3 questions for experienced druids

Classes Druid
1

Hey, I am bored with WoW and I think it is just because I am bored with the classes I always play as I have been playing them for so many years. I was thinking of trying to main a Druid instead. I have three questions though.

  1. Can you play well without form shifting mid combat?
    The hardest content I do is Heroic Raids and M+ to get keystone master, and even then it is just if I am really into WoW at the time that I bother to do either of those most of the time I just do the Normal raid and get bored of M+ before keystone master.
    For the level of content that I play wondering if switching forms mid combat is needed or not as it is a little overwhelming the amount of buttons it takes to be doing that. I am planning on tanking, doing dmg with feral and healing just switching depending on my mood incase that matters.

  2. Do you feel like Blizzard messes with your class to much?
    One of the reasons I get annoyed with the two classes that I played a lot of for years (Pally & Hunter) is I feel like every patch my class gets changed, sometimes it is trash, sometimes it is top tier but no matter what it is always being Fd with, it is never stable. Does it feel that way with the Druid or no?

  3. Best Race for Durid Transmogs?
    I was thinking about doing a Highmountain Tauren but not sure yet. what are your thoughts on what races you think look best with the Durids transmogs?

Bonus question… do you guys get player hate like the Pally & Hunter? haha this may sound strange but I feel like whenever I play my hunter people are just yelling huntard all the time even if I am top dmg and doing all mechanics. And if I play my Pally I could pull some amazing play and save the whole team and have top dmg and heal people at key times to save everyone and at the end everyone just says “Yeah, your a Paladin they are OP so it is just easy for you” kind of grinds my gears haha, not sure if Druids get any crap like this or not or if it is just the hunter and pally.

2

1.) Form Shifting is ultimately really not needed. For your desired content

(RESTORATION SPECIFICALLY)

They changed our stuff to where the mana and dmg amplification is baseline now in a talent in our spec tree so you can just starfire / wrath / moonfire / sunfire / nature’s vigil.

You could cat weave and do like 10% more dmg but honestly its a risk in pugs for someone to die and the key to fail.

So you can learn to catweave in coordinated groups eventually.

But shifting isn’t mandatory unless its to Bear Form and Frenzied Regen for a quick self heal / defensive.

(BOOMY / FERAL / GUARDIAN SPECIFICALLY)

You pretty much stay in ur form and switch to bear for defensive and travel / cat form for mobility.

  1. ) I feel your pain, pally now feels like a weird Hpriest / Rsham, identity crisis for sure.

But no Rdruid doesn’t change. But its for the worse. Cause as the game innovates, you don’t.

The class plays nearly the same since Legion, WoD Arguably.

You can find comfort in having this toxic relationship hating the devs with the class that won’t change that you will fall in love with.

This unchanged is the same for Guardian / Feral / Boomkin

1 - 2 new concepts but are AFK baseline and you don’t gotta really do anything different.

3.) Tauren / highmountain for big mogs.

Nelf and zandalari troll for clean versatile mogs. (zandalari has a cool boomkin form)

Kultiran for the forms cause they are ugly otherwise.

Worgen if your into that sort of thing.

Yeah, druids get hate but not for our skill.

Just for us being useless and offering nothing.

Were a verse buff and battle res (that’s it)

We aren’t that great in mythic +, Feral Sucks, boomy has AoE but terrible single target, resto druid is awful for many reasons, and guardian is on its way out of meta.

Raid if your doing heroic and below ya all specs are great. After that into mythic you are juss wanted for ur verse buff so they will only take one of u. Probably tank if not then boomkin / feral, rdruid doesn’t offer anything in a mythic raid comp that would be worthwhile to take.

PvP (arena)
Ferals a god rn
Boomy is I would say a B
Resto is trash
Guardian is Meh

BG ( Rated & casual )
Ferals a god rn
Boomy is a god rn
Resto is trash
Guardian is Meh

Open World

All of em are S+++++ Super fun
stealthin, zooming, flying, escapin!

3

In terms of being able to perform your role, shapeshifting isn’t required save for one exception, which I’ll cover in the second paragraph. However, we do need to discuss druid defensives for balance, feral, and restoration. When compared to most other specs in similar roles, druids have worse defensive options except for bear form. In many ways, bear form is the best defensive in the game because it has no cooldown and no duration. With how spiky incoming damage has become, it’s very common to be popping into bear form before a big hit. It sounds like your concern is more the keybind and need to figure out an additional rotational component, which this shouldn’t have much of an impact; but it is something to consider in terms of if you ever need to shift.

The exception I mentioned is resto druid not in a raid context. For KSM-level keys, there is no need for you to deal damage or use an interrupt to have successful groups. However, these things certainly help at all levels. For interrupts, you will have to catweave at least to get the interrupt off. For dealing damage, you can do reasonably well with either catweaving or using casted damage spells. Catweaving does deal more damage as things currently stand, but doing something if you have downtime is better than not. Both options will allow you to get mana back if you spec into Master Shapeshifter.

As someone who plays feral and resto, no I do not think Blizzard messes with the class enough, actually. While I would not welcome having monthly changes like some specs seem to receive, there have been issues with the class and specs I play within the class that go back the better part of a decade now.

Balance specifically does receive more frequent changes, but I’ve never really cared for the spec and so it hasn’t really impacted me that much. And it’s nowhere near as frequently changed as paladin and hunter.

I barely care about transmogs on my druid because I’m a cat more often than not. Shadowmeld is just so good for PvE that going anything but night elf has never really been much of an option for me.

4

Depends what you are doing and what spec.
Healer? you don’t got a form unless you doing cat form heal stuff
Feral and Balance? Unsure, don’t really play them
Guardian? As long as you can get Regrowth proc and keep up Iron Fur (maybe go with giant lunar beam as a talent choice as that heals you A LOT) and you won’t ever have to shift out of bear.

5

I’ve been a Feral and Resto main (exclusively druid really, barely touch alts, but I help a lot of classes in my guild with rotations) since Wrath. I’ve dabbled in Guardian and feel extremely tanky, but I’m just not a fan of tanking.

Do you have to shift mid content? Note that your main action bar can shift to a new bar depending on your form, so you’re getting a lot of re-use out of keybinds.

  1. Feral - You’ll shift into bear for defense when you know a big hit is coming, to cast frenzied regen using rage instead of energy, or to incap roar, but that’s about it.
  2. Resto - If you want to get into catweaving (Dream of Cenarious makes your dps heal - shreds heal for 1.3 mil atm for me on a party member), it ups the complexity / usefulness of the spec. You technically don’t have to, but it’s an indicator in my opinion of a good resto vs a great one as any damage pushes keys faster and requires good control over every encounter.
  3. Guardian - It has a reputation of being boring. It’s as boring as you make it where advanced catweaving ups the complexity/skill ceiling. You retain a portion of your armor/hp when leaving bear if you’re Druid of the Claw, so that can make it much safer than it has been in the past.

Do you feel like Blizzard messes with your class too much?
Definitely no. In fact, we are often ignored for a long time. That can be both good and bad though because changes are not always buffs. It’s definitely not like Paladin haha. That being said, when a spec is in a really bad spot, you’re probably gonna be there for a while. I think Resto and (usually, not really recently) Boomy typically get the most support. As I hate boomy though, maybe it feels different to those who actually play it as I’m going off of the patch notes I’ve read over the years.

Best Race for Transmog?
Entirely subjective. Shadowmeld OP if you care about that, but I’m excited to try the upcoming Zandalari racial changes to see if the crazy proccing bleed is gonna be worth anything.

Do druid players get hate?
We do based on memes and long-time expectations. There are still people who automatically consider feral bad in particular. Resto this expansion has had a rap of being utter crap, though it really requires a deviation from old traditions in my experience.

Closing thoughts on spec viability
Feral is actually in a pretty decent spot, but it requires more work than a lot of classes to learn how to make it work. It also has more on-the-fly decision making than most. Information is extremely important for the spec as you’re dealing with snapshotting, pandemic windows, and minor energy pooling for tiger’s fury windows. Rotation differences between single target and multi are far more drastic too than “final verdict or storm?”. My very recent alt is a ret paladin, and it’s stupid how easy it is to just blast 1 million overall at ilvl like 603 in keys. So, I get it. I have a weak aura on wago if you search “Feral Druid Suite” (Raij doesn’t search well for some reason) or there are others as well that can help with bleed/ buff tracking. As for numbers, I’m regularly doing in M+10s 1.2-1.6 million overall. Raid single target burst is about 2.5 - 3 million dps for the first 20 seconds and every 2 minutes. Convoke go brr. So, definitely viable.

Resto felt horrible early on. I actually saw someone on here that did 11s suggest an alternate talent setup that kinda turned resto on its head that worked really well. For years and years and years, cenarion ward was group content while abundance was raid. With a recent talent though that gives abundance cast speed as well, pairing abundance with germination in 5 man content + the crit talents gives 100% crit regrowth spam at like .5s cast for barely any mana. Regrowth spam in the past was considered really bad form too, so I admittedly got stuck in the past and couldn’t think outside the box at first. The switchup though made healing a 10 Grim where I could never keep up with the last boss completely doable and even easy. Also, stacking stupid levels of haste has helped drastically. For w/e reason, raiderio has the wrong talents for what I ran (trying to run resto more to test this more), but it’s basically double lifebloom, germination, imp regrowth, double swiftmend, and abundance + wildwood roots that make it feel as good as it does.

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6

I did play Guardian and Boomy for casual BGs in Dragonflight. How that changed? I remember Guardian being rather competent to hold objectives and put pressure on the opponents, with the free Regrowths being really useful to help team mates.

7

As a balance druid aficionado, yes. They have tinkered with the Eclipse Mechanic every expansion except for when it was removed during Legion and BfA (good times). I don’t know why they seem obsessed with this anti-fun mechanic, but it seems to be here to stay.

8

Night elf. There is nobody else who comes close.

9

Cool thx for all the helpful replies. I am leveling a Highmountain Tauren right now and like it a lot so far. Only doing Guardian so far as I am just spamming dungeons but I feel like it is the most intuitive tank I have played so it is nice. Just moonbeam, thrash, mangle, iron fur spam, heal myself when needed, repeat.

I am excited to try out Feral for questing though.

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