Druids of the NerfFollow

Oh, I don't think bear tanks are far behind other tanks. In fact on some fights (think Sarth 3d) they are preferable due to huge HP pool and extremely high armor. They got upgrades to aoe, which maybe don't make them up to par with pallies and DK on aoe tanking, but they are as good as warrs. Yes, feral DPS is little low right now(devs agreed on that) but in late TBC that was not an issue. I believe some of the best guilds had ferals on top of DMg meters (I'm sorry but can't remember any names).

When i was talking about us being last place, I was talking about the pre bc state, and I was refering, cheekily, to a "prefered" future state, where we would be behind other tanks. But get back the synergy between tank and cat for godsakes :)

lol Bravo.

Ok, I missed it. Where are we getting nerfed? Someone sounds upset, but I don't know why. We lose a bit of armor in the upcoming patch, but get a shielding ability AND our bleeds can crit now. Net gain, IMO.

There Is also a stamina nerf in 3.1 for bears (it will a ten percent lob off of heart of the wild).

Anyway, the op was not meant to say that we are currently inadequate, It was predicting, cheekily, a return to feral sucking at an undisclosed time in the future. It was a sarcastic spoof of the wow druid forums, where the uninitiated would think the world is ending. Also, The main argument was actually that we should be nerfed so that all the power gamers that only play druids because they think druids are broken will go home. ironically, that was referring to the type of player that would say that they can't think of playing anything else that was weaker then a druid.

Also, I don't remember referencing restoration at all (the class otherwise known as the one everyone wishes we'd stick too.)

In other words the post

1 argued druids should be nerfed to dissuade power gamers from ruining the class.

2 Mocked the winers over at wow forums.

It is annoying that they're going to nerf our armor again in 3.1 but we survived the initial armor nerf with the xpac, we can survive this one.

I do admit in the original game that ferals were practically extinct - I didn't know of a single guild out there that wasn't presuring them all to switch over to resto.

Outlands gave us some love though and feral tanks became a force to be recond with. Kitties were pretty solid too, although once you hit the highest end content we were no longer able to keep up with other DPS, for the bulk of the content we were certainly acceptable.

Now with Wrath we're almost prefered to any other tank - our avoidance is through the roof, health can't be matched, AOE agro is about on par with others and our AC still tops the charts - combine that with the fact that we can out DPS most other tanks and we're damned dangerous. Feral kitties are nearly as lethal - when I'm playing the DPS game with rogues in a group they get annoyed because "[I] make [them] earn it."

So no, I think us druids are doing quite well so even a nerf or two wont be able to hurt us.

I really don't care about armor or health or anything like that. I just like my forms. Im more irritated by a supposed aqua manta ray mount or something that is rumored to be coming at at some point that is going to give riders + 100% swim speed because it competes with aquatic form. Besides, from what I understand, nobody cares about the armor thing, so why do people keep bringing it up? A lot of people do seem to be bothered by the stamina nerf, and I'm actually curious about the numbers since the forums over at blizz seem to be crazy about the hotw nerf. Does anyone have numbers on that?

Besides, I'm one of those snobbs that feels that the buffing of feral's in relationship to pre bc was the worse ting that happened to the class. It provoked too many people who just rely on stats to become druids. As a result, druids aren't nearly so courteous or interesting as the players use to be back when you had to have some balls to play the class. They diluted the strong Old Blood :P. So, yet again, I was saying that druids have received a steady supply of nerfs yes. However I was not saying they suck now. I was saying that they will in the future. And i was saying really I hope they do. I want some skill back in the game.

Also, druid avoidance is slightly behind other tanks as is aggro. health and armor are better now, but it will be about even with after 3.1. though to get incredible health advantage you had to sac avoidance. No one knows anything about SD, but presume it will be just enough to negate the armor debuff, which I'm presuming it was meant to do. I haven't run into any dps math, so I can't confirm or deny your assumption there. All in all, it looks like, from the math on the forums, that with health, and armor equal or very slightly ahead, and being slightly behind in avoidance, and poor cooldowns, we will fall slightly behind wars and far behind DKs in tanking. I haven't heard any math comparisons with paladins. But who knows.

As for rogues, they have my sympathy, maybe if they were helped out a little their wouldn't be so many cat druids.

Problem with these threads is that it always seems to be an excuse for someone to brag. "with my toon i out dps mages, while tanking and I won the battle for my raid when I soloed satharion after everyone wiped. so i think druids are ok. :P

Anyway, I wouldn't take these post particularly seriously guys. It wasn't a particularly serious argument, a fact easily derived from the number of times the words cheeky and snobbish were used, the lack of spell check, or grammar, and the references to Underlined The Great Gatsby. Also, the addition of a constitution, was kind of a give away, I suppose that, this was just a little bit of jest. In fact, the first post was really meant as an intro to the second one, and it got more attention then the one it was suppose to be introducing lol.

Thus the nerf.

Honestly, as a whole, we tend to look at what happens at the front end of a content patch and throw a ***** fit, but the devs are also considering the end of this tier of content. Is it a slight nerf now? Yeah. To the ground? Naw. Will it balance out in the end? Probably.



People keep bringing it up because they still haven't put SD out on the test realms. The stamina nerf has been resulting in I believe a 3k->5k HP loss. This is a significant difference, but I think it's a bit overplayed because people see "stamina" and automatically think "health." I certainly thought it would be a lot worse when I first read the patch notes.



...do you play a Feral cat? We have one of the most challenging DPS rotations in the game, specifically acknowledged as such by one of the leader designers of the game (Ghostcrawler). Resto Druids will have to reconfigure the way they heal with the changes to Regrowth, Nourish, and Lifebloom coming in 3.1. Bears don't really have a whole lot of skills to fall back on. Moonkin... I don't really know, because I haven't played it.

We aren't one of the easiest classes out there to play, by far. My tree doesn't have a nice "oh sh*t" button for if the tank's HP starts plummeting (DK tank anyone?). If my kitty rotation falls apart, it can be rather annoying to get started again. Most players don't even have the knowledge to get it started.

That being said, WTB a glyph that increases the duration of Rake.

Only a dedicated person can withstand the hell that druids endure before getting cat form, and even then before getting Mangle. We have never been an easy class to play in any role, and we're hard enough as it is. Cut me some slack, please. I love my kitty, I love my tree, and I love how they perform compared to other classes. We don't need a nerf just so that no one plays druid anymore. Other people need to experience just how amazing we can be.



Er. My DoTs couldn't crit before. Now they can.

That alone is a huge boost, and no math is needed to show it.

Edited, Mar 2nd 2009 12:06am by CBD

I concur with CBD, the kitty DPS rotation can be very challenging. If I'm on my game I can do close to 4k on a boss, if not I can expect around 2 to 2.5k.

I like your constitution Chimeria. There were a few articles I wish we could enforce. For one I too hate Gnomes, and hate when my low level alts are ganked by someone who is over 10 levels higher. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, but Nature's Swiftness is on a 3min cooldown, and Swiftmend has a 15s one. My experience is that if I'm healing the person whose HP is plummeting, those aren't going to be enough of a benefit. I can take a short burst of damage on the tank, but that's about it. Really this problem just goes back to "how fast are the DPS killing mobs?"

I don't mean for it to sound like I'm QQing about this, I really love the way Resto Druid plays, it's just one aspect of it that makes it a bit more of a challenge. I'd assume the average player would go "LOL DAMAGE BIG HEAL LESGO", but we need to make sure we prioritize and adjust a bit more than the average healer.