Having meld/stun be so compulsory makes playing my Tauren druid feel terrible.
95% Night Elf druids across all pvp brackets.
Every M+ druid being Night Elf
I’m so sick of Night Elf meta…
NERF SHADOWMELD
11 Likes
If they made more Druid races I’d be happy to change. I hardly ever hit meld as a tank in M+ anyway.
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The amount of skips being pulled off by NE VDH in M+ is so egregious that you will be ridiculed for attempting to join a pug as a BE VDH.
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Don’t get me wrong. I love Shadowmeld. But I’m honestly surprised it’s lasted this long as a 2-minute cooldown. I remember years ago in an MDI I believe, Blood Elf was the best race because Arcane Torrent used to interrupt casts. Then Arcane Torrent got changed to purge a magic effect instead, which completely changed the meta.
The only reasonable nerf that I’d be okay with seeing for Shadowmeld would be to make it a 3-minute cooldown, rather than a 2-minute. Changing the racial to do something completely different would kill the spirit of the ability which has existed as far back as the original Warcraft RTS. Unless someone has a revolutionary idea here for a rework of course. I just wouldn’t want to see the racial ruined.
Could just give Druid in general (or maybe just Feral spec) a Vanish ability in some capacity. Rogues still have a huge advantage playing Night Elf for the free Shadowmeld-Vanish. But at least if the Rogue does want to play another race, they still have Vanish available to them without Shadowmeld being nearly a total requirement like is for Druid.
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Give me Dracthyr (Half-Elf) Druid and I’d switch in a heartbeat regardless of racial!
But I agree with the premise, Shadowmeld has defined the meta for a long, long time.
Although I do agree that it needs a nerf. But I question where it would be utilized if it wasn’t a vanish.
But the Druid problem revolving Nelf the only solution is to give Druid a Meld for all specs.
That would share a CD with meld. Similar to the PVP trinket thing with human racial.
That is my only solution that seems logical?
2 Likes
Would love to have play dead back, was a thing tbc beta that got removed and was brought back for a bit with symbiosis; not a Vanish but can still be used for skips and combat resets in a similar way.
Meld itself might need a longer cooldown or maybe a rework to be a free invis potions; instead of a vanish that forces you to be still, you can use invis and move for a bit.
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I am willing to bet that if Meld is nerfed, it will go back to it’s original implementation that it can only be used out of combat.
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With my above comment (#5) in mind, I still WOULD be sad if Shadowmeld were nerfed, especially made useless. I think its absurd strengths shine more on the fundamental design issues of the game. IMO a far more fair nerf would be to make it be just a short immunity in PvP, but it should crucially retain the combat-drop functionality in the open world.
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So this is the reason my Ztroll druid with all timed 12s isn’t invited to +13s… wrong race, lol.
I honestly agree with this. I miss being a tauren feral
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Not Really…honestly there are plenty of Druids Races now…yet still low representation because of Shadowmeld. Personally, I made the decision NOT to play my NE druid as my Main. I play Worgen Main, or KT just for esthetics…I like the Werewolf, and KT Forms.
Yet Every Time I play it I miss Shadowmeld.
3 Likes
Easy fix would be to give shadowmeld (named something else, perhaps) as a druid ability for all races.
Have it share a cooldown with Shadowmeld, thus removing the requirement to choose Nightelf for High-end content.
Kind of removes Nightelves racial bonus but maybe they can give them something else instead? Something less overpowered?
P.S. I will admit when I play druids that arn’t a Nightelf, I miss Shadowmeld. It is about the only racial I miss, lol. Not only is it a in-combat vanish, but it boosts your next Shred or Rake.
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I guess that could work. But it would also remove meld from every other Night Elf player’s class as well. For example, Night Elf Priests and Hunters thematically would actually use this ability in the lore, and they’d lose it. Would be very strange. The more I think on it, the more I’m realizing that would make me sad.
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No they don’t need to remove Shadowmeld. They would need to give druids basically a copy of Shadowmeld, and if they use it, it shares a cooldown with Shadowmeld. Basically, removing Shadowmeld only for Druids (the racial ability, not the new druid-specific one)
This would remove the “meta pick” of Nightelves for Druid for High-end content.
I see what you’re saying now. It would be beneficial to the other Druid races, so they at least have 1 Vanish like Nelves do right now, rather than none at all. And we wouldn’t be giving Night Elf Druids 2 Vanishes if this new Druid Specific-Vanish/Meld shared a CD with the racial. I guess the issue for me is that now Night Elf Druids specifically don’t really get a racial at all if you think about it. Sort of weird I guess.
It raises the question that if this could and did happen; would Rogues keep the extra Shadowmeld on top of their Vanish like they have it now? Or would Night Elf Rogue naturally need the cooldown share nerf?
…h’wat? Meld/stun be compulsory? Brother, Cowstun/meld are undeniably good, but they’re not that good. They’re certainly not make-or-break a class good.
Y’ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe you see a lot of NE more because of the aesthetics? Let’s investigate -
Horde druid races - troll, z. troll, cow, moose
Alliance druid races - nelf, worgen, kul’tiran.
It’s an undeniable, undebatable fact that people dig the pretty characters in games. Furries are also a reasonably small subset of the people playing the game. So, which race, would you say, is both conventionally “pretty” and also not a Furry? Mmmmmyeah. That’d be NE. It’s why you see so many of them. The racial’s good, but I’d bet massive odds you’d still see swarms of them even if the racial got nerfed (which it won’t). End game content, you’ll be playing that character a lot to get there, meaning you’ll have to be looking at it a lot.
Short and sweet: Aesthetics matter. Want people to play non-NE druids? Don’t nerf the racial, just open the class up to other “pretty” races. Beyond that, unless you intend to homogenize all races so NOBODY gets racials, you’re inevitably going to have some better than others. Let’s say they nerf Meld, the min-maxers are just going to go cow for the CC thereby just shifting the goalposts (and probably just narrowing your complaint here). Everybody else’d just stay NE 'cuz best looking druid (to most people).
Best you just play what you like and ignore what other people are doing, dude.
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Yeah, everyone is a Night Elf for the “Wild Hair” setting… ofc.
I do play what I like. I play Tauren.
I still hate that Shadowmeld is so obviously (just not to you it seems) OP.
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It isn’t. Objectively. Any differing opinion is simply ignoring reality. It isn’t Vanish, never was Vanish, and has never worked like Vanish. You can’t move during, if you drop out of it with your party in combat (either by taking EXACTLY 1 DAMAGE FROM ANYTHING, moving AT ALL, or using ANY ABILITY) you get all your aggro back. For all intents and purposes, it’s only real purpose is dropping combat to avoid a wipe and even then it doesn’t work like 75% of the time due to prevalent rot damage and the requirement that you’re basically the last one alive for enemy aggro to actually drop, and again, for the kids in the back, EXACTLY 1 DAMAGE BREAKS IT.
Tell you what. Convince Papa Blizz to give NEs a more useful racial CC like your oh-so-underpowered race of choice and I’ll be super groovy with losing my almost-never-works and is almost-never-used combat drop. Legitimately and unironically I have Meld on my bars mostly just in case, it LITERALLY DOES NOT GET USED ON A REGULAR BASIS, and again, VERY COMMONLY BREAKS BEFORE IT’S INTENDED PURPOSE. And before we go there, I don’t play a Tauren because I don’t care for the look, objectively their racial wins out (not that even that is a big deal, which is why I’m not boohooing to try get them nerfed).
Just for good measure - If your inane whining was to open druid to the Blood Elf race, I’d be on board, and that might actually solve your self-perceived problem. Y’know, because it’d open another conventionally pretty race so people would play that instead. As I stated above, people prefer playing something they find attractive, and turns out a lot of people don’t find cattle, dogs, whatever trolls have going on, or obesity as attractive as a tall fit fantasy race. Shocker.
ADDITIONALLY - From a PVP standpoint: You can’t figure out how to play around an ability that breaks on 1 damage and they can’t move during? Really? When you have an AoE racial stun? On a 30 second shorter CD? Maybe PVP isn’t your strong point, hoss. “Buuuuh but it’s got a 0.5 second cast time what if they mooove?” Well, that broke shadowmeld, any movement does. Your stun’ll be up 30 seconds sooner than their meld. Congratulations, you’ve countered Meld. 
3 Likes
Stonerform has been OP and meta in M+ for ages too, and hopefully gets nerfed as well soon.
But this thread is about Shadowmeld, which is so OP that there are more Night Elf’s in pvp than all the horde races combined… despite not even being able to roll every class in the game.
It’s default for Druids and Rogues in all content.
I’m sure they have all picked Night Elf for the wild hair.