Shadowmeld isn’t usable in combat in Vanilla, making it 100% useless for a druid. Does it remain useless in TBC? All I want to do is arena.
Shadowmeld cannot be used in combat in TBC.
It’s still better than WoTLK version (for Druids) – and the cooldown is still 10 seconds in TBC.
Ok, so then unequivocally for druids in arena, Horde is better?
Fruit Elf Druid > Cow Druid, for everything.
10-second Shadowmeld > 2-minute Warstomp, outside of very edge cases where a WELL-TIMED COWSTUN BRO wins an arena match.
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What does an out of combat stealth do for a druid that can go stealth in cat form and move around?
nom nom nom
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Are you saying you can drink while melded? I know in later xpacs you can drink in stealth. I’m assuming you can in TBC?
Yes, that’s what makes Fruit Elf Druid superior to Cow Druid in arena.
You used shadowmeld in arena in a macro to spam your food/water macro to eat/drink while stealthed
Can you not Prowl/Drink like you can now?
Going into cat form cost a lot of mana.
That is good to know! And 2’s come down to mana quite a bit I guess. Ok I guess nelf has more utility than I had thought.
um… the main advantage a night elf has is the stealth level bonus… not shadowmeld.
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Shadowmeld passively increases your stealth, meaning Night Elf Druids are less likely to be the first target. Also as stated you can eat and drink in Shadowmeld or if your Prowl is on cooldown while out of combat you can use Shadowmeld until Prowl comes available.
But arenas are all about the stun / burst combo, so a Tauren Druid would have the edge thanks to +Stamina and an AOE stun every match.
Horde do have better racials overall, but if you’re a healer nightelf is better for druid. The reason for this is because of a couple things, warstomp messes up stun DR that you are going to need for bash or if you are playing with a rogue. Secondly in arena one of the biggest things you will see is how important drinking is going to be.
If you are a nightelf you can sneak away and drink in shadow meld and get tons of full drinks off.
In tbc you can’t eat in form
Warstomp into Cyclone is pretty good but TBC pvp is really slow paced, especially 2s, and comes down to mana management. Shadowmeld + drink is superior to Warstomp for this reason
Thanks for all the feedback guys!! I’ll forge ahead with the nelf druid. I’m tryna take advantage of the queue times that are bound to be terribly skewed in favor of alliance.