Big nope on that one.
It’s hard for me to type a message to you that doesn’t revolve around me asking you if anyone that works at Blizzard that is working on Classic WoW, or any version of WoW for that matter, still actually plays the game. Don’t take this post as hate, but do understand that your responses are really starting to create alienation.
I like this change. It does reduce the feeling that I need to level leather working. At least until the Sunwell version is released.
I’m Interested in how the Sunwell version works. My guild was so happy after the Blizzcon dev interview. I hope you are still going in the direction of reducing the number of people that need to be leather workers. I don’t feel its good enough to just delay the feeling that leatherworking is mandatory until sunwell.
Drums is one of the places where I do NOT care about authenticity.
If it comes down to 20 raiders with leatherworking or re-balancing Sunwell. Please re-balance Sunwell
If you’re not willing to remove the Leatherworking(375) requirement, at least change the buff duration to 1 minute.
That way you can still “preserve the Drums rotation” but you drop the number of required leatherworkers from 20 to 10, which still sucks but its a lot better.
Doubt even 1% of players who complain about drums used sappers/battle chickens on cooldown. Blizzard is a terrible developer and they less the screw with the game, the better.
Oooooooo, 
. I get it now, so you are removing boosts. Thanks guys.
lol, that actually hit me in the funny bone.
I didnt have time to raid in Classic but really want to in TBC. Will not if I need to do this nonsense and its going to be hard to not get forced into it. Which means my sub will end when I hit 70 and get bored of leveling alts. This seems like a distraction from Boosts, and while I am not worried about them a lot of people are and you cant be bothered to speak to those people which is actually turning me against the boost on the principle of solidarity with other players
You’re talking about trash? lol. Tell me how many boss fights as a caster that sappers are OP for? Then think about how many boss fights drums are OP for?
I’m not talking about trash, at least not in the specific sense. I’m illustrating that engineering is in fact, the meta for the top teams in Classic. It has been thru all phases.
When we are speaking of Meta, we are talking about once we’ve boiled all the possibilities down to the last little bits, and we see these are the things that are the most consistent in terms of providing benefits to the group and ease our progression thru the desired content.
And engineering has been that profession throughout all of Classic. If someone is in a raid team that doesn’t largely require engineering from its members, that’s ok obviously-- but it’s not a meta team.
And yet, we made it just fine thru Classic without Blizzard removing the engi requirement of nades/sappers.
I believe that well coordinated drums usage in TBC will account for ~3% dps increase on boss fights, although i’ll concede that on very short fights where burst windows matter significantly more, we might see an uptick of their importance. Many classes and specs still garner almost no value from haste (dots/hots especially.)
Would I like to see some changes to the perceived upcoming TBC meta? Yes, and putting some type of tinnitus debuff on drums would be the best way imo to deal with that small issue.
I would also like to see bonuses grey out when someone has dropped a profession, like the ring enchants and the JC gems.
The actual worst offender that I see on the horizon unless dealt with is the group swapping of shamans and warriors to keep shouts and bloodlusts rolling. I’m not really sure what would properly address the situation, but I hope (but don’t expect) something to come along that will alleviate the issue. It just happens to be a particularly cancerous thing that breaks raid frames, annoys healers, and ruins the enjoyment of warriors etc.
You have to understand that engineering is not important for guilds not participating in the speed clear meta, which is the vast majority of guilds. Engineering has virtually no impact on clearing bosses, which is what most guilds care about. They don’t care if they can pull 5 trash packs and sapper them down or whatever.
But drums increases raid dps on bosses. All guilds care about boss dps. That is why the vast majority of guilds, including non-speed run guilds, require WB. It’s because they increase raid survivability and increases dps by a huge margin. Those buffs make boss fights easier. Yes trash goes faster too, but that’s not why most guilds collect WB.
I’ll edit and say that engineering is also popular because it’s the best pvp profession. People who don’t really pvp nor do speed clears don’t really need engineering because it doesn’t impact boss difficulty except for one boss. and most guilds have enough pvpers for that one boss anyway.
You dont sapper or nade bosses?
As a caster? It’s not needed most of the time. And the only time sappers have a significant impact on boss difficulty is viscidus. It does so little for most bosses.
Bumping this to let Blizzard Devs know they are 100% wrong in this decision.
Same! Bumping this!
I know right! Imagine a casual that doesn’t sapper on cd on bosses! (gasp!)
Yes, I do understand.
Yes, and world buffs are like 7000% better than drums. Heck, Onyxia buff alone accounts for more than drums ever will-- even if we flat-out ignored Rend, ZG, the zanza potions, and that’s even before we get to the super-silly stuff like Blasted lands consumes, Rumsey rum, etc.
So lets make sure we are in fact comparing apples to apples. In Classic, we have any variety of what feels like 17 different random consumes/buffs that actually quadruple our dps/healing/tanking/rage gen output… versus 3 or maybe even 4% shorter time to kill on a boss fight (drums.)
How many hoops are you prepared to jump thru to get that 3 or even 4% increase? Is your entire raid team prepared? Are you going to level professions like enchanting time and again each tier, so that you can enchant your rings and then drop it again (but only until the next tier?)
If you say yes to that, then I believe you. I can assure you that my personal Classic experience has been exactly that, doing all of these things. Staying up all night camping dragons, so that I send notifications thru an app on my phone and wake up my guildies at 4am for the dragons. Having to run multiple DMs on raid nights (I play both warrior and druid tanks) to help my guildies get their tribute buffs. Our guild required every melee, hunter, caster, and paladin to be an engineer for sappers and nades. The only allowances were made for druids that have forms to stay in (kitty/bear) and also the guild profession guys (guild enchanter, bloodvine tailor initially, alchemist with all flask recipes etc.)
I 100% believe there will be teams that enjoy the drum rotation meta and thrive with that level of sweatiness. But it is not required to clear the content, at all. And if the very average guilds actually start and actually enforce that playstyle just for a 3-4% increase on very marginal content, I will be super disappointed.
I don’t believe that many guilds will actually force this onto their playerbase. It is just not necessary. It’s like racing to snag the mail from your mailbox in the afternoon. Is it a thing that can be measured and compared? Yes. Is it also an absurdity that the vast majority of humans have no desire to engage with? Yes.
You seem to confuse the strength of the advantage with guild requirements. I can see guilds not requiring the 8 yrd version because it might be more trouble than its worth, but they will require people to be LW for Sunwell.
It doesn’t matter how powerful the buff is, it’s powerful enough that people will require it. You seem to think that it’s not very powerful then people won’t require it. It’s as powerful, or more powerful than some world buffs and some guilds require all WB for their raids. You think they won’t require drums as well? Just because you can’t stack WB anymore doesn’t mean people won’t require any advantage they can take.
I don’t really think engineering is a good analog because the profession really doesn’t do much for boss fights outside of one. 5% haste provides so much more damage. Not even remotely comparable.
Ok. I do. We can agree to disagree.
I see you are posting on a priest (although a retail one) so let’s use that as an example. How much damage increase does it provide for a priest? How much healing?
5% haste across the raid is ~5% damage increase. It’s hard to quantify because haste adds synergy to some specs, allows more CD stacking, but it requires perfect coordination to maximize uptime. It doesn’t matter how it impacts healers. They weren’t dpsing anyway. Yeah drums are less useful for healers, but we’re talking about dps groups. Most TBC raids will be stacking dps and tank groups. They won’t mix in healers across all groups apart from shaman. All of those groups would use drums. Healers could also make use of the other drum types if 5% haste is not as important to them. And healer groups may opt not to use drums. Still would be only 1 of 5 groups where drums might be optional.
First, I want to thank you for the replies. I’m not trying to argue, but I like discussion and I can honestly admit that WoW has been my favorite game to play and discuss since I started playing in 2006. 
Many many groups will put a restodruid in the tank group for the Tree aura (25% increased healing received.)
Yes. I haven’t personally found this 5% haste to magically add up to 5% throughput, due to the variance of both specs (bleeds/dots) coupled with occasional inconsistencies in drums applications (scuffing it up.)
Maybe, after a month or two. Take an enhance shaman as an example. He is first and foremost going to be a blacksmith to make his weapons, and might also be a jewelcrafter or an enchanter. He won’t be a LW at all initially. Then he (and his team) might discover that they can actually clear the content with no problems, while they are all still doing their cd’s and crafting their bis pieces etc and might just decide that the hassle of dropping all these professions in order to get drums may just not be worth it to them.
Many healers have had a quite unenjoyable time thru Classic if they were completely honest. Like in my Classic guild, all of our warriors were running cancelaura macros to their Bloodthirst, Heroic strikes, etc just to make sure that no druid would ever see a benefit to casting a Regrowth on them.
Many healers are finally excited to see things coming up that equate to more than just stand here and spam rank 9 Healing Touch, and nothing else. When they finally get to TBC and see their raidframes breaking because the leader continually swaps kids in and out of groups to keep commanding shout on a paladin, moving bloodlusts onto the hunters forever, etc. then it’s going to be a frustrating experience.
That’s what I honestly expect to see if the current proposals go live for TBC.
Yes, maybe, perhaps. Certainly the top teams will. (The actual top teams, not the wannabe middle of the pack teams that claim this ridiculous title of semi-hardcore that we see so often nowadays.)
But also, Sunwell is the end of the expansion. So yea, maybe. All the crafted gear is out of the way by that point. Most of the enjoyment from being a tailor and making bags, popping kids in Bg’s with nades etc might very well have had the shine worn off by then.
Fair enough. I think if LW had other stuff besides drums for non-leather/mail wearers I don’t think people would be complaining about them. the 5% haste bonus is so much better than any other profession, guilds are just going to flat out require their dps to have it. Casters may get by without them until Sunwell.
It’s just not fun to dedicate one profession slot for a single item in TBC. That’s why people are trying Blizzard to fix drums so the meta isn’t 20/25 LW.
I don’t think people complained about engineering as much because it was also the bis pvp profession. And most players in classic did some form of pvp. You also didn’t hurt your raid not having engineering if you weren’t doing speed clears because the profession didn’t really add a lot, especially as a caster for the vast majority of bosses. If LW had some uses for cloth and plate wearers outside of drums, I think people would be a lot more meh about it.