Druid still useless

[Glock1]

Serious raiders dont want to see druids in DPS specs because of their uselessness, 3% of crit buff doesn't help at all if you are on the bottom of list.


Moonkin spec - whatever you do you will always be dramatically worse than other caster even if you have better gear.
There is no adequate gear for Balance druid, every tiers sets are healing sets.
Cat spec - has the same dps problem and no control at all, a bit helped new feral set but its not enough.
Healer spec - Tree shape -20% run speed, are you serious? ppl avoid that suicide tallent and dont use tree at all.
Tank spec - its hard to hold agro if its more than 1 target
In pvp druids suffer from luck of control.

Proposition

for not going deep in dmg formulas
Cat - adding dps with Book - Claw rank 6
Balance - adding dps with Book - Starfire rank 8, remove AOE CD, moonkin needs hes own new caster set(like feral)
Tank - remove limitation of 3 targets on swipe
Tree - remove that shameful -20% run speed
Entangling roots - remove limitation to cast only outside

[Spriggit]

I'm all for removing the outdoor entangling roots limitation. Devs know that roots go underground, right?

Also a balance talent (or for moonies) that lets hibernate also work on humanoids would be great.

[Isvya]

Cats dps with shred and not claw...
Unlimited swipe sounds a bit too much but the number of hits can be increased idd. Also swipe in cat maybe?

Balance is cr@p idd, add improved FF for more armor reduction and perhaps make it the nature curse of elements within the spec?
Does not even have to be the same talent:
Imp FF: 15/30% more effect --> Greater FF 1/1 now also reduces nature resistance of your target and increases nature dmg taken
Or: your FF hits now also apply FF to 3 nearby enemies. Lot of possible variations here.
Make boomkin aura scale off of something (spirit? Spell crit?) Same as tree of life. Can also be done to leader of pack.

Tree of life? Idk the talents seems ok. 20% speed penalty can be removed but i think its ok. I dislike that u cannot cast healing touch, vanilla resto is not as much into hots as tbc when u get lifebloom.

[Reploidrocsa]

Feral tank and resto druids are fine, a bit underwhelming but nothing that some skill can compensate.
Feral cat and boomkin tho leaves much to be desired. Either increase the damage potential or give useful debuffs/CC

[Glock1]

Cats dps with shred and not claw...
it was so in sick imagination of bliz developers, thanks to turtle we have - Claw also deals 100% of weapon damage
now we also can attack directly in face as any other melee class, meeting parry and other direct attack issues.

improved FF, nature curse, boomkin aura scale
it's difficult, a lot of fuss, we need a simply fast changes, adding books with some power+ will be easy and prognosable.

I dislike that u cannot cast healing touch, vanilla resto is not as much into hots as tbc when u get lifebloom.
I dsilike too, but let's not ask for much, first of all we need to solve critical moments.

[Reploidrocsa]

Claw still does less dps than shred, since it doesn't scale from equipped weapon.

But hey, from 4 possible roles, tank and heal are very decent at group play, cat dps is very useful when solo and boomkin is... Good at pvp?

[Gantulga]

Dumbest thread 2022.

[Isvya]

Dumbest thread 2022.

That title is already taken by "everyone can be a tank URGENT"

[Shamma]

Hey. It is actually the hottest thread 2022. And apparently druids are better than warriors for tanking:

To be fair, Skarm could tank with an Arcane mage if he want to...

Also, "warriors are the only true tanks" is very misleading, Paladins are better in 5 mans, Druids are better than warriors in some fights so... it would be something like "Warriors are the best MAIN TANKS"

Hmmm, but like I said, its not just Skarm, and its not like he did anything special here, he did what we all do, he pressed a few buttons. You could have done that too. Its really just Abomination Wing in Naxx that can give Druid a bit of a problem because Bear cant block. But thats it. Otherwise Druid can outperform Warrior, or at least go even with him.

If anything I would go as far as to say:

-Paladins are the best in 5mans.
-Druids are better then Warriors in 5mans.
-Druids and Warriors are on par in raids. (Some (magic heavy) Bosses Druid outperforms, and 2 Naxx bosses War outperforms.).

[Shamma]

I am about to find out. Tanked my way to MC on a HC warrior during R2R. And 2 days ago started an HC druid I intend to tank my way up on.

[Spriggit]

While we're complaining about all things druid, how about we mention the raid set items for druids being completely heal-focused? They don't have to be the best, but at least toss some +Agi and +Str on those so the cats and bears might want to use them sometimes too!

[Bayanni]

I'm going to have to post a thesis to fully tell you why you're wrong, but I'll settle for an abstract.

Resto got some nice buffs all over and criticizing tree spec for 20% run speed is the 5-head take of the week. It's amazing at raid healing and gives additional passive healing to the group, making it very, very good when grouped with tanks. It's like another item for other healers when targeting a tree's group. It's amazing.

Bear tanking is in such a good spot that multiple guilds are currently running bears as their main progression tanks. The new berzerk last stand talent and the changes to their regeneration ability gives them a surprisingly large amount of additional survivability. Couple that with the changes to omen of clarity and they're able to hold rage and aggro over everyone exceptionally well. I can and have tanked Garr with all of his adds at the same time on my bear and it isn't even BiS. If that isn't showing an ability to hold aggro on multiple targets I challenge you to find a better example.

Cat dps is lacking compared to other melee but a claw book isn't going to do anything. As others have said, their damage is from shred, and even then they have two steroid abilities from fury and berzerk which actually help with their fight longevity by prioritizing against powershift while they're up. Cat could really only use some end-game versions of the powershift set and they'd be set for life and even then they're capable of dropping some real numbers right now, ask Isabel/Chlo.

The boomkin statement that there's no gear for them is just plain ignorant. There is a ton of new balance gear, maybe more than any other spec for any class, added by the devs to try and address this problem. Here's items from three custom world bosses:
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=83482
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=83532
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=83530
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=51776
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=51777
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=51787
https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=51738

Some of these items are BiS forever for a boomkin and some are very, very close. Several of them are clearly boomkin-specific, and a lot of them add a significant amount of +hit which was boomkin's glaring weakness after the complete overhaul to boomkin mana issues that was 1.16.1. I would go so far as to say boomkin mana problems are solved and the only thing they're lacking now is some raw dps, but a new rank of starfire will not fix this. It will add more mana cost to a class that is just now barely within margins to not need two mana pots and a tea with sugar for every boss fight just to maintain casting.

I run a beast's deck with my boomkin set because of the mana regen it provides. With that, across-the-board mana reductions, procs from omen of clarity, a shadow priest in my group, and the new arcane mage in my group, I can make it through Nefarion without popping a mana pot. Now, the only fights where I am guaranteed to need mana pots are C'Thun and KT. If I don't have one or both of those other specs with me, it's a few more fights, but I can make it through everything except C'Thun without running into cooldown issues. A new rank WILL throw this off and if it's anything like the new rank of wrath it won't do anything anyways. New wrath is about 50 more damage per cast at an additional ~29 mana, so you just go oom 40 seconds faster for ~35 more dps with endgame gear. New starfire will be more of that, a minimal dps increase at the expense of either a lot more consumes or hitting the CD wall and having to spam r1 starfire anyway.

If you want to improve boomkin, do it some other way. Increases to the crit aura will make them more useful as they will bring dps that isn't showing on their meters but will on everyone in their group. 5% crit on four different mages is insane. Making Faerie Fire more varied in what it does would also be a unique solution and wouldn't snap pvp in half. Adding totems that remove CD on hurricane or increase the scaling would do a lot, especially with the attack speed debuff it provides making your tanks' survivability vastly higher while it's up. Anything but just slapping raw numbers onto moon lasers is a good solution because, as they are now, they 2-shot any player with one crit and can even 1 shot lower hp toons in pvp, then in pve it just brings back the mana issues from before.

TL;DR: no

[Glavorli]

Imho Reploidrocsa and Bayanni are pretty right here.
Druids are in such a great spot, they have a few imbalances, but nothing you cant make up for.
Cat is really the only one who needs a bit of love.

But OP saying that bear cant hold aggro and that swipe only hits 2 targets already shows me,
that he doesnt know how to play bear.

You arent supposed to swipe the same target over and over again.
You are supposed to tab in between swipes and target different mobs so that your swipes get
to hit all the mobs throughout the encounter, and you only need to do this if your DPS is AOE.

If your DPS is AOE (mages, locks etc.) you have to tab-switch targets and swipe them.
If your DPS is single target (warrior, rogue etc.) you can just swipe/bash same target anyways.

Its that simple. If you have problems with aggro on bear, youre doing something wrong,
and instead of figuring out your mistakes, you complain.

[Glock1]

Resto got some nice buffs all over and criticizing tree spec for 20% run speed is the 5-head take of the week.

Yeah it so nice, from 4 raiding groups that I know, no one of resto dru uses Tree


Im glad we all understand that cat and moonkin have dps issues, the only question is in measures witch need to take.

[Kairion]

Bayanni hit the nail on the head about the state of druid.

If something about the dps specs should be done, easiest way to improve them would be to allow moonfire, insect swarm, rip & claw to fill their role as decent damage spells.

These spells are in their current form only marginally better than just casting starfire/shread in the best of situations. In 9/10 cases they are strictly worse.

A increase to debuff slots & improving these dots scaling could allow druid to deal mote consistent damage without diseupting the class with fantastical widgets

Bear on the other hand is fantastic. The only thing holding him back is people being to stuborn to realize he is good. With the extra armor items turtlewow added its very well within the realm of possibilities to reach armor cap. With a bigger healthpool and and armor cap, he is a reliable tank that outperforms sword & board tanks in tps unless they have thunderfury and even with tf its a close comparison.

DW warrior tanks can draw much more threat sure. But they live MUCH riskier lives doing so.

[Bayanni]

Resto got some nice buffs all over and criticizing tree spec for 20% run speed is the 5-head take of the week.
Yeah it so nice, from 4 raiding groups that I know, no one of resto dru uses Tree

Amazing this is the only part you refute, and with anecdotal evidence at that

I see trees regularly. They are not good at single-target healing but do a pretty nice job at raid healing. I see two different groups that run them in my current raids and they are very much nice to have. Just because there's a number of guides and metas from vanilla/classic that people follow doesn't mean TWoW custom specs aren't viable, it just means they're less explored and we don't fully know their limits unless someone does a numbers crunch and we see some real-world applications.

The raiding meta has been changed here thanks to items, talent changes, new spells, and new race/class combinations, but no one has tried a detailed guide on the pros and cons of each. I have found guides on the trade-offs between a resto druid going 31 into resto instead of the split balance/resto build with moonglow, but nothing on a tree vs deep resto vs split. Maybe we'll see that someday, and it might be surprising, but my point is we don't really know and no one seems to have dug deep enough to say they've tried.

[Velite]

This thread is another example of why people are so stuck in the Wrath of the Lich King+ Mentality, where if your spec isn't doing within 10% of dps on the meter and having some incredibly useful raid buff, you're trash. Druid is a support class. All of it's roles are done through the lens of support with some heal/tank/dps on the side. The class itself is a combination of useful baseline support tools, some spec based support, and aforementioned role duty.

Looking at the design (or at least intended design) of every class in vanilla, you have what is called "total contribution", or in other words, how much weight a build pulls. All builds have some mixture of direct and indirect contribution which should total to 100% (in other words, that any given healer is as useful as any given tank as any given dps) through a mix of direct to indirect. You have the polar extremes of, say, rogue, which is very much 90% direct 10% indirect, to something like a shaman which is about 60% indirect 40% direct. That a balance druid has low damage is not in and of itself an indicator it's trash, because it can make up for that deficiency through indirect support. As far as vanilla math goes, the 3% aura is not sufficient to replace a 5th mage in a party, but a 5% aura would be, so I agree with you on the front that the aura should be 5% spell crit, but that can only exist if world buffs are off the table.

In summary, do not dismiss an entire class because it isn't doing the same things as another class. The area of concern is if it isn't pulling as much weight as another class in a given build. Everyone should be pulling equal weight but in different ways. That's how you keep classes and specs unique. Not through some being objectively superior to others which is unfortunately still the case in some instances.

[Glock1]

In summary, do not dismiss an entire class because it isn't doing the same things as another class.

It's not me who discriminates the class as a whole, I am a victim of discrimination like others druids.
When a serious raid is planned, raid leader decides:

Im a dru healer - no man, not this time, we need priest, sham, pal..
Im a moonkin - no man, not this time, we need mages, warloc..
Im a cat - no man, not this time, we have a lot of true melee guys..

[Kairion]

[...]

It's not me who discriminates the class as a whole, I am a victim of discrimination like others druids.
When a serious raid is planned, raid leader decides:

Im a dru healer - no man, not this time, we need priest, sham, pal..
Im a moonkin - no man, not this time, we need mages, warloc..
Im a cat - no man, not this time, we have a lot of true melee guys..

And at this crossroad you as a player got a decision to make. You can say "sure i log to my other char" or you tell your raidleader you play druid.

As awful as it sounds, if you put your foot down and give a guild the option to have you as druid or not at all. If you are a decent player and have some social competence they hands down take you as a druid over jimmy smalldick who cries every time a item goes to someone else. Even when he plays warrior.

Most content is playable with a 40 druid raid no problem. Raidleaders will fill their raid with decent players if they have to. No matter what class they have

[Shamma]

In summary, do not dismiss an entire class because it isn't doing the same things as another class.

It's not me who discriminates the class as a whole, I am a victim of discrimination like others druids.
When a serious raid is planned, raid leader decides:

Im a dru healer - no man, not this time, we need priest, sham, pal..
Im a moonkin - no man, not this time, we need mages, warloc..
Im a cat - no man, not this time, we have a lot of true melee guys..

What is this serious raid? It is not on turtle, that is for sure. Unless druid is already overrepresented in your raid grp, this situation does not happen on turtle. And if you are in the only guild where druid is overrepresented, switch guilds. Druids are underrepresented on the server and with general lack of healers, you can raid as resto druid is just about all guilds that are recruiting.

[Bayanni]

What is this serious raid? It is not on turtle, that is for sure. Unless druid is already overrepresented in your raid grp, this situation does not happen on turtle. And if you are in the only guild where druid is overrepresented, switch guilds. Druids are underrepresented on the server and with general lack of healers, you can raid as resto druid is just about all guilds that are recruiting.

Actually this characterization isn't too far from fact for some raids. None of them completely exclude druids, but several will treat them as effectively second-rate raiders for the sake of ideal raid comp. I've heard from at least two that druids will not be given gear over other classes due to what their class is regardless of performance, veterancy, or raid/guild contribution. In essence, a druid would get what everyone else no longer wants, or at least up until a certain point where enough of the other classes that can use the gear have it.

Funnily enough, <Thunder Ale Brewing Company> did not do this and gave out gear on merit of the player alone and, as a result, had the best geared druids on the server and more than one of their members who longer plays here still has better-slotted items than any raiding druid since. They also cleared KT with this in mind, so clearly druids can do enough to do all content the server has to offer at this time.

[Mekunekud]

I don't get the druid hate but it's just Classic player logic. Same reason you don't really take more than one resto druid to a raid in Classic.
Here, it's not too much an issue. A resto druid is strong enough to warrant in all content due to the passive healing effect alone and I can't see why you'd deny them gear based on that. If they pull their weight, there's no reason to deny them an item unless it's legitimately a vastly better item for another class.
Druids aren't useless. They just have relatively poor stacking potential. You need maybe 1 or 2 Resto tops in a raid and tree form IS worth it on at least one for the tank group. Feral, DPS or tank, are strong enough to warrant a place . The only bum spec, and not even outright bad just like Elemental, is Balance but no spec is remotely as bad as Ret or Enhance is. They can all argue for a place in raid unless its a minmaxer group in which case you aren't taking non-healing hybrids really.

[Kairion]

I think druids largely got a bad rep early in classic where some players struggled to utilize its potential and back when searching the database for decent gear was something only the elite players did.

It has to be said, good gear definitely makes an impact on ones performance. And druid is not an easy class to itemize and pilot well.

To give you an example for bear, you do want items with extra armor. But there is a fine line between good items with a lot of armor and junk. And the good items with armor are extremely hard to come compared to for instance decent weapons for warrior.

This in turn ment a lot of druids in raid underperformed even harder than you would expect in a raid.

This was kind of a compunding effect. Once you had a druid tank woi sucked, their reputation as a tank was ruined and you are less likely to try it again in mc. Because using warriors works just fine.

That the druid stacks badly with himself and resto just happens to be his numerically best spec doesn't help the case. Because healers are always in demand. So telling a druid to rather heal is in the entire guilds interest. But realistically, if they need healers, they can also level a healerclass...

[Vrerk]

Perhaps some way through talents and items to increase whatever weapon skill the druids natural weapons count as, although reading earlier in this thread that bear threat is already pretty good, that could push them into a too powerful state.
Increasing the debuff limit and adding some better scaling to bleeds so that they're worthwhile in your rotation, maybe with something unique like rake or rip increasing the damage of bleeds to the target (Like a soft-mangle that assists the bleed damage wars/rogues do as well, not that i assume they use them much at all currently).

[Sofacrusader]

Everytime when something good happens there are still people that want to spoil it and make a WoTLK out of the vanilla with cut out BC and WoTLK content.

Druid is about utility, adaptivity, etc. You sacrifice quality for quantity. Just accept it.

Please don't repeat blizzard mistakes and don't make classes faceless.

The latest changes turtle wow had made is absolutely lovely, enough and reflect the vanilla vibe. I think those who want changes should just switch the played expansion.

[Shamma]

Everytime when something good happens there are still people that want to spoil it and make a WoTLK out of the vanilla with cut out BC and WoTLK content.

Druid is about utility, adaptivity, etc. You sacrifice quality for quantity. Just accept it.

Please don't repeat blizzard mistakes and don't make classes faceless.

The latest changes turtle wow had made is absolutely lovely, enough and reflect the vanilla vibe. I think those who want changes should just switch the played expansion.

Word brother! More new Turtle content, less changes to classes! And if changes to classes are necessary - then flavorful making the classes more different, not more the same!

[Kairion]

True, if it exists in the wotlk skilltrees, it should be actively avoided :D

And on a sidenote, weaponskill doesnt really matter for bear, maul cant glance and the main point of weaponskill is to dampen the effect of glancings. It would however improve the cat dps by about 6%

[Markuis]

True, if it exists in the wotlk skilltrees, it should be actively avoided :D

Is that really a problem? A change shouldn't be judged by being wotlk or not, rather than improving the game in a desired way or not.

[Sofacrusader]

True, if it exists in the wotlk skilltrees, it should be actively avoided :D

Is that really a problem? A change shouldn't be judged by being wotlk or not, rather than improving the game in a desired way or not.

Well, the key word here is "DESIRED" way. Don't ever let that "DESIRED" way repeat the original WoW path. Nevertheless, most of suggestions here actually lead to the WoTLK. It's not visible when we talk about small change pieces like we do here, but if you just try to gather all pieces together and build up the resulting picture you will see where it does and will lead. Spoilers: To the BALANCED world where everyone is EQUAL, but vanilla wasn't about equality man, it was about the differences and thoughtful choice but not the "UGH UGH I WANNA BE THE KITTY" choice which is how the current world is functioning now, sadly.

[Markuis]

Well, the key word here is "DESIRED" way. Don't ever let that "DESIRED" way repeat the original WoW path. Nevertheless, most of suggestions here actually lead to the WoTLK.

Spoilers: To the BALANCED world where everyone is EQUAL, but vanilla wasn't about equality man, it was about the differences and thoughtful choice but not the "UGH UGH I WANNA BE THE KITTY" choice which is how the current world is functioning now, sadly.

I don't agree that some things it should be avoided completly just because they resemble wotlk. Some changes from wotlk are good, if not many. Vanilla is far from perfect. Twow main focus on vanilla is, iirc, its lore.

I do agree that we shouldn't be chasing that equality, yet I see people call vanilla some parts of the game that are simply unfinished or unpolished

[Shamma]

It is all like raiding. You want the next upgrade. U keep raiding to get it. You get the desired upgrade, you are done playing!

Same thing with class changes. Fun for awhile, and then you are done, cos the class is done. Players are not good game designers.

[Glock1]

"UGH UGH I WANNA BE THE KITTY"

Yeah, but I don't want to be a neutered cat


Players are not good game designers

Agree, admins have all statistic, about clacess(which arent popular), about damage, Hps and other effectivity.
With all that stats it makes clear why there is so many druids

[Vrerk]

Dire cat form; increases attack power bonus of strength by 1 per point

[Kairion]

Dire cat form; increases attack power bonus of strength by 1 per point

Not sure how to say it, but 300-400 ap more doesnt fix cat

[Glock1]

situation in BWL on trash

warlocks burn out everything, mages flood with blizzard, explosion and only one moonkin idiot is soloing mobs waiting for 1 min CD on shtorm.
cmon guys owl is some kind of shaggy mage, so where is his adequate AOE?

Why we stick with Blizzard vanilla concept that druid is neutered in everything?