hi. im Quor, and this is Druidic History 101. its a thread thats designed for the newer druids out there, and for people who dont know anything about druids that just might wander by. im writing this to give everyone who stops in an idea about what druids were, what they went thru, and what theyve become. so sit down friends, brethren, young ones....and learn.
About Me
ive been playing druid since the orignal retail launch of the game. i picked WoW up about a week after the launch (didnt preorder), and having come fresh off of final fantasy 11 (as a warrior) i knew that warriors were a VERY gear dependant class. gearing a warrior is expensive, and im not a guy whos savvy about making money. plus i wanted something different. i did a little research online, and came up with three choices; rogue, hunter, or druid. well, rogues and hunters seemed like damage dealers, and i didnt want to be a dime-a-dozen class, so druid it was. plus i LOVE shapeshifting. the very idea of it just makes me all tingly. im a big Werewolf: The Apocalypse fan for those White Wolf faithful out there, and druids fit that little niche pretty nicely.
so i made a druid.
As It Was
heres a link to what the retail launch druid talents looked like:
OG Talents
ya. thats right. huricane used to be a TALENT. and im sure many of you are wondering what the hell "swiftshifting" is. look down a little further in balance and youll see "weapon balance". 10% more damage with melee weapons. easily the most useless talent in game, being in the casting tree like it is.
click the next tab and check out feral. bloated, aint it? as of today, the only talents in the feral tree that are completely untouched are ferocity and feral charge. everything else has either been moved, adjusted, or just plain tossed out. im especially fond of the TWO 31-pt talents at the bottom, one of which is a 2-pointer. while a passive -25% to shifting costs aint bad, an extra combo on pounce was laughable (altho with the recent changes, it doesnt sound like such a bad idea anymore).
in short, feral and balance were TERRIBLY broken. hurricane completely sucked (it was pbaoe...or point blank aoe...think channeled arcane explosion), the rest of balance was, to be nice, crap, and feral....feral made grown war veterans weep.
it wasnt just talents tho. we didnt have a lot of the skills we have now, skills many druids consider as staples.
remember how leveling from 20-32 was? when youve got cat form, but all you have is claw, rake, rip, and that opening shred? well, imagine that, but all the way to 60. thats right, there was no ferocious bite. that didnt come until a few months later. there also no such thing as frenzied regeneration, or barkskin.
oh! and lets not forget resto!
its actually not too bad really. note the changes: furor only worked on rage; you had to spec down to intensity in order to get energy-on-shift for cat form. improved enrage was crap, and improved healing touch reduced COST, not the casting time, of healing touch. on the bright side, we get a 1 talent point 5% boost to all our heals, which is nice, but right next to that is combat endurance. remember what i said about weapon balance "easily being the most useless talent in game"? i lied. combat endurance was the most monumental waste of five talent points you could ever think of. shaman had combat endurance in their resto tree, except it was ONE point. and they STILL didnt take it.
also, innervate was a talent. see that? subtlety was lower in the tree as well. but compared to feral or balance, resto was a god send. innervate alone was insane, and the other buffs to the tree made druids pretty efficient healers. more efficient than priests actually.
these were our talent trees, and they had flaws. this meant druids were few and far between. only the most die-hard druidic fans played the class, and they made their builds work, be they resto, feral, or balance (admittedly, finding a balance or feral druid was incredibly rare). in short, these were our talents, and we loved them.
but druids all over the world, druids who loved their class, pushed for change. ideas were brainstormed, thoughts put to paper, and discussions had. slowly, things began to change.
Flux
starting in the mid-winter (january, about three months after release) changes began happening to the druids. first off, totally unexpected, was a huge buff to bear and dire bear forms.
during the WoW original beta, the armor values on leather items were much higher. about 2-3x as high as they are now, to the point where there wasnt that much of a difference between leather and mail. druid bear form armor WAS a 65% increase. dire bear form WAS a 125% increase.
1.2 patch notes: druids
in the space of a single patch, the mitigation druids had in bear forms almost tripled. it wasnt long until a few enterprising druids had snatched all the high armor items they could find, and Anna was the first druid worldwide (as far as im aware) to break the 10k armor mark (at HEAVY sacrifice to every other statistic).
but that was merely the tip of the iceberg.
shortly thereafter, near the end of march '05, blizzard dropped the 1.3 patch, introducing such things as the two first world bosses (kazzak and azuregos) and the dire maul instance (and its ever-so-yummy unyielding maul).
1.3 patch notes: druids
look at that. just admire it for awhile. ferocious bite added. barkskin added. frenzied regeneration (an ability that no druid could have dreamed up on our own; plenty ideas had abounded about a temporary damage shield and a DD finisher in cat however), our very own bear form bandage, and some pretty nice class changes. rebirth, for instance, used to be a three second cast, not two, and didnt ignore the rez timer (which created more problems than youd think it could). cat form receiving a flat DPS increase helped a lot too. and then there was swiftshifting....a % reduction in shifting when you shifted out of a form IF you shifted back into a form in under 6 seconds.
in other words, youre in bear and you want to heal. you pop out, healing touch yourself, and get back into cat form. with swiftshifting, the cost of doing so is reduced by 60% IF you make that shift into cat form in under six seconds.
thanks to this talent and the new ferocious bite ability, feral actually had some decent viability now. even the most hardcore min/maxed couldnt discount the ability of feral to do well assuming proper playstyle and gear setup. with primal instinct and swifthshifting, a druid could stack the physical gear they needed to excel as a feral while not being constrained by an anemic mana pool. an 85% reduction in shifting costs makes up for a LOT of lost int.
this also laid the foundations for what would later be known as the "swiftbuild". but im getting a little ahead of myself.
feral was doing a little better, but balance was still suffering. +dmg gear was relegated only to greens (<random item of natures wrath> etc.) and had yet to be incorporated onto blue and purple-quality items. the gear to support a balance playstyle, plus the lacking power of balance talents meant that many druids didnt dabble any further than 11 points into balance, and many would stop at swiftshifting and ignore omen of clarity totally. which reminds me....omen of clarity used to be a weapon buff, like the shaman weapon buffs. it also only used to work in caster form.
Mage Domination
patch 1.4 changed the dynamics of pvp.
1.4 patch notes: druids
shapeshifting can now BREAK polymorph. yup. druids used to be as vulnerable to polymorph in caster form as any other class. this change, combined with the lack of spell dmg gear and the prevalence of resto spec druids meant that any druid who knew how to spell fake could literally heal a mage to death. by using only regrowth and rejuv, i would repeatedly stab mages to death with my dinky caster dagger as they vainly tried to overcome my healing with their nukes.
coupled with a strong (and newly unbugged) opener from cat form, a druid could choose to flat out decimate a mage, or just wear them down if they so chose.
it was about this time that talk on the official forums began to turn towards class reviews. warlocks and warriors were to be first up on the table, expected sometime in the next patch or two, with hunters after that and then...druids!
and that my children, is where i leave you for tonight, for it is late, and old Quor here is tired. the lesson will continue another night.