I am rolling another alt during prepatch, I want to do PvP in shadowlands but just returned to the game and am outgeared and told its not worth the hassle to get better gear to PvP with until SL.
So… alt-a-holic it is. I am debating between a rogue and a druid. So far balance druid has been more fun than feral, but my rogue has been more fun than balance druid. (lower leveling) I was curious about what you PvP druids have to say about Druid class in PvP now in prepatch? I like that a druid can be different specs if I ever wanted to heal in PvP but I also like knowing that the class isn’t nerfed hard or at the bottom of the charts for PvP data.
mainly playing an undergeared feral druid here in pre patch and it feel good in most pvp content. Now druid will never be as popular as rogue and if you wana do other content like mythic rogue will have a easier time doing that. Kittie feel good, lot of self sustain, control and a good burst but is not a power house and is higly skill capped.
Rogue/Mage/Lock are your best bets for DPS. Rogue/mage are ALWAYS good (and have been for 15 years). Feral druid has been a meme for almost 5 years running, and isn’t competitive in PvP except in jungle cleave. Balance druid sometimes has a place in RBGs… but often beaten by Spriest / Lock / Mage. Balance druid does not do well in arena in almost any comp.
Unfortunately DPS druids do not fair well in competitive pvp, and haven’t for the last 2 expansions.
For healers it is always a toss-up, though resto druid and disc priest usually seem ok no matter what.
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Aren’t ferals still/usually considered pretty damn scary in wpvp and duels? Arent balance druids pretty fun at cheesing out tons of damage in battlegrounds? I know that for a lot of people pvp=arenas but…
I forgot to mention resto. The OP didn’t mention resto, but having access to an amazing pvp healing spec is pretty great too.
@OP why not have and play both? It’s pretty easy to level up characters now
I intentionally keep some at mid level too, because mid brwcket casual BGs are fun. You kinda can’t go wrong.
Decided to co-main a druid for SL and play it for basically the first time ever.
But from my research and my experience so far it looks really fun and Balance/Resto seem like they will be strong in PvP according to prominent players like Cdew.
I’m pretty keen to sneak up on people in the world in Prowl and hit them hard from 40+ yds away.
Not sure what lvl you are but Balance QoL gets a lot better once have the full toolkit…eg you only get Shooting Stars and Cyclone, two key abilities, close to lvl 50.
Balance seems to have a really good mix of DoT (Moonfire/Sunfire), Burst (Celestial Alignment/Starsurge), CC (Cyclone/Root Beam/Incapacitating Roar), Utility (Typhoon/Thorns/Off Healing/Stampeding Roar) & Survivability (Travel Form/Bear From/Frenzied Regen).
This legit hurt to read, it pains me.
Just have little to no desire to play mage or rogue.
You can completely ignore what he said to be honest. Not really trying to be mean but I don’t think anything he said about druids is true.
Feral doesn’t have a ton of comps to play, that’s true, but only because MS is so mandatory on melee that it gets overshadowed. It does have health reduction though and besides jungle (feral/hunter) it can easily perform in top ratings in FMP (feral/mage) and with a destro (in all of bfa). It also had great success with UH dks back in the day (called Ebola) and kitty (with a war). To say it’s been a meme for 5 years is just false. Ferals have been in tournaments regularly and have periodically shown up in all of wow’s history. Just because it’s not popular or easy to play doesn’t mean it’s not viable for glad+ range.
Now to say balance does not do well in any arena for the most part is also bs. It literally won blizzcon in S1 of bfa? In bfa Boomy did well paired with a dh, a ww, a rogue (dancing with the stars), spriest (owlplay), fire mage (spicy chicken) and even hunters with a different play style. They could also do fine with destros.
I’m glad I saw this thread and hope you feel more at ease. If anything about druids is strong, it’s their pvp presence. Pve can fluctuate and has over the years (still more than viable, just not necessarily meta always) but in pvp settings they’re generally very solid if played correctly.
Also feral is like king of duels/wpvp.
Take this for what you will but, this is my opinion. That of an exclusive druid main since vanilla and current gladiator (as a boomy primarily).
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World PvP is basically 5 people flying around looking for people to gank. I don’t consider Wpvp competitive. You just jump down - gank someone - fly off.
Balance druids have high dmg in battleground due to padding. (starfall & dots). That is basically it. They don’t really have kill potential like rogue/mage/lock (insert most other classes here).
Again - random BGs is not competitive PvP either.
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Compare Boomkin to mage/lock/spriest/ele
Compare Feral to rogue/warrior/DK/ww/DH
Then answer this question… why would you play feral over any other melee spec - or why would you play boomkin over any other caster spec?
OP is asking for advice from a general rule. And as a general rule - the other specs are better in competitive PvP. Truth hurts… I’m a druid main with 2400 exp in arena - 2500 in RBGs (nothing amazing I know - most people have this xp). I picked up a DH and found groups easier - got rating easier with less thought in how I played… everything was just easier.
I want people to have fun - and if you can ignore the frustration of never finding groups and getting meme’d on… go ahead and play it. If fun means you want to feel competitive - then play something else.
TLDR: You can get gladiator on anything -you just have to play better and work harder to find groups as a Boomy/Feral to do it compared to other classes. (post sounded more harsh than I meant - I truly think people should play what they enjoy. I personally get frustrated when I feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle…)
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Sure, I’m not arguing that. But something doesn’t need to be competetive in the meta/pro sense to still be fun. Casual bgs and wpvp are more of a social/chill thing, and I think it is overlooking a large chunk of the playerbase to just write that off entirely.
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That is fair - I am only looking through the competitive lens.
Which, to be fair back - I can’t speak about because I am very far from competetive or in-the-know on that stuff. It’s on my list to get in to that in SL.
Hey, while youre here, do you have an opinion about those Skill Capped pvp wow guides I’ve been seeing on youtube? They do a lot of tier lists, among other things. They seem cool, but I am unsure what to make of them.
It looks like skill-capped has evolved recently. They used to be a subscription website service. They would have guides written by rank 1 players for each class/spec and composition. One of the big issues in the past few years, was that they had a content draught - and their info would be woefully out-dated.
Very recently - it looks like they have changed their model to incorporate high quality you-tube videos which are very up to date. The info from the videos is spot on. However, we are in pre-patch and a lot will change once tuning occurs in Shadowlands - so you take it all with a grain of salt.
I like their videos and it would appear skill-capped has less personal bias that you’ll see from many Rank 1 streamers. The tier-lists are all subject to change with changes in the expansion - but overall I think the content in the videos is top-notch compared to anything else out there.
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Awesome, thank you for the feedback! I think I’ll keep absorbing their content then. They bring up several concepts that haven’t even been on my radar as a player.
Yeah I mean, so essentially you’re saying “ask yourself this, is druid ever super OP and the ideal fotm meta pick?”
Sure, no it’s not generally. Yes you could’ve gotten rating easier spamming gpy or playing destro or falling asleep while logged into a dh. There’s always classes like that but I think originally condemning druid dps specs to simply not performing well is just bad advice.
I mean what does feral have over those other specs? Honestly it’s burst it’s comparable and it’s self sustain is much higher. I mean it’s hard to compete with rogue and we is typically very strong too but war? Totally different play styles.
Boomy compared to others? It has the dot damage of spriests and can still dish out a lot of damage via casts and dumps. Not to mention the biggest things, it can heal and is the tankiest of the bunch typically.
TLDR: Like you’re not wrong in that mage and lock are safer usually. But druids are more than fine for most people’s goals and even for the very top of the ladder goals occasionally. They’ll never be the easiest to succeed with though and personally, I love that about them. What’s better than beating streamers in 2’s for fun? Doing it as a boomy. And flapping on them afterwards 
Ps
Kinda weird fake humble brag thing. I’m fairly certain you know that most people definitely don’t have that. Especially (no offense to others) most people on these types of forums. Kinda strange to say.
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I didn’t read much in the responses with my post - I just read OP was looking between Rogue and Druid. My advice was to play rogue if you want to be competitive and didn’t want to worry about groups. Play druid if you like to play druid regardless of it being good or not.
But at the end - as always - play what you enjoy most.
So, I have to ask–might the fact that less people may end up playing boomie add an advantage to playing them, simply because less people will be familiar with them?
Uhm, depends on the bracket my dude. Theoretically you’re not wrong, being unfamiliar with a class certainly puts you at a disadvantage. Case and point against hpals, I can tell when they aren’t familiar because they’ll use their aura mastery and cast a big heal. Normally that can’t be kicked by conventional kicks (counter spell, kick, pummel, etc) and so they feel safe. Rootbeam is a blanket aoe silence though and very much can stop that cast. Mistakes like that can cost you games and that’s why I say it depends because at high level pvp, you can’t afford not to know the basics at least of every class. If you’re talking anything below 2400 at least though, I’d say that very well could be an advantage to playing an uncommon spec, yes.
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Rogue is stronger but Balance is easier to play. Balance is actually looking pretty strong at the moment in Arena so is Resto Druid. Play what you enjoy more.
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Unrelated but I think rootbeam is the best healer CC in the game