I will be looking to do some mostly casual pve (normal/heroic raids and mid-cap M+), as well as my favorite content–pug battlegrounds, skirmishes and wpvp. I see reports on Icy Veins and SkillCapped that ferals are just awful in SL, that guardians are just bland and bad, that their resto healing took a hit and that balance is kinda meh/middle of the pack.
Now, I subscribe to the philosophy that you should just pick a class that is most fun for you, and not chase FotM specs. But, I also have played the game long enough to remember certain specs that I had previously loved become very difficult to enjoy, because their mechanics and tuning was so abruptly nerfed that it felt like you were all of a sudden driving a car with 1 wheel.
So, are druids still going to be mostly viable, if not FotM, and enjoyable overall, or are they truly gimped and broken in SL?
When you refered to they, did you mean ferals, or the guilds that reject ferals in trying to emulate CE bleeding edge guilds? Who is getting the stigma? I’m assuming you meant the ferals.
@Tical Sorry friend but I try my best not to promote that Stigma and just relay what is said. I myself try to make Feral famous and prove its viable at every single part of the game.
For that comment you get two PEW PEW start ducking, but I still love you <3
Take whatever the absolute worst spec in BFA was, at it’s lowest point and it was still completely viable for Normal/Heroic and entry level Mythic bosses and comfortably capable of doing M+ at a +15 level or whatever breakpoint blizzard sets for the weekly cache maximum (it was +10 earlier in BFA).
If your spec is considered “bad” you might have to deal with some stigma which mostly matters for pugging but it’s not really an issue for guild play. Normal/Heroic and entry Mythic guilds will take anyone who shows up consistently and can play up to the level of the rest of the group, regardless of class.
Even the “bad” specs will still be completely viable for all the content the OP described and more.
Do you prefer doing healing, tanking, and dpsing or do you like to focus on 1 role? If you like to do all 3 Druid is a great choice because you don’t have to worry about leveling alts. Druid is also the only tank/healer/ranged dps/melee dps hybrid in the game.
It remains to be seen exactly what numbers feral druid is capable of, but the numbers alone will probably be on the lower end of viable if you gear correctly.
The big question is whether you will be pugging or whether you will be playing with a static group.
If you play with a static group in heroic raids and equivalent level of keys, I would feel pretty darn confident that you can perform adequately with feral.
But those tier lists from IcyVeins and WoWMeta have already done their damage. If you plan on pugging, do yourself a favor and play a meta class for whatever role/content you plan on doing. Getting rejected because of your class is not going to feel good.
Ya know, I actually have enjoyed playing all 4 specs at different times. I liked being able to at least kinda be able to perform any role I wanted in the past. But like Chaunt said:
I remember getting in to some trouble with this during the last 2 expansions. I remember it being frustrating, being told ‘no’ by pug groups, fairly often, simply for being an off-meta spec. It’s something I am still trying to decide if I want to put up with, because I love druids, but I mostly pug content and yeah…if their stigma is going to be really bad again then I might just sigh and avoid the class. I wonder if paladins are going to have the same issue…
I’m not sure about final tuning but, for raid, community perception is that most druid specs are bad. Boomkin is probably the most viable, but is probably considered c tier.
I think feral is good in arena and resto is good in m+.
As a Guardian main, you do feel like people, especially mythic Raiders, are racist against you. You won’t be getting a mythic raid spot in SL, as Guardian, unless you already had one in BFA.
