So with the server instability, I decided to give in an try a DK. I can honestly say the it was the biggest mistake I have made playing this game since I started. Only thing it’s caused is a loss of faith in what changes have been and will be made to the Druid class. I actually kin of sicken, really. I’m sorry if this sounds like “QQ”, it’s honestly not my intention because my feeling on this goes much deeper than “They get cool stuff and we don’t.” Let me explain….

1. It’s glaringly obvious that there was care put into the creation of the class. It’s in everything from the look and overall feel, to simple things such as the graphics to their spells. Their talents make sense and actually give them what they need to do everything that the class is intended to do. The again when it comes to looks, Chilly was also crafted very nicely… I summoned him, took one look and put him right back because of the sheer fact that toy looks better than any of the Druid forms save for the Epic flight. Bottom line, I’m almost bitter over the glyphs now. Mind you, I wasn’t at first… because I thought they were going to be a novelty thing. Now? Mm mm. I really wish I could burn them.
2. In BC, we were made into really great tanks. Couldn’t dps for squat, but that was ok because we had a purpose. Having a niche didn’t matter because we were supposed to be flexible and whatnot. Plus I love to tank. If I weren’t tanking, then I was Resto. I actually do not possess a cat set on live. It’s 3-4 pieces of gear that I swap into the grind. With Wrath however, Tanking is all but shot. Less mitigation and more incoming damage means than I won’t see anything past 5 mans heroics and early 10 mans if things stay the way they are. Our flexibility I mentioned earlier is gone now too with the splitting of talents and lack of proper gear sets. Here’s where my biggest problems with all of this come in…. Are Druids given something to compensate for the changes?

A. No. Cat form is still terrible and changes to that are given sparingly for fear that we will “become op” or perhaps “grow farther than our hybrid nature should allow”. It’s to the point that it seems Devs are almost afraid to give us things. Yet the plan is to make us viable choices for dps? How does that work… A level 80 should not be just NOW doing the same amount of damage to a level 1 target dummy with zero armor and stats that a comparable class is doing at level 70 on level 73 bosses. Even if that level 80 is in ALL greens.

B. Druid tanks have not been given a niche. This is where the pure hate for the DK class sets in because our niche COULD have been magic. No. It’s given to a new class who isn’t even out of the creation stage and already works, scales and does our job better than we do. Idk, I’m running around on this DK and looking at its talents and everything else about the class and all of this just kinda hits me. Hard. Druids have no cat form to turn to instead of tanking. And the tanking status we would have done very well in with the addition of talents and scaling belongs to “the new guy.” We won’t be considered for not one encounter over one of the other tanks. Pallies are Aoe tank kings, Warriors mitigate like no other and DKs eat magic users alive. There simply isn’t anything left….

TL;DR…I’m going to watch my class rot come opening day, aren’t I?

I hope not. Beta's still in progress. This is still completely up in the air. Heck, next new buil could be "The Druid Build" idk *shrug*


Please. I'm begging you, Blizzard Devs working on our class. Please, please make. me. regret. writing this. Make me look like an ass. Please be able to throw this letter in my face come time this game is officially ready for release.

[ Post edited by Maligma ]

---

Q u o t e:
1. It’s glaringly obvious that there was care put into the creation of the class. It’s in everything from the look and overall feel, to simple things such as the graphics to their spells. Their talents make sense and actually give them what they need to do everything that the class is intended to do. The again when it comes to looks, Chilly was also crafted very nicely… I summoned him, took one look and put him right back because of the sheer fact that toy looks better than any of the Druid forms save for the Epic flight. Bottom line, I’m almost bitter over the glyphs now. Mind you, I wasn’t at first… because I thought they were going to be a novelty thing. Now? Mm mm. I really wish I could burn them.

---

We did put a lot into the DK class. It's a new class, so we figured we had to do more work to get players to try it out over the ones they've poured so much time into. But also consider that not only did we add the DK at a time when we added no other class, but we've also gotten a lot better at everything from quest design to art. The Epic flight form looks great for the same reason. I agree it's high time that we updated the bear and cat, or at least gave players an option to do so.

---

Q u o t e:
2. In BC, we were made into really great tanks. Couldn’t dps for squat, but that was ok because we had a purpose. Having a niche didn’t matter because we were supposed to be flexible and whatnot. Plus I love to tank. If I weren’t tanking, then I was Resto. I actually do not possess a cat set on live. It’s 3-4 pieces of gear that I swap into the grind. With Wrath however, Tanking is all but shot. Less mitigation and more incoming damage means than I won’t see anything past 5 mans heroics and early 10 mans if things stay the way they are. Our flexibility I mentioned earlier is gone now too with the splitting of talents and lack of proper gear sets. Here’s where my biggest problems with all of this come in…. Are Druids given something to compensate for the changes?

---

You can still be flexible. We didn't take that away as an option. What we tried to do was give you more options, so that a Feral could decide to be a guild's MT (which was possible, but pretty challenging in BC) or try to be tops of the dps charts, which was almost impossible in BC. With a hybrid bear / kitty build, you should have no trouble tanking 5-player runs and probably even heroics, and you will still be able to OT in 10-player raids.

---

Q u o t e:
A. No. Cat form is still terrible and changes to that are given sparingly for fear that we will “become op” or perhaps “grow farther than our hybrid nature should allow”. It’s to the point that it seems Devs are almost afraid to give us things. Yet the plan is to make us viable choices for dps? How does that work… A level 80 should not be just NOW doing the same amount of damage to a level 1 target dummy with zero armor and stats that a comparable class is doing at level 70 on level 73 bosses. Even if that level 80 is in ALL greens.

---

Cat form dps will be competitive with other dps classes. If you can't take my word for it, I understand, but I'm not sure what else I can offer in that regard. No, it's not there yet, but we also have some classes doing 4500 dps in a raid. Clearly we have a long way to go. :)

---

Q u o t e:
B. Druid tanks have not been given a niche. This is where the pure hate for the DK class sets in because our niche COULD have been magic. No. It’s given to a new class who isn’t even out of the creation stage and already works, scales and does our job better than we do. Idk, I’m running around on this DK and looking at its talents and everything else about the class and all of this just kinda hits me. Hard. Druids have no cat form to turn to instead of tanking. And the tanking status we would have done very well in with the addition of talents and scaling belongs to “the new guy.” We won’t be considered for not one encounter over one of the other tanks. Pallies are Aoe tank kings, Warriors mitigate like no other and DKs eat magic users alive. There simply isn’t anything left….

---

Niches are very dangerous to our goal of having 4 viable tank classes. We were scared that if we went too far down that road you'd run into situations where a group would bring in the bear for boss 2, then bring in the paladin for boss 3, and every group would end up needing all 4 tanks just waiting in the wings. Making each tank viable for each fight places a lot less pressure on raid swapping and guild recruiting in general.

Even withou a niche, I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the things you can do that no other tank can do. Drop by the warrior forums and you'll see they are concerned they will never get to tank because the druid can innervate and battle rez.

As far as the death knight goes, I really hope this doesn't sound like I'm accusing you of a grass is always greener argument (because you seem like a nice person), but if you visit the DK forums, they are very worried about their scaling. I'm sorry you aren't excited about your new talents. I find King of the Jungle a lot of fun and Berserk is cool in both forms. This is intended to be a sincere question to help me understand: What is it you're missing?

If I can let you in on a little secret, there are a number of rabid druids at Blizzard who really have a vested interest in seeing the class succeed. You're in good hands. :)

I was looking forward to coming back to this thread, but it appears to have turned into another where my presence makes people more angry instead of solving anything. So I'll just leave it at this:

1) I'm sorry you feel burned in the past. I can't make that situation go away. Your options are either to keep working with us to fix any problems with the class or give up. I can't suddenly buff druids to silly levels to make up for past inadequacies, and I don't think most of you are really asking for that.

2) There are no tank niches, at least the way they have been defined here. When you ask why would anyone take a druid tank over a warrior tank, the answer is because that player is a better player, not because they have the magic ability that makes an encounter much easier. If you're concern is that the preponderance of warrior mitigation and abilities makes warriors a much more effective tank than druids, then that is a legitimate problem.

3) We haven't finished tuning numbers yet. If cat dps is low, we'll fix it before Lich King goes live. We haven't focused on that yet because we are still working on talent trees and bugs. But you're starting to see some of it. One thing I forgot to mention is that the raid buff overhaul was a net dps loss to melee classes. We expected that would happen, but we have not yet adjusted their dps accordingly. That might not be all cats need, but I wanted to mention it before I forgot.

4) I know balance druids feel neglected. My time is limited, and it's totally valid feedback that I don't give all specs or classes equal attention. My choices seem to be post a little or not post at all. I'm not a CM and any time I spend here (while very valuable for me) is time I'm not fixing classes. We'll try to give balance some more love.

5) I think bears in particular could use a couple more situational abilities. We did lower the cooldown on Berserk and we might even do it again. I assume this doesn't count or you wouldn't be asking for more flashy abilities, but when I did Feral Charge as cat in Utgarde last night, the fight virtually stopped while everyone said "Wait? What did you just do? That looked so cool!"

6) Feral is going to feel a little bigger than other trees because we are specifically trying to offer you more talents than you can get. The design is that you can choose 2-3 talents to emphasize your bear role over your cart role... if you choose. If you want to try and be relatively good at both, then split the difference between those talents.

---

Q u o t e:
Talents are definently a good step in the right direction from what they were(not that they were bad pre-wrath), except for 2 things: IFF(None of us want it, feed it to the Angry Bears to calm them down) and Starfall(Hurricane 2.0, please please please don't make the same mistake again, you're already doing it gearwise with all the spirit, don't do it talentwise too) - We need a relatively quick Arcane dps spell, not a stealable dispellable uncontrolled aoe that isn't worth it's Tier. Make 51pt either a 2sec cast arcane dps spell or make it turn Starfire into insta-cast with a non-haste-able 2sec cooldown, anything but going the aoe path -again-, learn from the past mistakes lol

---

Oh, I love Starfall though. I can't take any credit for the spell, but it's one of my favorites.

All casters are going to need to take mana regeneration seriously again. For too long we let casters just stack +damage stats and fill themselves back up with shadow priests. You also have to consider downranking is also gone now so you can't rely on that to save you mana. Spirit is a seriously good stat now. I realize Dreamstate isn't directly a Spirit buff, but neither does it let you opt out of stat-based mana regen.