depending on how far you are pushing it (which if you aren't, it probably isn't too effective) the bosses switches back from their cast and hits the tank pretty fast. WoG is instant, so I can cast while being hit. on phases where they are casting and damage is high (such as magmatrons lock on) I can get a couple flash heals off and push it, if I'm still casting and he hits me- My armor still mitigates the damage, and I don't take a much bigger hit than if I wasn't casting. Can you say the same in caster form if you mistime it or lag just the slightest? :)

Not meaning to make this sound like a "anything you can do, I can do better" - but this utility of a druid is kinda pushing it and unreliable.
From post I have read, I believe a lot of people feel the same as I do. Druids need something to make them stand out and put them in line with other tanks better. Its my firm belief, if you have 2 equally skilled players- one playing a druid tank, one playing a pally tank, the pally tank is going to be more beneficial to the group.


Edited, Jan 19th 2011 7:11pm by Vilaca

GC and the Frostmage Band are after Druid in PVP. Half of the Bg’s are FM, I won’t be able to move as Feral. I will have a new form, GHOST...

So my Druid is a Bank alt, my FM is currently 2200 rating in 3 (so easy). Feral Druid is not fun anymore.

I still like tanking on my bear. Well raids. Heroic tanking sucks on bear.

Rage being retarded doesn't help. I'm usually running on fumes and most pulls are annoying unless I have most stuff CC'd or get a group where I can chain pull to some degree.

Raid tanking is fun as a bear. The mobs hit hard enough to give me a decent rage supply so I can do stuff.

I need to get a separate gear that is more threat based for heroics I think.

Well said rusttle. I remember when they gave us real gear/talents in TBC (hell, when they gave us ALMOST half-decent gear like Genesis *gag*) and druids suddenly exploded because we had learned how to manage on scraps. It was like running on a treadmill that suddenly stopped.

I'm not an uberbear, but I'm slowly beginning to recognize the abilities I HAVE honed that make my guildies happy. I think of them as simply being competent, and it wasn't until I caught myself fawning over a hunter guildy CC juggling three mobs that I realized competence is relative. I think what I do isn't special because I've been doing it for years. Heck, I could do a half-decent cat rotation blindfolded, running off internal buff timers and energy counter.

(Three mob Hunter CC: Trap in front of one mob, 30 seconds in trap another and start the pull, wyvern sting a third and when that wears off another trap will be back up. Since he's SV trap lasts 90 seconds so he can then cycle trap on all three mobs with Wyvern as backup. Note that he pulled this off in Vortex Pinnacle, where you need to do everything while working around those stupid grounding fields.)

@rusttle

I disagree with a bit of your post... or perhaps I would just word it differently. For example:


Unless you forgot to mention you play a new class in the last sentence, you said bears have a "spread of AOE taunts"; by which I believe we have exactly one. Alt-tabbing is needed and has been since TBC, precisely because we only have one AoE taunt on a long cooldown and relatively weak AoE for groups larger than three. Saying that "learning to play your class" and gain situational awareness are exploits that only bears gained above other classes sounds, well, childish to me.

No, I recall the assessment as "Feral druids are worse than other tanks in all situations at level 60." They weren't hard; they were handicapped. They were rare because it was a sub-par tank. You yourself said that gear made hardly any difference and that's completely right. Blizzard messed up when it came to feral (and at first, Paladin - I leveled protection pre-1.8, and THAT was a nightmare) tanking back in vanilla.


Going forward this is true. Looking back, it was not true. Feral druids in vanilla were not solid tanks, even when competent. They could get the job done, but so could a voidwalker (I remember a MC video showing a VW tanking the bosses and reading a comment saying "Hey, the blueberry is better than a bear for tanking!"). But to do so required much more coordination from DPS (and less damage, to keep aggro on the bear), more healing from a healer, and a higher chance of failure.


I really feel you have rose-tinted glasses on when it comes to the nostalgia of the good ol' days. I was active in the raiding scene back in vanilla, and feral druids were never a part of our raids. Not because the players weren't good, but because the spec was terrible. We didn't have demonology warlocks or beast mastery hunters either, as I seem to recall. People shunning feral druid wasn't because "the class spec is too hard" it was because "the class spec is not good." We don't have quite the same issue now, but the class is definitely tougher than at any time since TBC (when I started my druid). My Paladin is a blast, however.

Edit: And Blizzard was fine with some specs not working. Ask a fire mage how much they liked MC or BWL. Ask a shadow priest if they got to DPS. Ask a Retribution Pally how often they got to deal damage instead of respeccing holy and being a cleansebot. We're not even talking about cookie-cutter specs with a difference in damage of 5% from one another - we're talking about entire specs being about half as effective (or less) on raid content.

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 2:30pm by LockeColeMA

I don't believe so. Bears WERE used in very rare cases, like Jindo who would use polymorph. Up until 1.9, Paladins didn't have righteous fury - they used Seal/Judgment of Fury for extra threat, but none of their other abilities (Holy shield, judgment... and auto-attack) had threat modifiers. They had Holy Shield, but their final talent was Repentence (yay!). Consecration was in Retribution and out of reach if you put 31 points in Protection. In fact, Protection was more of a PvP build than anything else; Consecration was really useful if you got jumped by several people or needed to get a heal off, and since you needed 5 points in improved seal of justice (what a terrible waste of points, as it's on diminishing returns!), they were best off for stunning utility. I loved a video of a Grand Marshal Protection Paladin. 1.9 gave Paladins a bit more utility with Blessing of Sanctuary and a Consecration lower in the holy tree, as well as the Righteous Fury changes, but until TBC Paladins still did not have a baseline taunt, making them worthless on fights that needed a taunt rotation.

Druids got their change in 1.8 (AQ patch), but the changes mostly affected cats and Balance druids. Balance got Moonkin; feral got Leader of the Pack (just a 3% crit buff to melee). Feral also got some buffs - finally a threat modifier for bear form, as well as more attack power (but still no scaling from weapons). All through vanilla, the only thing druids could do as tanks was growl, Maul, Demoralizing Roar, and Feral Faerie Fire (no damage component). Due to this they had a VERY hard time keeping threat. And unless I miss my guess, I don't think they had growl or swipe originally either (not positive on that, though). Even when Swipe was given to druids, it would only affect 3 enemies.

I REALLY wish Quor's history of the druid class still existed I think it was forever lost in the merger with wowhead.
Edit: Found it: http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?wclass=6&mid=1169562232160472122#msg1226323722252602049

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 4:11pm by LockeColeMA

1.8 marked the real changes making druids better in feral, giving them raid utility. This means for almost a year, they were sub-par. Even then, weapons did not scale so only the Agi and Str stats mattered for some minimal extra damage. Not until 1.11 (Naxxramas release, June 2006) did Innervate go to a trainable skill and people stopped automatically assuming a druid was Restoration.

Edited, Feb 10th 2011 4:27pm by LockeColeMA

I don't know, I remember in Vanilla doing a 40 man raid in ZG and the boomkin topping the dps charts. This was somewhere between 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through Vanilla, right around the time that AQ came out. He was even beating out the two or three mages. That was when I first got the idea that someday I wanted to level up a boomkin.

From the gibberish here the message I got is you think you are better than everyone because you played a druid in vanilla?

Perhaps if you read, not one person is claiming a druid can't tank. I will readily admit druids are fine at tanking.
The problem comes when druid tanking is lackluster and feels incomplete.

As a druid tank, there is usually very little I can do to help the group down a boss other than doing my job as best as I can. As a Paladin I have 3 times the utilities and abilities that I can use in a multitude of ways to help the group- allowing me as a player to be creative and make it seem like I'm stepping out of the box rather than being restricted.

Going from an 85 druid to an 85 Paladin is similar in switching from a level 40 to a lvl 85 of the same class. Sure at level 40 you have the basic tools, but the rotation and reward just isn't the same.

Only one of those skills is an AoE taunt.



WWIII hasn't happened yet. I'm assuming you meant WWII, current mechanics are more similar to modern warfare with drones, fancy new guns and complete different tactics. WWII, ie the old style, would teach you nothing about the new modern system of play. The basics of awareness and using all of your skills can be learned no matter the tool set. People are complaining druids have a WWII toolset instead of drones planes, new weapons and new kevlar vests. How does being handed the equivalent of a machine gun and told good luck have anything to do with the extensive tool set most other tanks have.


Edited, Feb 10th 2011 4:09pm by Horsemouth