#0 - Jan. 20, 2007, 5:18 a.m.
I decided to write this, after seeing a worrying trend on the forums for many warrior players worried about their roles, and the relative power of druids. Seeing some legitimate complaints (among the idiotic trolling), and the often misguided, or just plain foolish replies of some druids.
So I thought I’d sit down and write this explanation of the druid class in relation to feral tanking and damage ability in comparison to warriors, to allay some of the fear and scare mongering, and open up a reasonable debate.
Tanking
Lots of warriors seem to be worried or even hostile over current tanking capability, so allow me to explain the problem with judging current feral tanking ability to the long term ability of a feral druid.
A druid is a very talent orientated class, simply put, without the correct talents in the correct tree we cannot fulfil that role with any degree of competence.
A druid with 0 points in balance has very poor nukes, and in no way would be competitive or useful in PvE as a ranged damage dealer.
A druid with 0 points in feral is nigh useless at tanking, and has worse melee DPS than a protection warrior.
A druid with 0 points in restoration makes a very poor healer, at best only useful for light off-healing – or possibly a main healer if there is HEAVY off-healing support (basically 2 main healers, most often a paladin/shaman).
Talents are what define our class like any other class, but druids are unique in that the majority of their role ability comes from those talents.
That is why, at this exact moment in time we are overpowered in PvE in our roles, with access to our full 41 point talent tree’s we gained the majority of our level 70 ability.
Here is an example of that in practice…
Armour
One of the core complaints is the druids very high armour rating.
Right now, at level 62 I have 16000 armour unbuffed (in direbear) many players see this and feel it is over powered, but in reality this is a drawback of the druid class in terms of tanking.
Put it this way, at level 62 I have a armour mitigation of 71% - The cap for armour is 75%
So lets assume I maintain 70% AR until level 70 as I upgrade my tanking gear as I go, compared to a warrior who does the same but only manages to maintain a 60% armour mitigation.
Now, both the warrior and the druid are 70, the level cap, with only gear as a way to advance their character.
That warrior with 60% armour mitigation can gain better gear an increase this by 15%.
The druid on the other hand only has 5% to go before he hits the cap.
At this point the druid only has 1 other option to increase his mitigation – dodge rating.
While the warrior has Dodge, parry, and block.
On the dodge issue
Druid dodge is high, in order to make up for the fact we do not get parry, at 62 my dodge rating unbuffed is 30%.
While a warrior in tanking gear and at least a few points in prot (15 or so), will have 15% parry and 15% dodge – even if this is less, the ability to block with a shield (which negates CBs - and crits?) is a huge boon.
Another issue that feral druids suffer once they hit the level cap, is that the only viable way to increase their mitigation is very expensive (Itemization wise) – dodge rating.
Where as warriors can use the defence stat for very efficient boosts to mitigation – druids can also use defence, but the parry and block aspect of this stat is lost to them making it less efficient for mitigation.
This is a problem for a class that advances mainly through talents and has very limited options of advancing in gear.
So yes in tanking and while levelling druids may seem over powered as tanks, keep in mind that they are already pretty close to their mitigation ceiling, while warriors are no where near it – meaning once both classes stop levelling and look to gear, warriors have much more scope to advance.
Prot warriors and feral druids will have roughly equal physical damage mitigation upon gaining 70 (druid armour + dodge vs. Warrior armour + dodge + parry + block + defensive stance), and even for a little while after (druids have that 5% increase area and dodge rating gathering) – but as warriors advance down the tiers, the difference will begin to tell, warriors will eventually outclass druids in terms of physical mitigation.
Druids can never touch a warrior on magical damage mitigation at any time.
DPS in bear and cat form
The other side to the complaint is DPS ability in bear and catform
Now this argument must be weighted in the information I’ve just given you on tanking, druid DPS is in the same tree as their tanking tree, for the simple reason that as druids fall farther and father behind in a tanking role, the DPS remains.
Even this isn’t perfect
Again, large party of bearforms DPS potential comes from talents, this is why people are seeing bearform have large DPS potential (I’m nearing and often beating DPS classes while tanking if I have the ability to spam swipe).
This will fall off and fall behind as we level to 70, I’m starting to notice it now, the gear of other classes is starting to tell over the poor scaling bearform attacks.
Swipe is overpowered at the moment simply due to the change to the Idol of brutality, +50 damage on swipe is a huge boost, but one that doesn’t scale and will soon become less and less significant.
The DPS and burst damage you are seeing in bearform will not vastly improve as we advance in levels and gear – it will improve yes, but not at the same rate as other classes.
So as players gear up, and will push out greater damage, bear druids mitigation won’t increase with that, nor will the bear druids burst damage – so gone will be the ability to sit in bearform and “tank” a warrior or rogue – druids will once again be back to the “root or stun, heal or run” style of gameplay.
Catform DPS
Cat form DPS is now scaling quite well, it kind of has to as it is the only aspect of a feral druid that now does scale, and it only scales for druids with a full 41 points in the tree for mangle – mangle is really the linchpin of the entire feral tree in terms of how effective it will be in PvE.
In PvP catform is very fragile, often with less mitigation than cloth armour wearers (clothies have armour buffs), and lacking the damage avoidance of mages or rogues (you snare or stun a person that does 500dps for 5 seconds, and you avoided 2500 damage). Mostly only used as an opener for this reason.
Once again, as druids hit the bear “wall” their effectiveness against melee classes will diminish to a balanced level (or unbalanced in the warrior/rogues favour given a long enough gear progression timeline). While staying roughly the same (currently very well balanced, well except locks and shadowpriests) against casters and hybrids.
In PvE the balance will find itself and maintain itself thanks to mangle, in that druid DPS will NOT equal rogue (or even fury warrior) DPS, but the added utility, and buff provided by leader of the pack will make 1 feralcat 3 rogues and 1 fury warrior, better than 4 rogues and one fury.
Basically, we need to be, and will be (if all stays on track) close enough in DPS, that our innervate, battle res and 5% crit aura make taking 1 feral druid a better choice than taking a 4th rogue.
61-69 The days of feral glory
I can understand why many warriors feel threatened and useless at this point in time, and why many ignorant druids feel like gloating, but the fact of the matter this period is nothing more than a short lived window, that will tarnish and eventually crack under superior warrior tanking gear advancement.
An analogy: At tanking, warrior is a class that runs faster than druids do, but druids got a head start at the release of TBC – how much of a head start remains to be seen – but eventually the warrior class will catch up and surpass the slower running druid. With only those foolish warriors who get complacent, and fall asleep at the side of the track finding themselves losing the race again.
In closing
To Warriors: I ask you to try to understand that this inferiority to druids as tanks is a temporary state due to the reasons I’ve touched on, compounded by the fact that most warriors are not spec’ed for tanking currently – please do not cry nerf based on the current situation, or druids will suffer overly in the new 70 endgame – just as they did before TBC.
To Druids: Put a sock in your gloating, if in your ignorance you fail to understand the issues of the class, and the state we currently find ourselves in, then learn. Enjoy these times while they last, because in a few months when warriors are once again firmly the best tank in the game for most situations (as they should be) – you’re foolishness will come back to bite your furry behind.
To those druids who understand the situation, and those who’ve helped me understand with informative and insightful posts on the forums, keep up the good work, we’re getting closer and closer to finally been a finished product of a class only through your hard work and dedication. /salute.
P.S. I apologize is this is a bit of a ramble, but I did my best for a 5am only awake thanks to high caffeine intake, kind of post. Oh and if there are any factual errors please correct me, I'm in no way an expert, I'd like to think I'm fairly well informed and have a good grasp of the druid class, but I'm not a machine and not all knowing *wink*.
