#0 - Oct. 9, 2006, 10:35 p.m.
Look, all the class previews are now out, and it's fair to say that the reaction (aside from Druids) has ranged from basically happy to ecstatic. I know individuals might not be content, and others are dissapointed that they didn't get more, but no class is singularly discouraged, disheartened, and de-moralized the way that druids are.
Druids looked for the BC talents and spells to be the source of a much needed revamp of the ailing class. What druids received instead were either "fluff skills" like Crow Form, which doesn't add any utility but instead just saves some gold, or skills that help druids in areas they didn't need help in (healing and holding agro while tanking). Maim and Cyclone will be useful, to be sure, but they don't address the core problems that experienced Druids are so familiar with. I'll try to list them to the best of my abilities.
1) Poor itemization: Balance gear in leather is the rarest gear in the game, aside from pally tanking gear. Tiered class gear that only supports one role for the 3-roled class has only made things worse instead of better. Likewise, many feral DPS or tanking item slots are capped out by gear that can be acquired from 20 man raids or 5 man instances, with nothing available in the game that is better. As a result, the dps and tanking gap between druids and other classes significantly widens for druids as they advance through the game, giving the feeling that druids move backwards instead of forwards as they and their guild progresses through content. For instance, it is viable for druids to tank in Molten Core because the gear they have available before MC is comparable to the gear that warriors can get before MC, and the content is tuned accordingly. In BWL and beyond, the content is tuned toward upgraded tank gear, but druids receive no such upgrades, and thus become non-viable. This scenario is mirrored with DPS feral and balance gear as well.
There is also the significant problem that the gear and mechanics available to druids severely limit a druids ability to use his class-defining characteristics--shape shifting. A druid in feral gear is a very very poor healer, and may only have enough mana for 2 or 3 heals. Likewise, a druid in healing gear cannot dps as much as a priest using shadow word pain and a wand, Itemization for druids needs to be re-thought to account for these difficulties.
2) Lack of hybrid talents: The talent trees force druids into specialization specs, forcing balance and feral druids to spend nearly all of their talent points in talents that increase their effectiveness in their specced role, but leave them woefully underpowered in other specs. For instance, a feral druid has the longest base heal in the game, at 3.5 second cast time, doesn't have swiftmend, and doesn't have nature's swiftness, making him a worse healer for end game content than a non-healing specced shaman or paladin. Druids need talents akin to talents in the paladin and shaman trees which simultaneously increase healing ability AND their dps. Druids should not be forced into spending 51 points in talents that increase their dps, as is the case now, but should instead have a pool of talent points available to spend in utility or healing talents.
For instance, for the BC talents, a feral druid would have to spend all 61 talent points to get the talents that increase his dps, which he must do to have a hope of having comparable dps. With the exception of heart of the wild, none of these talents helps the druid in a healing role, meaning he is basically as good of a healer as if he spent zero talent points. The alternative should be that talents that increase dps should also have some sort of healing utility attached to them. Or, another solution would be to consolidate the feral talents (taking OOC and natural weapons out from 11 points deep in balance would be a good start) so that druids would be free to choose between utility talents in the feral tree (such as fear/stun resistance, imp LotP, and nurturing instinct) or spec some points into restoration. These changes would essentially allow the druid to effectively change roles and not have to min-max to such an extreme.
3) Lack of Raid Utility: Leader of the Pack, Moonkin Aura, and imp faeire fire add very little to the raid, especially compared to battle shout, vampiric embrace, shadow weaving, totems, and other similar skills. In fact, it an be argued that druids bring the least cross raid utility of any class in the game. What a druid does, potentially, bring to the table is the ability to fill in emergency roles, but because of the lack lack of hybrid gear (see point 1) and hybrid talents (see point 2), shamans, paladins, and warriors make better emergency role switchers than druids do.
For instance, a dps warrior can easily pick up tanking if a tank dies by putting on a shield and going into defense stance. His mitigation and avoidance will be significantly higher than a druid who is in healing, balance, or feral dps gear who is forced to tank. At level 60, a druid in dps feral gear will probably have about 6000 armor, and 6000 health in bear form. That same druid might have 10-12k armor, 7k health, and significant dodge if he had his tanking gear on. Because druids are so gear dependant in their various roles, and their gear has no cross-role synergy, their impact as emergency role shifters is severely limited, and as such, so is their raid utility. Therefore, Druids need other skills and talents to compensate for their very limited raid utility.
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The druid community as a whole right now is extremely discouraged. I know that Blizzard takes the wise approach with class buffs and keeps them limited and incremental. But I fear this approach will not suffice with druids. The feeling is that druids are so far behind in terms of needed adjustments, itemization, and utility that we cannot wait another two years for them to be addressed in the incremental fashion that has failed druids thus far.
The bottom line is that Druids have been drained of all confidence that they once had in Blizzard's ability or willingness to fix the class in a timely and appropriate matter. So my question is, is Blizzard concerned about this problem? Are they even AWARE of it?
