This is why classes are ruined in retail today. You retail crybabies love to cry. I !@#$ing hate the " [Enter class here] has <<SKILL A>> so why doesn't my class have <<SKILL A>> mentality.
I posted the below in another thread where someone was crying about Druid tanking, but like others have said, you're playing a hybrid class so sit down noob:
Druids were used as off-tanks. They fell off for late end game stuff because of itemization problems not because feral was bad. They had a bigger health pool and more armour than prot warriors but they couldn't avoid or mitigate large crits which made them unpopular. The unpopularity is what led people not to play Druid tanks but they were definitely good tanks. A great Feral could have easily out tanked a good warrior.
Can you really say all classes are equally good at tanking end game content even in today's game?? The answer is no for anyone who's played the game since Vanilla and have done Heroic and above.
Regardless, many raids still brought feral Druids for their innervate, one of the most sought ability in Vanilla WoW especially for raids. In fact, if you visited the Nost subreddit, you'll realize that there are many players who main tanked Onyxia, Ragnaros, etc. as Druids.
You also need to realize that internet guides weren't a norm back in Vanilla. We had limited information on the internet and a lot of people who played didn't bother to look. The website mostly used was Thottbot and that was for quests. Websites like mmo-champion, icy-veins or even YouTube weren't there to guide players. So when the mentality of warriors being the "best" tanks spread, less people played druids and less raids took druids. That didn't mean druids were awful. They were still very much viable.
That being said, Druids were one of the few true hybrid classes meaning they could do everything. Just because they're not as good at tanking as warriors doesn't mean they can't tank. They can tank, they can heal and they can dps.
Prot pallies were also good and had much better itemization. They could take big hits and healers had a much easier time healing them, but they lacked taunt. They still made good off-tanks but they were definitely not as good as warriors or Druids. Regardless, prot pallies brought buffs and bubbles.
That's a good example of how druids were excellent tanks in certain circumstances. They were certainly viable as MTs, even if they weren't by design the best for it.
Looks like you know a lot. The main reason I'll go to a classic server when they are up will be to get Atiesh, only legendary I don't have.
Whoa,, did you get all the others in time period? Because that is truly impressive if so.
I honestly don't know squat about that staff to give you good advice. All I know is we had a guild caster who was collecting the shards of it before 2.0, and then he gave up till mid TBC when he went back and farmed till he had it done. That is actually all I know about the thing.
Balance goes OOM and you will have to auto attack till you regain enough mana to cast again, or you will have to shadowmeld if night elf to drink some water to cast again.
Feral will lack attack power, only source of attack power will be from strength so you will need to squeeze it in with some strength necks rings & if lucky a 2hand strength mace.
That about sums up all the issues a druid would face.
I kinda hope they decide to integrate a few modern changes into the servers, such as hunters having focus instead of mana, agility giving attack power and other such modern things and or changes that are hardly noticeable.
I would not be half amazed if they decide to import the new models into the servers since its just a cosmetic option in the interface to appeal to newer players. I mean a nice example would be putting a updated Tauren along side its Vanilla wow counterpart, current day model looks more like the tauren in the first wow ad.
PS Please make Agility give attack power it would help balance the unbalance
1. Shadow meld was out of combat. Every class had to downrank to reduce mana costs and threat. Sorry to burst your bubble.
2. Druids have a ton of attack power but a lot of the best players I knew as ferals didn't even stack AP. They just wore the best PVP/raid/Blues they could get. What made druids good at the time is they could jump in and do a 5 point bleed or ferocious bite and when you swung at them you got rooted, they stepped back into human form and regrowth/rejuvd and restealthed or came in as bear. Back then a druid needed to shape shift several times in a fight against a good player in 1v1. Sorry if you're thinking of later Xpacks where they stayed in cat form for years and never shifted out, or if you played on nost with no classic experience and got mad and quit.
3. Hunters were insane back then all the way from lvl 1 on up. They leveled fast virtually mana free with just auto shot and sending pet in, they farmed honor points easily in AV because they weren't dead all the time like the melee characters. Back then their pet alone gave a clothy a run for their money, and at some levels the pet alone could solo a clothy outright. At higher levels with gear they can auto shot crit for 1k as well as trap/cc, DoT, arcane shot, and had burst with aimed shot. As a matter of fact, if they aimed shot, and spam clicked arcane shot, those would go off at the same time as well as an auto shot. If all 3 crit, you were dead, or close to it. Giving them unlimited mana would remove all doubt.
Looks like you know a lot. The main reason I'll go to a classic server when they are up will be to get Atiesh, only legendary I don't have. What spec do you recommend me to play assuming balance/gameplay will be as it was during Naxx? I main resto druid since 2008. I'm guessing Atiesh was a dps legendary? Give me a tip about this if you can please :)
Not sure what the druid version is/was; the staff was different for each class it was available to (druid, priest, mage, warlock). I remember thinking the best was the mage version but that's all I remember about it...
Atiesh gave an aura similar to a paladin or shaman totem, meaning it only affected the wielder's party rather than the raid as a whole. The aura changed based upon the version that was being used. Druid was +mana/5 Priest was +healing Mage was +spell crit Warlock was +spell damage
If I recall correctly the first confirmed Atiesh wielder was a Druid.
I honestly hope they keep it at least like 95% the same. A couple VERY minor tweaks to some but keep it the same overall. I'd be okay with updated models though... not sure if I could happily return to the mega pixels of the past.
The Vanilla devs were concerned about hybrids being able to do everything effectively, so they limited their ability to do any one thing too well. It was a very sensible decision to a problem that plagued earlier MMOs. When people started min-maxing, the pure classes obviously did better, and hybrids got stuck in a support role. It's bad for some of the classes, but good for the game overall, and it's the reason why the classes feel so different in Vanilla.
That said, Classic is going to be a nostalgia trip, not the new hotness in competitive gaming. There is absolutely no reason not to take off-meta classes. Nobody cares if you get server or world first when you're retreading content from 10 years ago.
Druids aren't in such a bad shape in vanilla (using patch 1.12.1 balance). Granted their true calling in raids is healing but the odd min/maxed feral does raid and some bosses are tanked fine by bears. Moonkin needs some gear in later progression and buff slots upgraded to 16 but the odd one can raid with HEAVY consumable use. Gear issues persist with feral as well as the only real feral AP gear comes from Naxx only if I remember correctly and likely only added because of the set up to TBC changes.
All other areas of the game is fine for druid. They are great at pvp in many builds including various hybrids. The dev excuse of hybrids doing something similar to "pure classes" is complete BS. You have to be in a dedicated build in order to compete in a primary role which means no hybrid can do anything else well. Doing 50% of another class is not competitive at all ... not even within the realm of logical balance. That excuse was from early Wow and not reflective of what existed near the end of vanilla Wow era.
This is what I am saying about vanilla Wow meta. The game running from launch using 1.12.1 balance mechanics is TOTALLY different than earlier after release. Most of the old vanilla memes everyone throws out are utterly obsolete and not reflective of the direction Wow took later as well. Again, if you haven't played on patch 1.12.1 to understand the real meta of vanilla game play vs your old memories ... your opinion is invalid. I say this because I had to do purge old static opinions to fully adapt to the reality of a more static product.
It really just comes down to gear. Casters need a real non-hybrid set. Cat needs an actual gear set based on their dps rotations and not hybrid crap. Bear could tank better with real tanking set bonuses and perhaps either a way to reach defense cap or buff other areas so they aren't hit by this shortcoming as much. Even so this won't likely put them right near dedicated classes.
Feral on some emulators benefit from using weapon damage enchants and weightstones improving their auto attack damage. Just this little gear addition improved feral dps to the point of being competitive when used by knowledgeable players (correct gearing of stats, powershifting and consumable use are required). This likely won't be in Classic so the impact of new gear sets would be massive for them.
Seeing the big picture here? So many other classes start getting sick bonuses from gear sets early while several druid builds get NOTHING. This impacts other classes too. We started seeing so many changes in TBC that would have been in vanilla anyway if Bliz went a different direction for it's expansions (more horizontal than vertical). As a stand alone game, Classic has nowhere to go but lateral and it so happens that also fills in the largest gaps vanilla suffered from.
Classic doesn't need many core changes ... just add equal content for all classes!
Seeing the big picture here? So many other classes start getting sick bonuses from gear sets early while several druid builds get NOTHING. This impacts other classes too. We started seeing so many changes in TBC that would have been in vanilla anyway if Bliz went a different direction for it's expansions (more horizontal than vertical). As a stand alone game, Classic has nowhere to go but lateral and it so happens that also fills in the largest gaps vanilla suffered from.
Classic doesn't need many core changes ... just add equal content for all classes!
Exactly this! I had a blast playing Vanilla but it was far from the perfect game that people of #nochanges seem to glance over and not talk about (points to Lord Kazzak SW attack and Bloodpact/Pet Bomb bugs; The game was broken and TBC brought needed changes for classes, itemization and overall bug patches that needed to happen..that's not to say TBC didn't have it's flaws but I digress..) The ones asking for re-balancing aren't asking to be the gods that we seem to be in Legion..but being pigeon-hold into cuttercutter specs and 1 role is a waste of good classes and that's why Pallys and Druids were typically on the bottom of the list.
Why would fixing Vanilla Pally and Druid tanks to help fill that 40M slot such a bad thing!?
My first character in Vanilla was a cat druid, created 2 months after WoW went live. Got to level 40.
I was grinding elites in Feralas and it was taking me 2 minutes to kill each one. Cat druid damage back then was ridiculously low. Decided to drop druid and reroll to a class that sacrificed literally everything for max damage. So I rerolled to this mage.
When my mage reached level 40 and I started farming those same elites, I noticed it only took about 12 seconds for me to kill them. Mage at that level in early vanilla had literally 8-10x the dps output of cat druids.
Blizzard heavily buffed cat druids in a later Vanilla patch, but in early Vanilla they sure sucked.
Balance goes OOM and you will have to auto attack till you regain enough mana to cast again, or you will have to shadowmeld if night elf to drink some water to cast again.
[/quote]
Doing it wrong. Dot them, switch to cat, dot them again, switch to bear. rinse and repeat.
Everything OP says is meaningless to me. If I want to shift forms, have cool lore, and do a little bit of everything I'll play a druid. Vanilla is an actual rpg, and I embrace that.
Druids aren't in such a bad shape in vanilla (using patch 1.12.1 balance). Granted their true calling in raids is healing but the odd min/maxed feral does raid and some bosses are tanked fine by bears. Moonkin needs some gear in later progression and buff slots upgraded to 16 but the odd one can raid with HEAVY consumable use. Gear issues persist with feral as well as the only real feral AP gear comes from Naxx only if I remember correctly and likely only added because of the set up to TBC changes.
All other areas of the game is fine for druid. They are great at pvp in many builds including various hybrids. The dev excuse of hybrids doing something similar to "pure classes" is complete BS. You have to be in a dedicated build in order to compete in a primary role which means no hybrid can do anything else well. Doing 50% of another class is not competitive at all ... not even within the realm of logical balance. That excuse was from early Wow and not reflective of what existed near the end of vanilla Wow era.
This is what I am saying about vanilla Wow meta. The game running from launch using 1.12.1 balance mechanics is TOTALLY different than earlier after release. Most of the old vanilla memes everyone throws out are utterly obsolete and not reflective of the direction Wow took later as well. Again, if you haven't played on patch 1.12.1 to understand the real meta of vanilla game play vs your old memories ... your opinion is invalid. I say this because I had to do purge old static opinions to fully adapt to the reality of a more static product.
It really just comes down to gear. Casters need a real non-hybrid set. Cat needs an actual gear set based on their dps rotations and not hybrid crap. Bear could tank better with real tanking set bonuses and perhaps either a way to reach defense cap or buff other areas so they aren't hit by this shortcoming as much. Even so this won't likely put them right near dedicated classes.
Feral on some emulators benefit from using weapon damage enchants and weightstones improving their auto attack damage. Just this little gear addition improved feral dps to the point of being competitive when used by knowledgeable players (correct gearing of stats, powershifting and consumable use are required). This likely won't be in Classic so the impact of new gear sets would be massive for them.
Seeing the big picture here? So many other classes start getting sick bonuses from gear sets early while several druid builds get NOTHING. This impacts other classes too. We started seeing so many changes in TBC that would have been in vanilla anyway if Bliz went a different direction for it's expansions (more horizontal than vertical). As a stand alone game, Classic has nowhere to go but lateral and it so happens that also fills in the largest gaps vanilla suffered from.
Classic doesn't need many core changes ... just add equal content for all classes!
1.12 is the real meta? what? For Naxx maybe. Not for anything else.
God, I hope Blizzard doesn't make Classic a private server.
1.Balance Druid - 9% mana cost of nukes by 9% and because all Balance were partial Restoration (Reflection +15% of mana regeneration during combat) 2. All casters priest/mage/warlock/Balance druids down ranked spells to reduce Mana cost and stacked +Spell damage to compensate (Example to build the actual damage of the spell back to its original total so they can cast the same DPS with 20% less mana = allowing more spells to be cast within the same 10 minute window +potions) 3. Rotation was slower then you think, Moonfire for the Dot, and then Starfire because it has a 15% chance to stun for 3 seconds, occasionally refreshing Thorns on the tank 4. there Was Excellent Pre-Raid gear, due to the hybrid stat budget on the actual dungeon set Wildheart was really bad for druids who wanted to be Balanced, wearing another class set was just simply better - More Intelect/mana pool and more spell crit (not much more) with Magisters and /or Dreadmist (when your mana pool was bigger, you could cast on avg. 4-6 more spells before needing to use a mana potion) 5. most Balance would go for other items with Heavy +crit/spell power and Mp5 So you can see for Classic/Vanilla you CAN build a sweet Balance druid because all the math and items have been found, you wont be a noob floundering around for gear and having no idea where it is, you KNOW the world of Warcraft dungeons, you can view the loot tables, you know what and where to farm, so YES most of the Hybrids like the Druid can be very powerful if you focus and build the gear around what you plan on playing.
just because many of us didn't do that 14 years ago, doesn't mean it cannot be done today
Druids aren't in such a bad shape in vanilla (using patch 1.12.1 balance). Granted their true calling in raids is healing but the odd min/maxed feral does raid and some bosses are tanked fine by bears. Moonkin needs some gear in later progression and buff slots upgraded to 16 but the odd one can raid with HEAVY consumable use. Gear issues persist with feral as well as the only real feral AP gear comes from Naxx only if I remember correctly and likely only added because of the set up to TBC changes.
All other areas of the game is fine for druid. They are great at pvp in many builds including various hybrids. The dev excuse of hybrids doing something similar to "pure classes" is complete BS. You have to be in a dedicated build in order to compete in a primary role which means no hybrid can do anything else well. Doing 50% of another class is not competitive at all ... not even within the realm of logical balance. That excuse was from early Wow and not reflective of what existed near the end of vanilla Wow era.
This is what I am saying about vanilla Wow meta. The game running from launch using 1.12.1 balance mechanics is TOTALLY different than earlier after release. Most of the old vanilla memes everyone throws out are utterly obsolete and not reflective of the direction Wow took later as well. Again, if you haven't played on patch 1.12.1 to understand the real meta of vanilla game play vs your old memories ... your opinion is invalid. I say this because I had to do purge old static opinions to fully adapt to the reality of a more static product.
It really just comes down to gear. Casters need a real non-hybrid set. Cat needs an actual gear set based on their dps rotations and not hybrid crap. Bear could tank better with real tanking set bonuses and perhaps either a way to reach defense cap or buff other areas so they aren't hit by this shortcoming as much. Even so this won't likely put them right near dedicated classes.
Feral on some emulators benefit from using weapon damage enchants and weightstones improving their auto attack damage. Just this little gear addition improved feral dps to the point of being competitive when used by knowledgeable players (correct gearing of stats, powershifting and consumable use are required). This likely won't be in Classic so the impact of new gear sets would be massive for them.
Seeing the big picture here? So many other classes start getting sick bonuses from gear sets early while several druid builds get NOTHING. This impacts other classes too. We started seeing so many changes in TBC that would have been in vanilla anyway if Bliz went a different direction for it's expansions (more horizontal than vertical). As a stand alone game, Classic has nowhere to go but lateral and it so happens that also fills in the largest gaps vanilla suffered from.
Classic doesn't need many core changes ... just add equal content for all classes!
1.12 is the real meta? what? For Naxx maybe. Not for anything else.
God, I hope Blizzard doesn't make Classic a private server.
No idea what your are going on about. What I mean is Classic Wow plays differently as a whole as a completed product than when it was live and evolving. It will be much more like it was at the very end of it's life before TBC and people's memories of it are skewed wildly from the live vanilla version.