Druid still useless

[Gladeshadow]

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?

Druids are a hybrid class. Thus they can't do everything that the dedicated casters can. If you somehow thought a hybrid class should be able to do everything a specialized class can do, you were misled. It's like this in every game.

Druids are still plenty useful, but perhaps not specifically at what you want them to do. They're strong at other things. The differences between classes make them interesting. When classes are all equalized, as we've seen in the future, the game becomes a whole lot less interesting.

[Oakenhorn]

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?

Druids are a hybrid class. Thus they can't do everything that the dedicated casters can. If you somehow thought a hybrid class should be able to do everything a specialized class can do, you were misled. It's like this in every game.

Druids are still plenty useful, but perhaps not specifically at what you want them to do. They're strong at other things. The differences between classes make them interesting. When classes are all equalized, as we've seen in the future, the game becomes a whole lot less interesting.

Amen!

[Bayanni]

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?

Druids are a hybrid class. Thus they can't do everything that the dedicated casters can. If you somehow thought a hybrid class should be able to do everything a specialized class can do, you were misled. It's like this in every game.

Druids are still plenty useful, but perhaps not specifically at what you want them to do. They're strong at other things. The differences between classes make them interesting. When classes are all equalized, as we've seen in the future, the game becomes a whole lot less interesting.

Although it is true that homogenization makes things less interesting, there are bare-minimums to be considered a hybrid. A priest, despite having some higher threat generation spells and armor, is not capable of tanking realistically. Maybe if they're horrendously overgeared they can take a dungeon, but not really. Same with Rogue. Even if they get the ability to dodge/parry the vast majority of attacks, they don't have the threat generation or health pool against spells to effectively tank. Neither of these are considered hybrids because they don't reach the bare-minimum needed to achieve those other roles.

Druids, essentially, do. They can fill each role (tank, physical dps, magic dps, healer) in at least the bare-minimum requirements. However, their caster falls behind in that it has one AoE that is better suited to protecting a tank than it is for taking damage while every other class with a mana bar has better options. I would argue a hunter is better at AoE than a druid, and that doesn't feel like it should ever be the case.

If a class known for it's single-target dps and kiting potential has incidentally more AoE options than an actual caster, which should, in theory, be your primary AoE users, I feel there's a problem. This seems to be reflected by the patch history of the spell which is almost exclusively buffs. Attack speed reduction increased, flat more damage via items and spell modifications, and cd entirely removed, and this was all by patch 2.2.0. It's busted in a bad way and really could use a little love so it's at least somewhat useful, and I don't see any one of the above as breaking anything.

[Balake]

Solution to druid is simple. When they removed world buffs (they will do it eventually) replace moonkin aura talent with "Gift of the Moon" and "Mark of the Moon" abilities. Just a simple buff like gift of the wild but gives %5 spell crit for 30 mins.

[Kairion]

Solution to druid is simple. When they removed world buffs (they will do it eventually) replace moonkin aura talent with "Gift of the Moon" and "Mark of the Moon" abilities. Just a simple buff like gift of the wild but gives %5 spell crit for 30 mins.

And you just found the 31/0/20 heal specc similar to how heal shamans currently spec enhancement for bloodlust. In aura form it necessetates the druid actually play in the moonkin playstile

[Balake]

u just found the 31/0/20 heal specc similar to how heal shamans currently spec enhancement for bloodlust. In aura form it necessetates the druid actually play in the moonkin playstile

Eh so what. If people want to do that then it's fine. Better than forcing someone to be the token moonkin just cause its needed to buff everyone.

You can discourage it by buffing 31-point resto druid (tree is horrible)

[Mativh]

Tree - remove that shameful -20% run speed

This perspective is just alien to me...
I think you should take a look at this, where I've explained the importance of not only positive but also also negative things and limitations as tools to define concepts. The original developers understood this, and the Turtle WoW dev do as well. Activision doesn't.
I was glad to see such thing added. I prefer to define strongly a concept with +2 of something and -1 of something else, instead of +1 of something, simply out of fear of negativity.
If you remember the walking trees in Warcraft 3 and the Trents in Lord of the Rings; they walk slow, they are uprooted humanoid trees. It makes perfect sense to add the reduced movement speed or other unique weaknesses while simultaneously expressing better their unique strengths.

Balance - adding dps with Book - Starfire rank 8, remove AOE CD, moonkin needs hes own new caster set(like feral)

Balance is one of those specs that are less developed than others, it'd benefit from more mechanisms, abilities, and a choice to focus in the talent tree either on astral druidism (moonkin for this only), or nature-focused druidism.
The same way feral has two different playstyles in one tree.
Of course it'd be nice to have more balance gear.

Entangling roots - remove limitation to cast only outside

If this was changed, then if roots would be used indoors, there should be increased cast rate, or couple seconds delay after the ability is used.
(simulating that the roots require more strength to break through building floors).

[Mekunekud]

Tree form being slow is fine. Tree form a vastly better 31 pointer in nearly all scenarios than any other healer 31 point. Mana Tide is shit. Holy Shock isn't game changing and can be skipped. Power Infusion is great but it's at the cost of later Holy talents and the Holy Champion talent is decent but nowhere near as good as a scaling healing buff to the druids own group which in turn buffs the ENTIRE raid's healing on the MT/OT.
Balances problems are the same as Elemental Shamans. The gear supports the spec but there's some tweaks needed such as spell costs, like make Moonkin reduce Balance spell costs by 25%, and the normal issue of there being no Nature resistance debuff on mobs.
Feral is strong. Cat DPS is no different from Vanilla and power shifting is super powerful, especially with the craftable battery /MCP combo. Maybe make it so kitty DPS procs oils and crusader off it's main hand attacks but otherwise it's fine.
Bear has no real issues. It's a solid raiding spec. It's a bit worse than Prot Paladin in 5 mans due to how obscenely well Prot can hold packs in place but with the tweaks and buffs it's an entirely viable option. Barkskin being castable in all forms would be welcome but Paladins could argue that Divine Shield should be the immunity buff and Divine Protection as a Barkskin effect would also be a solid change that would help paladins.

All in all, Druids are extremely solid and probably the most consistently good hybrid and always have been outside the HoT issue. There's some gripes but compared to Shamans and Paladins, druids get stellar itemisation, good scaling in each area and the changes they need are vastly smaller than Paladins, who are still kind of bad at DPS, and infinitely smaller than Shamans, who need a total overhaul to make Enhance a viable spec.

[Redmagejoe]

Balances problems are the same as Elemental Shamans. The gear supports the spec but there's some tweaks needed such as spell costs, like make Moonkin reduce Balance spell costs by 25%, and the normal issue of there being no Nature resistance debuff on mobs.

Moonkin Form already reduces mana cost of your spells by 20%. What more do you want for them?

[Nightowl]

Balances problems are the same as Elemental Shamans. The gear supports the spec but there's some tweaks needed such as spell costs, like make Moonkin reduce Balance spell costs by 25%, and the normal issue of there being no Nature resistance debuff on mobs.

Moonkin, unlike Shaman, has access to Arcane damage that is on 100% spell scaling, and last time I checked Arcane damage even benefits from typical raid debuffs. Which brings me to the following question:

Why is it such a big deal that there's no nature resistance debuff? You can just spam the 3sec cast arcane spell, which will benefit from the 0,5 sec reduction a lot more than Wrath does due to how global cooldowns tend to operate. I understand this issue from PoV of a Shaman since he's 100% nature damage, not counting shocks, but when a Moonkin brings that up I kinda scratch my head. Is Wrath that much better or what?

[Kairion]

Wrath has superior dps but is worse at mana efficiency. Unless your raid is killing bosses in 30 seconds you want to use starfire over wrath to get the most bang for your buck - or rather for your mana.

Classic druid is even downranking starfire just to keep casting. Any fight you can last while pressing max rank starfire is a boomkins wet dream

[Nickgreyden]

I've played since 04. Just recently joined TWoW.
I've never played a feral druid, DPS or tank. Retail boomkin was bad but haven't played TWoW version. But I really enjoyed resto druid, and their leet usefulness is unimportant to me. But I don't wanna play one without an ooc rez. And while I'm sure there are those with a ton of experience with druid, vastly more than I, it is the only thing I desire from the class.

My thoughts are this. Pre-raid, resto is bad. I don't care about leveling. You pick your punishment for that. But druid as healers are bad in 5 man's. You max deaths are limited to 1 and it costs a reagent. If you are lucky, you can survive one near wipe if there is another rezzer in the party, but that is your one shot. Anyway, nothing big to add. Just wanted to say this.

[Shamma]

I've played since 04. Just recently joined TWoW.
I've never played a feral druid, DPS or tank. Retail boomkin was bad but haven't played TWoW version. But I really enjoyed resto druid, and their leet usefulness is unimportant to me. But I don't wanna play one without an ooc rez. And while I'm sure there are those with a ton of experience with druid, vastly more than I, it is the only thing I desire from the class.

My thoughts are this. Pre-raid, resto is bad. I don't care about leveling. You pick your punishment for that. But druid as healers are bad in 5 man's. You max deaths are limited to 1 and it costs a reagent. If you are lucky, you can survive one near wipe if there is another rezzer in the party, but that is your one shot. Anyway, nothing big to add. Just wanted to say this.

Try HC mate. Ppl do not tend to die in 5-man instances when playing HC. You do not even learn the rez spells.