In my perception (correct me if I’m wrong as I haven’t been playing retail that long) druids currently fall into two general “categories” - animal forms (feral/guardian) and humanoid forms (balance/resto), and but for a couple of specific utilities, there is basically NO point in shifting to the other category (I mean shapeshifting, not spec). This is because “out of category” abilities are so bad as to be useless.
This leads to three questions - 1) why is it this way, 2) does it have to be this way, and 3) what could be done to change it? The first, I think, is relatively easy to answer - it’s the way stats work on gear. As we all know, when in feral or guardian spec, leather gives Agi, while in balance or resto, it gives Int. Also you have to chose between Agi and Int on your weapon and non-armor gear pieces. Thus, “out of category” abilities get literally no contribution from stats.
The second is a balancing question, and one the devs would need to address. Personally, I don’t think it would be OP for ferals/guardians to be able to pop out and heal once in a while, or cast a few balance dps spells that don’t completely suck. Not nearly as good as the spec versions, of course, but not useless either.
Finally, what could be done to change it also seems like maybe an easy answer - make gear stat contribution based on form, not spec. Am I correct in saying that druids are the only class that needs or has this mechanic? So change it such that when in either animal form, gear (at least armor) contributes Agi, and when in humanoid it contributes Int. Do you think that alone would raise “out of category” abilities to the level of at least moderate utility?
I’ve played a lot of classic (from og vanilla to private servers to current iteration) and greatly miss (again, what I perceive) the highly flexible nature of the class, regardless of spec (or at least, much less dependent on it).
Druid is still a very versatile class and the only one in the game with access to every role. We can make use of the different forms and abilities (whether we want to or not). But from within the roles we pick I would prefer they are what they say they are. I love the feral druid and the aesthetic of being “the cat”. I do not like being forced into a play style that is clunky at best. Feral is already fighting a current battle with this, as of right now, bearweaving is looking to be about a 1.9% gain in dps.
The jack of all trades and the master of none is archaic in my opinion. Of course it’s all subjective but I’d be very willing to gather that most druid players prefer the single flavor of their role and would not like to be shifting around all forms for optimal play.
What do you mean by “Again”? Druids have never been a class where you spent a ton of time doing things that have nothing to do with your role. In most cases it’s just about the utility.
It seems pretty well thought out actually.
As a Resto Druid, the bit of DPS that you can do can be done via caster (using a limited subset of the Balance toolkit) or feral (using a limited subset of the Feral toolkit), and you commit to this mostly via your talent choices. Additionally, none of this is really required in group content as people are almost always fine with healers who just heal.
But even as a healer who focuses on healing, I still use cat form frequently for Dash, Stealth, fall-damage reduction, and it’s built-in speed increase. I still use bear, even just as a non-cooldown turtle form. Moonkin form is valuable even just for Flap and for controlling which spells Convoke casts.
Having direct meaningful access to every ability from every role/form would add massive button-bloat issues to a class that is already among the worst in terms of button-bloat.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that changing “category” should be necessary or even desired for optimal play - simply have some measure of viability. E.g., if things hit the fan let a feral pop out and throw some heals around, or let a resto pop into bear for a temporary boost in surviveability. If you want to just maximize your single spec role, then by all means go for it. But forcing it and making half the forms useless half the times seems unnecessary counter to the original design of the class (and yes I understand the game has shifted a long way from its original design, but is there really harm in asking?)
Both of these things are already possible. A Feral Druid will have less mana, but their mana bar should be full since they aren’t using it for anything else. As a Resto Druid, I already use Bear form as a turtle form quite often and it’s saved me many times.
The other forms are not useless “half the time”. If anything we are still hindered by the fact that in higher content the druid HAS to go bear form to live and we are balanced with this in mind. Which is why we are considered squishy outside of bear form. For restoration druids, they use cat form to get more damage to help the group. Cat form is also used for extra mobility.
For healing as dps, you can use heart of the wild and natures vigil for those key moments. Even just throwing out the free regrowths as cat can and has made differences in groups, even if it was small. It could have meant the difference between someone taking fatal damage or living.
Certainly no harm in asking but they won’t give you an answer. You’ll just get other player opinions.
Did you play any substantial time in classic? Apart from end-game raiding (and again I get that the retail game is all about end-game content) most druids could fill all three roles (and ranged or melee dps) with some gear swapping, and without needing to change talents. HOTW/NS spec was particularly good at this.
Since your primary bar swaps for each form, you have up to 12 slots to dedicate to each. And I’m not talking “every ability from every form” - just basic stuff like what you can get in the class tree.
So, you’re basically just upset that you have to press a button to swap talents? I’m really confused by this. You can play all 4 roles on retail optimally with minimal gear swapping. You just switch your specialization. You only need different trinkets and sometimes a weapon.
From the time I spent in classic, you had nearly no mana to do much of anything. In retail you can do anything you want without much concern for your mana constricting you.
I think you underestimate retail druids hybrid capabilities.
No, but I did play during OG vanilla. I even leveled up my druid as Resto back when +Healing gear didn’t even increase your spell damage.
I mean, if you’re just talking about romping around the open world doing random world stuff, then I guess you can/could do whatever you want.
It really doesn’t matter if a UI bar swaps automatically. It’s the number of spells that you have to understand and commit to using correctly, including keybindings. There are specs in this game where the number of abilities that they have to keep track of can be counted on one hand. We would have more than that for each form.
How much damage does Moonfire do if specced feral, or how much healing with rejuv? Regrowth is scaled in such a way that it’s always good - since every spec needs at least 1 viable heal.
Things are a bit better the other direction (humanoid → animal, bear in particular), but can a resto actually tank something for even a brief time in a pinch? I think the answer is no.
Again, maybe this isn’t desired or feasible given the game’s overall design. Your spec is your spec and you focus on it almost exclusively. There’s no need or desire for crossover, apart from a few very niche situations.
Sure. You have the unique ability to load yourself up with HoTs ahead of time. While in bear, you still have abilities that can heal that don’t require shifting out of bear, such as Natures Swiftness + Regrowth, Convoke, Renewal, Grove Guardians, etc.
Feral uses moonfire as a dps gain in wildstalker and has a free heal after every finisher. Feral currently must also use bear form during downtime for damage. We all go bear form defensively. Guardian has a complete hybrid galactic play style called Elune’s chosen that uses moonfire or uses cat form for off tank damage with Druid of the Claw. Resto uses cat or balance to deal damage. I’m probably missing things!
IMO retail made the class even more hybrid with the way you can play without losing too much from your current role. Classic feral used all their mana on powershifting. They never moonfired.
I get what you want though. It’s just not possible in modern world of warcraft. It would either be ungodly overpowered, or below average on everything at best. This was called “hybrid tax” and most hated it.
It’s really nice that we have both versions of the game we can enjoy.
Balance, and while technically it doesn’t have to be this way, the only realistic alternative would require adding a hybrid role to all group types so Blizzard can adequately build encounters around the presence of a true hybrid. Otherwise, having a true hybrid in an even remotely balanced game is impossible.
This isn’t quite correct, at least not for resto. Resto druids gain attack power while in cat based on intellect; that’s why you deal more damage catweaving at 620 item level than 590 item level.
As for the other specs, it would either require us pay a hybrid tax or it would be stupidly broken. More on that in the next paragraph.
This would be completely overpowered, you just don’t seem to realize it. Have you ever asked yourself why the term hybrid tax even came to be with WoW? Have you ever asked yourself why very few resto druids were deemed main healers in vanilla? Why so few feral druids could tank at end game in vanilla? Why feral and balance druids were generally so far behind in performance in vanilla?
The unfortunate reality is that there is no way for a hybrid to retain viability of an offspec without them falling behind the performance of a pure spec in a world where hybrids are competing with pure specs for the same roles. If they could, there would never be a reason to ever bring a pure spec for that role (raid buffs notwithstanding). Even if you never planned to use a hybrid’s ability to jump to a new role mid-fight, having the safety net of the hybrid would be better than not having it and you would be giving up zero performance for that safety net.
That’s why there was a hybrid tax (at least by perception) back in vanilla when hybridizing was more viable. The logic here being that teams would bring a rogue when they want max output and a feral druid when they want a safety net. But then this creates an impossible to balance situation for encounter design. If your encounter design requires a dedicated tank 20% of the fight, you punish teams that don’t have a hybrid to pick up that role. If your encounter design doesn’t require an extra dedicated tank at all, you punish teams that bring the hybrid as they will be weaker on the throughput end.
Realistically the only way to allow hybrids to be truly generally useful at an offspec role mid-fight, is for Blizzard to create a dedicated hybrid role. That way a hybrid dealing less damage or healing wouldn’t disqualify them from getting a damage/healing slot as their competition would be other hybrids that fill the same niche. We’re seeing the same pressure on overstretched roles with support and augmentation. The only way to create balance amongst specs that require different measurement than other specs in a given role is to create a different role entirely.
In vanilla, this wasn’t nearly as much of a problem because collectively the player base was not even in the same league of performance mindedness as we are today. With how performance-centric the game is today, Blizzard would be eaten alive if they attempted to have a true hybrid spec competing in a non-hybrid role.
Off healing is pretty much the same; I played old druid and healed plenty of vanilla and tbc dungeons while specced feral-tank but that required a full +healing and spirit/mp5 gear set after 50; main healing wasnt just a thing you decided mid pull, it was a commitment in gear, consumables and mana managment even without talents.
In tank gear, off healing was pretty much the same as now, ~15 mediocre hard cast before you end up oom, they moved healthbars a bit more but the healing/healthbar ratio was just way higher back in the day along with downtime needed for mana regen.
None of the specs that use too can emergency tank extended periods of time anymore; dps warriors, dks, holy and ret pallies, no one can just slap on a shield or change stances/forms and become a decent tank on the fly for longer then their major DR lasts. Mobs just melee to hard since the active mitigation shift for tanks, and giving a dps or healer the survivability to take the same amount of hits would be way to overpowered. Druids probably still the best at it sans immunity because of heart+bear+barkskin(or SI) being a long lasting combo, ive secured plenty of low % boss kills with it since legions rework.
I remember in I think Legion M+ as a resto druid I had a tank die and was able to switch to bear and taunt and we finished the boss successfully.
I doubt that would still work outside lower level content now but I haven’t tried in a long time. Maybe if they buffed the stats and duration of ursine vigor it would be a thing again
Yeah, I think it’s just not doable in retail. Forms don’t really mean anything - they’re just skins for a spec. I’ll gladly pay the hybrid tax to play a hybrid, as opposed to constantly being siloed, even if there is a silo for every possible play style. As you rightly point out though, that’s only a thing in classic.
I didn’t focus on this in my initial response just for brevity, but this position isn’t really correct, either. You’re working far too much at the extremes. You’ve basically set up your position to be full performance or bust for your offspec. When in reality every offspec form grants access to capabilities that are either impossible to achieve and/or at a much higher level of proficiency than other classes are capable of from the same role. And that’s even more true if you spec Heart of the Wild (albeit with a long cooldown).
Rogues can’t pop into moonkin form whenever a mechanic pushes them out of range to get any ranged DPS. Mistweaver monks can’t pick up 220% armor and 25% more health with zero cooldown if things go sideways. Mages can’t provide any offhealing to teammates. Protection warriors can’t shift into cat to add supplemental damage whenever they aren’t tanking.
It’s true that for your goal of being able to be fully proficient in an offspec, druid forms don’t offer that outside of when using Heart of the Wild. But despite the internet insisting on every situation being black or white, the situation is a lot more gray than this. Offspec druid forms exist between useless and full proficiency. And while they may not offer as much offspec performance as you would like, they offer far more than what most other classes can bring to the table.
But many won’t; or more importantly, many group leaders won’t be willing to have their group incur the hybrid tax. Unless Blizzard designs many fights that greatly benefit from having a hybrid (which would then pigeonhole groups into bringing a hybrid), group leaders will have an incentive to simply not bring them. And such a design would be impossible for small group content like M+ and arena. You might be willing to pay a hybrid tax for the content you want to participate in; I am not.
Perhaps Blizzard could create a choice via talents to give both kinds of players what they want. Where you could choose a set of talents to significantly increase your hybrid capabilities at the cost of performance in your main spec. But I don’t see how that wouldn’t just be a different flavor of forcing raid groups to bring the hybrid.
No, I’m not. As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t expect out-of-spec forms to be anything close to “full performance”, just to have some measure of viability. You seem to think they do, I think they don’t. I’m perfectly willing to accept that I may be wrong. Up until recently retail has not even been on my radar.
The current nature of that talent illustrates my point - it’s needed to make an out-of-spec form viable, albeit briefly.
Sorry, that statement was a bit cryptic. I mean I’ll gladly just continue playing druid on classic if my perspective on its nature in retail doesn’t change (which it may or may not, with more time and experience).
I would disagree. If you want to play druid when it was a hybrid you can always play classic vanilla, BC, Wrath, or Cataclysm. (realistically only vanilla or cataclysm right now on Blizzard servers, but soon cata will be turning into MOP which is really when druid as a hybrid ended and they finally seperated Feral into two different specs)
This is also why they need classic servers of every expansion, but I digress.
P.S. On retail, really every class is a hybrid as every class can do a little bit of everything…the definition of hybrid. Everybody has damage reduction abilities, damage amplification, self healing, etc.
