#0 - March 15, 2008, 8:34 p.m.
Q u o t e:
A balance druid is essentially a ranged DPS class.
There are other ranged DPS classes
People who are looking for groups for PvE or PvP will have preferences over which roles need filled and which classes they wish to fill those roles.
I think the fact that there are any balance druids filling any of these roles proves that they can be just as viable as other ranged DPS classes; the difference, I suspect, is that those balance druids in those roles have worked hard to prove their worth rather than simply expecting a slot "because it's not fair".
A restoration druid, on the other hand, has a unique type of healing which is regularly sought, and occasionally required, by many groups.
Feral druids can fill two different roles, so I would be interested to see which of those were chosen for their tanking abilities and which were chosen for their melee DPS abilities. Regardless of those numbers, there are less classes that can fill the role of melee DPS so logically speaking we would expect more druids to be chosen for those positions.
Seriously, this is a BLUE answer? If BLUE posters can be SO clueless, no wonder this game takes years to fix simplest problems.
Just in case some BLUE comes here to read it, I'll explain your game to you:
Mage has polymorph
Warlock has seduce
Hunter has trap
These things are called "crowd control", they allow you to keep a mob from performing any action for virtually unlimited time, effectively reducing number of mobs you need to handle when pulling.
Now, in most situation when I was tanking, I LOVED every single bit of that CC. Heroic SL we did JUST because we had 2 hunters and a rogue, otherwise the remaining mobs in that one great room there would own me or someone.
Feral druids cannot CC, they can stun for few seconds and they can offtank which is in no way comparable to crowd controlling as the damage needs to be healed and mob can use special skills like "addle humanoid" quite freely.
Balance druids can use cyclone, but a) it's on DR, b) it has 6 sec initial time. That means a balance druid needs to spend 4,5 sec out of 10,5 sec of CC he provides, essentially cutting his damage in half in that time. More to it, once cyclone is on immune DR, the mob is loose and needs to be tanked
When I'm looking for group, I'll take a mage, hunter, warlock or rogue over ANY OTHER DPS CLASS OR SPEC, because of their crowd control. And they just happen to bring many other great tools balance or feral druids don't have - like spell interrupts, immobilize crowd control, survivability other than damage mitigation (I'm not even going to say why frost nova, ice block and ice barrier are superior to thick armor - ask healers about that if you don't). Rogues can stun a dangerous mob or disable caster mobs which counts pretty much as a CC and their sap lasts long enough to deal with your current mobs.
Feral and Balance druids are not alone here, same can be said about enh/elem shamans, retri paladins, dps warriors and shadowpriests.
Basically if you are hybrid in this game and want to DPS, you are screwed the moment you hit lvl 70.
Hope that enlightened you dear developers.
PS. I didn't talk about PvP because I find it silly to even bring this topic on, balance druid is one of the most useless arena specs out there. They perform good only in situations where people mistreat them as resto or feral and don't deal accordingly, furthermore supported by high (best) quality gear AND EVEN THEN best teams will be able to handle teams based on them.
Just because someone was able to setup their arena games, buy a team or friends made up for his weaknesses doesn't mean spec is viable.
