I’ve been struggling for a while on what I want to main. For 15 years I’ve played Hunter. For whatever reason Hunter has become very boring to me. I started leveling this Druid a couple weeks ago and i have so much fun! I have been considering maining this Druid from now on. Just scrolling through the forums though I see many are displeased with Druids especially in Shadowlands. Are things really that bad? I have so much fun on my Druid even though he’s only 74. Is it still worth it to main a Druid currently and going into Shadowlands? I would really like to hear the opinions of some veteran Druids. 
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I’ve mained a druid in almost every expansion at some point. I was a feral main rank 10 (on another account, RIP) in vanilla, and all of BC.
Honestly, unless we see some changes to the base class, its going to be more of the same. Poorly scaled at the beginning, only becoming playable near the end. You have to work much harder than any other class in PVP and DPS (feral) while being middle of the pack dps, and little utility(feral)
There are some (soulscape from twitch) that think we will be fine, but he also is a mythic raider whom has the best gear at all times. Mind you when he pvps, you hardly ever see him on his feral, you see him on a lock, or a DH. There’s a reason for this.
A class shouldn’t BECOME fine with the best gear, it should be playable at all levels of gear and just hone in on dmg with gear.
Guardian is just boring and badly designed. Its a spec left in the dust with the changes to all the other specs and classes over the last couple expansions. thrash, mangle, swipe. hit Ironfur when you can. COMPELLING GAMEPLAY.
When I play my other tanks i feel like an actual tank:
Warrior
- aoe Fear(baseline, druids get incap, which is broken IMMEDIATELY and therefore useless unless you are only trying to interrupt a cast)
- aoe stun (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- ST stun (both war and druid have to spec for it, warriors ST stun is less duration, but its ranged and therefore better in most situations.)
- group wide health increase (druid has no such utility)
- I can intervene damage (druid has no such utility)
- AOE Damage reduction (that also grants me rage if speced, amazing) (druid has no such utility)
- an actual DPS cooldown (druid has no such utility (until SL, and its a lame dps utility (berserk))
Paladin:
- Blessing of Sac: DR for someone in my party. (druid has no such utility)
- bubble taunt (if speced) (druid has no such utility)
- cheese mechanics with bubble/bop (druid has no such utility)
- ranged long stun (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- aoe incap (that my own abilities dont break unless i use it poorly (IE, I dont have bleeds)
- Blessing of Freedom for myself or a party member ((druid has no such utility as stamp roar doesnt clear snares or roots))
- Insta-cast heals for party members if they need it (druid has no such utility)
- Lay on Hands (druid has no such utility)
- and amazing ranged interrupt + rebuke.
- and actual DPS cd. (druid has no such utility (until SL, and its a lame dps utility (berserk))
DH:
I dont actually play this class anymore because I have a spine.
- aoe silence (druid has no such utility)
- aoe grip (if speced) (druid has no such utility)
- aoe fear (druid has no such utility)
4 ) self heals for days (druid has no such utility) - ??? I got nothing else, but it still feels better to play than a bear. There are built in interactions with souls and heals, spirit bomb, leaps. Its just fun to play.
DK:
- AOE grip (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- ST grip (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- ranged stun (spec’d, still better than guardian melee range stun)
- self heals are better than druids
- AMS (druid has no such utility)
- unstunable when IBF is on (people underrate this i think) (druid has no such utility)
- SL they will get AMZ too… (druid has no such utility)
Monk:
- AOE stun (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- Ring of Peace (talented) simply the most unique area of denial and interupt in the game. (druid has no such utility)
- Mitigation smoother than any other tank
- ST incap (baseline) (druid has no such utility)
- aoe slow (kegsmash snares) (druid has no such utility)
- teleport with setup (druid has no such utility)
The list can probably go on, this is just stuff off the top of my head.
As far as Ferals go, having to GCD just to help my group when I need to, and no other class suffers an additional GCD to heal, or “pop out of dps” …feels real f*** bad.
Boomkin is filler spell spamming snoozefest.
Resto will always be good because the devs seemingly only care about giving restos every single tool while ignoring the other specs, which they decided to gimp for 3 expansions now, soon to be 4.
Guardian and feral are playable, but you will have more fun and not want to quit the game playing other classes.
If you want to play a boomkin; play lock, mage, or even hunter
If you want to tank; play war, pally, dk, monk
If you want to stealth; play a rogue, they are OP as f. (those cooldowns are so amazing)
If you want to melee dps; play literally anything else.
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what spec are you looking to play??
“Bad” is a matter of perspective. Druids are not in the very definition bad. but we are subpar to other classes in respective roles. now let me preface this by saying the druid is literally the only class to fill all 4 roles (Tank, MDPS, RDPS, Healer) and as such i dont feel they should ever be the strongest at XYZ (they should be a true “Jack of all Trades, masters of none”. however right now each spec has massive shortfalls that make then undesirable in endgame content.
Bears:
-Lacking DPS thats needed for M+ and Raids (where any none healing class needs to bring it all for the kill).
-lacking ANY sort of fun in their rotation (swipe, swipe, thrash, mangle… there i made the bear rotation).
-only 2 CD’s to combat magic damage (both not on short CD’s, with 1 being a serious oh sh*t button)
-no baseline kiting/control abilities (roots takes you out of bear and you can never afford to get out of it) and you would sacrifice other key tools to gain the 2 kiting abilities we can get.
Feral:
-Very slow ramp up time to get bleeds out and put up pressure (in raiding it can be okay but you’ll chunk a lot of your lust time) making M+ not all strong.
-very weak and easy to get chunked down and killed (as we have little to no defensives)
-the rotation is very strict and missing a step/wrong step can lead to a drastic drop in dps.
-gear dependency puts them low on dps without getting the correct gear
Boomkins run similar to feral, exception being instant cast star surge that can generate dps fast, but in movement fights you resort to sun/moonfire spam and SS spam.
overall the druids just seem to be riding the blizzard rollercoaster of skills, where we excel one expansion, people complain, blizzard freaks out and shuts them down into the ground. AS it currently stands, there are not many great improvements coming to druids for SL and thats what concerns many mains for druids as we do not want to spend another expac hoping for change and being forced to get alts.
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Honestly play what you like. If you aren’t wanting to do super high mythic dungeons or raids druids get by just fine. I love my Feral druid and get by just fine in world content. I only recently joined a guild and started doing some raiding and mythic content and have been fine. I’m never top dps but I hold my own and am never last. One of our main tanks plays guardian druid and some play restro healers.
Unless you feel the need to min-max everything, Druid will get you buy just fine.
The small increased damage or whatever I might get from maining something else can not compare with the amount of QoL skills we have in the world. Stealth, instant flight, fast underwater travel, and a teleport hub are just a few. And possibly most important is the ability to interact with stuff in flight a sometimes even stealth without breaking out.
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Agreed! I think I will continue on with my Druid! Even though most people say it’s boring i actually enjoy Guardian. Maybe I’m just boring xD
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Meh, I’ll keep playing Druid regardless.
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I actually don’t mind Guardian’s rotation as long as you talent for Pulverize I find it pretty fun, alhough swipe is pretty lackluster. Without Pulverize though the rotation can feel extremely boring. The only thing is that for big aoe pulls (like 4+) RaT is just better but it’s entirely passive so there’s no gameplay interaction going on there.
Enjoy the Pulverize nerf in Shadowlands.
10 second duration
30 second cooldown
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Yea but they are increasing the damage reduction from 9% to 20%.
Sounds like it will be a mini-OH SH*T button.
Although they will have to significantly increase the damage for it to remain a single target dps increase over RaT.
Almost nobody will take it, just like almost nobody takes Pulverize now.
Doubling the defense, but reducing the uptime by two-thirds, is not a buff. It’s a nerf.
Yes I know it’s a nerf.
I was more or less interested on what your take on the extra 11% damage reduction would be like or how it would be useful.
Edit: You have to think, current RaT only provides 6% damage reduction. If you were to spread that out over the course of the new Pulverize that is 18% over 30 seconds compared to 20% DR over 10 seconds.
To quote my Alpha feedback thread:
Druid is a terrifically fun class. People here on the forums want to see it grow and improve for Shadowlands, and we have some concerns about if or how the proposed changes are going to accomplish that. Don’t let that turn you off the class. We all love it, or we wouldn’t be arguing for it so passionately. =)
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Nicely put, thanks Tewa.
If you’re a Resto druid I’m sure it’s fine.
Druid is NOT fun if you play Guardian or Feral, and it’s getting worse in Shadowlands.
“Is not fun to play” is highly subjective. Playing my Feral Druid is the most fun I’ve ever had in the game. You may not like it and that’s fine but everyone can like different things.
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In general, I am always referring to non-trivial content, where your performance actually matters.
I’d note that the top US M+ tank is a Bear, 2nd worldwide behind a monk. Player skill is the most important thing here.
Bear has ample tools to aid itself in multiple pulls. It can be squishy on pull, but it’s made up for with 0 mitigation downtime unless player error is made. I’m currently tanking keys in the 21 range with no issues other than those traced to my own mistakes.
I do understand there are possibly issues with Bear in raid, but since I don’t do that content I don’t know the first thing about it.
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Imagine how well he’d do on a real tank!