Yes, this series is probably going to continue for some time. I have to talk about every class, and anything else I think of along the way.
So, druids.
I have not played a druid, nor have I played with one extensively in PvP, so my insights are probably going to be significantly less insightly this time around.
First up, moonkins. Poor moonkins.
Moonkins aren’t in a very good place, overall, and haven’t been this entire expansion. Or ever. Moonkins are generally inferior to their other caster brethren, enjoying limited success in the hands of excellent players in a couple comps in 2s and 3s, and like death knights are shunned from 5s. They do quite well for themselves in battlegrounds, largely because the best way to PvP as a moonkin is to shove people off cliffs, ledges and bridges.
The major problem facing moonkins is that they are a caster trapped in the body of a druid. They have snares, they have nuking capacity, they have crowd control, they even have a half decent defensive cooldown, but all of those are inferior to what their caster brethren enjoy. In addition, moonkin do not have access to something all the other casters have: an interrupt.
Mages, warlocks, shadow priests, and so forth all have numerous ways to shut down opposing casters and numerous ways to avoid being shut down by other players. Moonkins have neither. They have no meaningful interrupts and no reliable way to avoid being shut down by enemy players. To put it lightly, a moonkin is a caster with either no caster tools or weak versions of them.
Every arena comp I’ve played, whenever we come across a moonkin, we very rarely don’t hit the moonkin extremely hard right off the bat. The only defensive cooldown they have is Barkskin, which can be easily dispelled and doesn’t even provide a great measure of help anyway. Other than that, their only real major option is to shift and run away, which frankly suits us just fine.
Similar to how an arms warrior in defensive stance with a shield equipped stops being a major threat, so does a moonkin forced into caster form to heal itself or cheetah to try and run away.
Moonkin damage is alright, which is about the only thing they have going for them. Currently, with Starfall and trees popped a moonkin can deal respectable damage, but without that their damage is merely average. A lack of damage is not what is holding moonkin back from being a great PvP spec, a lack of burst damage is not what moonkin are hurting for. (Though a more reliable Eclipse talent would certainly be a big help.)
What the balance tree needs is some proper caster tools. A few defensive abilities, to use against both enemy melee and enemy casters, would go much further in helping moonkins than anything else. Barkskin is simply not enough, not nearly enough. Buffing the damage Starfall deals isn’t going to fix anything.
Hell, even letting barkskin provide 100% dispel protection while it’s active would be a major improvement. Which, apparently, is coming to druids in cataclysm. Little late for any moonkins trying to compete in season 8.
Ferals are in roughly the same boat as moonkins. A melee class without any of the melee tools. Which isn’t entirely true, as any mage can tell you from trying to fight the instant snare breaking polymorph immune bastards.
I can’t say much about ferals, for I don’t particularly know a lot about them. They are few and far between, the only time I can recall even seeing one per battleground was the first few months after Wrath shipped. Since then, I see one maybe every five or six battlegrounds, and even less often in arenas.
Generally though, their population trend is the same as tree druids. Prevalent in 2s, scant in 3s, and seeing one in 5s is cause for laughter and derision.
All I can really say is that feral druids are very tough melee characters. With numerous bear tanking talents at their disposal, they have higher than average armor, health, and critical strike chance reduction. They can shift into bear form for significantly higher survivability any time, they can shift out and heal themselves, and quite excellent mobility. They can stealth, though they lack a way to regain stealth during combat.
Near as I can tell, the lack of an interrupt and the inability to deal damage in a PvP friendly way is what is causing ferals to lag behind.
Ferals, from what I understand, rely on a significant amount of target uptime in order to get their various buffs and debuffs to actually start dealing heavy damage. PvP does not allow for a lot of uptime, any DPS class typically works in small bursts. Three seconds here, four seconds there. Situations where you can sit on a target for ten or so seconds, just hammering damage into them, are extremely rare.
And so, ferals are forced to do as much damage as they can in a few globals. Which is especially poor in their case, relative to other classes like warriors and ret paladins.
In any case, there aren’t a lot of feral druids running around in PvP. Perhaps because they all rerolled resto years ago.
Tree druids, on the other hand, are quite numerous. You can find them everywhere, really. They are in battlegrounds and a dominating force in 2s. Far less common in 3s, and rather rare in 5s.
This, I think, is due to a resto druid not having high throughput or group based defensive cooldowns. Resto druids have abilities and cooldowns that can defend themselves, but they have nothing to bring to the table when someone else starts getting blown up. The total lack of a magic dispel doesn’t help either.
They have numerous powerful HoTs, but HoTs cannot save someone immediately, they save someone eventually. A resto druid simply cannot keep up with the damage output in the 3s and 5s brackets, something shamans, paladins and priests can all do. In these larger brackets, the damage output teams can do is immense. A player can be taken from full health to a dirt nap in a matter of three or four globals. This is damage output druids cannot easily handle.
Druids can pre-HoT, yes, but their mana pool isn’t deep enough to pre-HoT everyone. Swiftmend and Nature’s Swiftness obviously are used plenty, but even that isn’t enough. Druids simply lack the healing throughput, and they don’t have the cooldowns to offset that. This is also why the only successful druid teams in 3s feature at least one partner that can seriously bolster their power. A ret paladin, for instance, has access to powerful team based cooldowns, shields and his own heals and dispels to help the druid.
However, a resto druid does have access to some offensive abilities. They have crowd control.
This makes them perfectly suited toward small scale PvP. This is why they are so strong in 2s. The amount of damage going out in 2s is far less than 3s and 5s, so the resto druid actually can heal effectively. And of course the fewer people there are, the more efficient crowd control becomes. Druids almost seem tailor made for the 2s bracket. Hardly surprising, considering druids have nearly dominated that bracket since season one.
One final note: Cyclone.
In my eyes, Cyclone is a broken ability for one reason and one reason only: it has no counters.
If you are hit with cyclone, your only option is to trinket. There are no other abilities you can use to get out, there are no abilities your teammates can use to free you.
You could say locking down the druid or using LOS to break the cast are counters, but those are also counters to every other kind of CC in the game. Every CC can be countered by locking down the CCer, breaking LOS or staying away from the healer, or removed once a player is CCd by any number of buttons.
Except Cyclone. Nothing counters Cyclone. This is broken.
Cyclone nullifying all incoming damage and healing is fine. I say, increase the duration of Cyclone to ten seconds, like the other forms of casted CC. However, Cyclone becomes a magic debuff, and thus can be dispelled.
What Cyclone does is fine. CC is CC, but most come with other little effects attached to them. Even locking out immunity buttons during Cyclone is ok, though it does make druids better at CCing paladins and mages than they would be against other classes.
The only issue I see is that Cyclone cannot be countered, which to me is extremely broken.
Cyclone’s counter is something you already mentioned. As a tree druid I can either heal or spend time CCing. I can’t do both with more than one more person around. Also casting cyclone takes me out of tree form, tree is huge when having anything melee chewing on my face.
Since cyclone has a 2 second cast time and a 6 second duration if I really want to keep someone chain CCed I have to cast it every 4 seconds. Cyclone also only has a 20 yard range, which means I have to spend time running to you, when the last place I want to be is next to someone who is going to DPS me (and not getting out of LoS). Also means that if I am a step too close and I am CCing a warrior I’m stunned and I have to pray my roots proc, or risk being locked out of my healing school (cyclone and roots are nature school which is my healing). Granted a school lockout for druids is not as painful because of hots, specifically LB, but it is still painful to make up that health.
From a DPS standpoint I have a very difficult time killing a tree unless a few things happen: 1) someone applies MS to them for me as I do not play a class with an MS ability 2) the druid for some reason opens themself up to a spell lockout. Even this doesn’t always kill them because of the high resilience out there these days, but it is usually enough to at least kill one of the people with the druid which is of course the goal. If the lone healer in uncoordinated PvP Druids will seems like gods because if no one is focused the damage is easy for them to heal through.
So as a tree my biggest issues are no way of casting a heal that has a cast time when someone is on top of me unless I get lucky and roots proc. I have one way to get off a huge heal, and I can do that every 3 min with someone on me. And should my partner die at any time I’m really screwed because there is virtually nothing I can do to DPS. While other healers may not have the tools of their DPS tree, at least their SP stays the same. Without being in tree form I lose a lot of spell power, at the same time I lose a 6% bonus to my healing. So I can’t DPS, but I can’t heal nearly as well either because my healing spells now cost more mana and heal for less (though I have met people stupid enough to die because my thorns killed them). This is something Blizz is getting rid of in Cat, and pvp is probably part of that reasoning.
Losing permanent tree form is actually quite an excellent move on Blizzard’s part, at least considering PvP balance.
Ideally you won’t be crippled anymore when you shift out, and that means you’ll have full power heals and all of your offensive and utility buttons accessible at all times without any of them being underpowered.
And yeah, Cyclone is far too gimmicky at 20 yards range. Really needs to be 30 yard baseline, and probably should have a 1.5 second cast time base as well.
Cyclone was originally 30 yards at the beginning of BC and people complained very loudly about it. Anyone who pvps realizes that 6 seconds is an eternity if you are not getting heals, but in the game currently it takes a long time to burn someone who is geared down (ok maybe not in 5s, or BGs when you’re the target of the train). In Cat Blizz seems to be saying that burning someone down will be damned near impossible to down someone who is geared that quickly. I mean they are saying that pallies won’t be able to heal themselves to full in the duration of a 12 second bubble. Either they are nerfing pallies, or people are going to have a ridiculous amount of life.
Also I will miss being a tree, it makes the class lose a lot of flavor, but over all I believe it will be a buff. Just give me my 200% armor bonus and 6% healing bonus back somewhere.
Anything longer than about three or four seconds qualifies it as an “eternity” in PvP, though I stand by my assertion people would have way fewer problems with cyclone if it was dispellable.
Don’t worry about the armor, you guys have to have the extra armor, otherwise you aren’t PvP viable.
Even priests have extremely high armor (for clothies, anyway) via Inner Fire.
Entangling roots not used much? On my tree I use it a fair bit. I am still new to tree form and in somewhat adequate PVP gear. It’s not my playstyle since fire mage is where my interest and dedicaiton lies. I am still rather crap at shapeshifting and running away cos as a fire mage being in the front line is a duty I take on keenly!
I don’t use roots often for a few reasons 1.) smart groups will run a train on the tree with a MS warrior heading up the choo choo 2.) It’s easier for me to just heal myself through that train than to try to CC people in it with spells that have cast times. 3.) using anything with a cast time opens me up to easier spell locking 4.) roots does next to nothing against any ranged class.
Now I use Nature’s Grasp all of the time, still it’s proc is not 100%, though it does happen frequently enough that I am glad it got extra charges.
The secret to tree druid pvping is finding a class that doesn’t need mana and sticking to them like glue. Any class that uses can eventually run out, and leave you hanging because they become not very useful (warlocks are an exception to this as your mana fuels their life and their manabar, but I find it hard to keep them alive when they are getting beaten on). Warrior or rogue + druid (hell any healer really) is a pretty strong combo that can last for a while.
Very nice writeup.
On the subject of moonkins, I sometimes run 2’s with a friend of mine as mage/boomkin, and I must say, our burst is ridiculously high. Starfall + Wrath spam does stupid amounts of damage. Any team with a shaman is getting blown to bits in a few seconds, and as long as they don’t have a rogue or competent DK, mage, or warlock, we’ll likely win very easily. Having both cyclone and polymorph ensures we always keep one opponent out of the fight, and in longer battles he plays half healing half dps.
This isn’t at a very high level of play, of course, only around 1700-1800 bracket, but moonkins are viable as long as they aren’t focus targets by anything that can shut them down for longer than 4 seconds. They do need some kind of an interrupt beyond typhoon, IMO. Against other casters with high control (such as mages or warlocks) boomkins are almost a free kill if you can live through the initial Starfall burst-o-rama.
No comment on moonkin in 3’s or 5’s, don’t have any experience with that. In 2’s with a decent partner they’re pretty good against select comps, though!
Also, I hate facing ferals as a mage. Anything I can’t snare is not fun.
I see the Moonkin Burst-o-Rama a good bit in 2’s. Every time, I wonder, why not bring an Enhance Shaman instead? Better snare immunity (since there’s no shifting), better burst, wolves can break roots and heal the Shaman, Frozen Power = insta-Roots … no Cyclone, but that’s about it.
I suppose Shaman are less viable if the enemy does manage to survive, but only marginally so.
My main reason for not doing that is my lack of an enhancement shaman friend, or really any other viable mage partner friend. The druid is also an IRL friend of mine, which makes arena matches much more fun!
And wolves can stun, don’t forget that!
Interestingly feral druids are actually a pretty easy fight for arcane mages. Frost mages suffer quite a bit, but arcane can easily spam slow just as fast as the druid can shift.
Moonkin are pretty close to being the direct damage version of a shadow priest. They just need a few extra tools to be a reasonably skilled caster, or just say screw it and turn them into a melee caster.
Trees/starfall/wrathspam is huge burst, but a class needs more than that to be any good at PvP.
Having been on both sides of Arcane vs Feral … as fast as the druid? Nay, faster! Arcane mages stack haste, Ferals don’t … the saved time on globals adds up just as fast as the Feral’s mana goes down.
Of course, if I can sink my claws into the bastard and get Infected Wounds up, he’s finished. Unless Ice Block is ready. Then it might be close.
A bona fide melee caster would be great fun. Moonkin are in kind of an awkward spot now (and really, have been since the game’s beginnings). It’s a caster! With lots of armor! And pets sometimes maybe! And, uhm, a big … aoe … thing … cooldown. And whatever the hell Eclipse is (most ungainly talent in the history of WoW? Or does that award go to Shadowform’s tooltip?). AND IT CAN KNOCK PEOPLE OFF CLIFFS OH MY GOOOOOOOD!
RE: Mage vs Feral
Conversely, as a fire mage I find ferals to be the only “easy kill”. For all that the mage has DoTs and good damage on the move in this spec, I think it’s the reliance on things other than snares and roots and the “wtf” factor that wins the fight.
Any druid knows to counter Nova+Blink and Slow/Chill and they are expecting it. Daze, stun, disorient and rarely stopping to cast though? They can counter these, but they’ll be looking for that Nova instead.
Of course, this is moot once you find a feral who knows how a fire mage works and we’re back to only having the advantage of DoTs and mobility. But you have to fight a fire mage to figure out how to counter their CC, and let’s be honest here: how often to you get to do that?
Disclaimer: I realize that Arena as fire is still a lesson in futility (I’m only at 1000). Just sharing my feelings of glee when I see a kitty. Everything else makes me weep and pray that they focus on my less squishy teammate.
Apparently I hit “Reply” to the wrong message. You know what I mean <_<
When I tried out fire pvp a few months back I actually found this to be true, concerning feral druids. I could just hop around doing constant damage to them while keeping them away with stuns and whatnot. Lots of fun!
With the changes to fire in Cata, I’m REALLY looking forward to being fire pvp again.
Also, I find that fire mages in BGs are very, very rare, and usually very, very good as well. I once faced off against an Arena Master human fire mage in AB LM, now THAT was a great fight!
Also also, I actually had a shadowpriest/fire mage comp as my opponent in a ~1600something rated 2’s match. Both very good, we died ridiculously fast. My jaw dropped.
Re: Feral:
I’ve played a couple hundred arena matches on my Feral Druid, in 2’s. I can say that the spec is fairly durable, but may have a hard time fitting into teams … they’re semi-decent at healing, if they can get their HoTs to tick for full duration, and semi-decent at hurting things, but a real lack of burst heals or burst damage keeps the spec down.
I currently run with a Marks Hunter in 2’s (probably suboptimal to a Rogue, but not so bad). Our strategy varies little; we chain CC on the off target while we blow up the main kill target. Against dual DPS teams where I can use Feral’s high-damage bleeds effectively, especially caster cleaves, we’re very often successful, but against a healer of any sort, who can heal through the bleed damage with relative ease, it’s a question of whether or not we can keep the healer chained long enough to kill. Holy Paladins almost always spell a loss for us, as Bubble, HoP, and Aura Mastery provide hard counters against even the best CC/Silence chain.
DoT-heavy DPS also almost always kill us, but that’s entirely due to the lack of a real healer.
The real issue is an inability to deal meaningful damage against competent players. Ferals have one offensive cooldown, and as its also a fear break, I sometimes feel a bit like a Retadin. Bleeds do great damage and my snares have even better uptime than Crippling Poison, but if I want to burst, I need to Shred, and good players won’t let me stay behind them.
Instant Cyclone/Healing Touch is nice, but I’ve lost more than one game to being CC’d while in caster form thanks to that, and an additional 6 seconds (3, once you factor in the globals for Cyclone and shifting back to Cat) isn’t enough additional time to get my damage machine running.
In 3’s or 5’s I see little reason to bring a Feral Druid. You can bring a full-time healer and a Rogue instead.
I should note that, like Retadins, I do love the playstyle here. It’s nice to see a melee DPS that can also throw decent heals, and I love the flexibility in BG’s. I just wish our matches weren’t so binary, and maybe that Bear form was useful for more than charge, Bash, and Frenzied Regen.
Give Ferals a cooldown that lets Shred be used without the positional requirement and something vaguely like Kick, and maybe a little more longevity or oomph with their heals, and I daresay they’d be fine. The baseline Druid toolbox makes up for their lack of a Vanish or Blind or what have you.
And pillar humping is fun.
Keep in mind that I haven’t stepped foot in arena in 2+ years. I never really enjoyed the small group encounters. I prefer my PvP to either be a 1v1 slugfest or a game with defined goals that promote offense / defense.
That said:
I love PvP on my Cat. This is probably the only thing I still 100% enjoy on that class. I stopped PvPing on him awhile back (I stopped playing him completely actually), so his PvP gear is way out of date – I think he’s still wearing the ilvl 200 epic gear from WotLK launch.
I think what I like the most about the Cat is the versatility you mentioned.
I choose when to start a fight thanks to stealth.
Once engaged I can choose whether I want to bleed them to death while kiting, or if I want to try and burst them down.
I have multiple options for defense (mainly in 1v1 here) thanks to Nature’s Grasp, Bear Form (Bash, Frenzied Regen, Survival Instincts), instant heals.
I can get onto my target after a seperation thanks to Feral Charge.
Having the CHOICE of how to fight is what makes it interesting (I enjoy the my Warlock for the same reasons).
My Paladin has defensive options, but his only real choice is to wade in a beat people until they die.
There is one terrifying comp that I’ve seen moonkin in. Moonkin + Ele shaman + Shadow priest. They have insane burst with heroism and a scary amount of CC between the 3 classes. Only way to really beat them is to pillar hump long enough to kill one of them… because getting out in the open means you will be cc or burst to death. I suppose you could swap the moonkin with just about any other caster… but still playing a melee cleave against them made me cry.
How to tell if your 3s team is any good: you look at what they can do and think to yourself “holy shit that’s OP”.
Caster cleaves are way too prevalent these days. I hardly ever see proper cleave teams these days.
Fought afflock/shadowpriest/resto shammy yet? Good lord.
Shadow priests are insane this season… freaking 40% base damage reduction with shadow form and resilience
Me and my moonkin brethren almost hit 1900’s in twos last night (or rather, this morning. Very early this morning).
Its true that it takes mad skill to get anywhere as a moonkin. One of these days I’m going to be fraps’ing our two’s with vent just so we can point to the video showing how hard it is we have to try to get to the just barely 1800’s, as to disassociate ourselves from some of the (pretty damn potent) fail that exists in that bracket. Priests that chill in the middle of nagrand arena… dps who let themselves get kited out of their healer’s LoS… bah!
But yes. We are both pretty damn geared if I say so myself, but it isn’t enough to survive some of the melee zergfests when they train my moonking friend. He even uses the Corroded Skeleton Key trinket for the on-use bubble and it isn’t enough.
Ah well. It’s still damn fun, and we intend to keep doing it.
I believe I read this on arena junkies.
Moonkins really need some sort of major defensive cooldown, like chickenblock.
There’s got to be a better name though… roosterblock?
I’d like to see some of the talents for that Magic Mushroom give it some type of poison application to targets when it explodes. These could be similar to rogue versions, except with a bang!
But seriously, talents for that thing could lead to that thing having infinite applications if they do it right.
Holy shit I used “thing” way too many times.
I am sorry. Trying to heal a fail DK on my resto while switching to second screen to type comments :(
Rip, I believe you were looking for “cockblock”.
Have I just been coming across geared cats? I beat cats but only when they are undergeared, and it’s pretty obvious when cats are undergeared.
Laughing out loud @ “best way to PvP as a moonkin is to shove people off cliffs, ledges and bridges.” Mind you, this shove is nowhere as powerful as shaman’s. I would rank in terms of effectiveness and ease of use, shaman’s, mage’s and then moonkin’s knock off ability.
A tree with resilience is an invincible tree. Not just against one person, but against 3 people. Yeh…slightly overpowered. Sure…they are not strong on offensive abilities. But once my mage runs out of mana, the tree will start to moonfire or wrath spam.
A tree with Mortal Strike on it, being Purged continuously by a Shaman, ain’t anything like invulnerable.
I get so excited on my moonkin when I see people near ledges… I run up jump and typhoon them…. of course that jump I did out of habit just before means that 80% of the time I follow them off the ledge… Guess I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.
Regardless it is extremely entertaining to knock back entire waves of guys at once… especially while sitting in the back of a demo.
Rare to come across both a warrior and shaman in BG that understands this tho…
Mage spell steal is not mana effective against tree hots.
The actual power of Druids and Ret Pallys is the same:
They have an OP defensive ability.
And nothing else.
Whoop.
Been playing feral kitty since Vanilla WoW and just wanted to throw out a couple reasons why I’ve enjoyed it (BG pvp focused).
First, I play mostly solo (no premades or RL friends playing WoW) and kitties can adapt very well to many situations. 1v1 I can’t think of a single matchup that I don’t at least have a chance to react (thinking of my rogue getting caught w/o any cd’s up/ Lock being burst down by rogue’s w/o ever even getting an INSTANT cast off wtf). Bottom line I don’t dominate every class or feel helpless ever either.
Second, in my early pvp days rogues and frost mages made me lose hair at an early age. From my experience on several toons I can effectively counter both with my feral druid.
@Endario RE: Mage vs. Feral Druid
Got a good laugh from your comment as I ran into a fire mage in Warsung the other night. First time in years that I’ve seen a skilled pvp fire mage and what you described above was pretty much my scenario. I got destoyed our first run-in and my chin hit the floor. Forgot they existed.
Cyclone is the Banish of the druid class, if everybody was a demon.
Given the mushroom ability in Cataclysm, I’d be kind of intrigued to see both Cyclone and Banish tied to an in-game object. With a totem-like health bar, even, but sufficiently resilient to incoming damage.
It’d rebalance the abilities in PvP, though I’m not sure if it’d be the right kind of balance. But moonkin love all kinds of balance, right?
Hi there, I just have one off-theme question: did you prove yourself the ttw/fireball spec? I’m trying to get into it but my dps is extrmeley down even blowing cds. I’m sucking huge amount of balls in this. And by huge I mean ball’s tsunamis. Do you have any opinions, tips or comments about fire rotation’s changes?
^ above: lame. Yes I know, but realy, I’m deseperated trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
switch to arcane
Like it or not, fire is still behind arcane, though the gap definitely shouldn’t be as big as you claim.
A couple quick checks:
Are you geared properly? Remember you have no +hit talents, and so need all of it from gear. You want very high spellpower (gem nothing else, I’m serious) and you need some pretty ridiculously high crit values. Yeah, you want haste, but as fire you don’t have a haste fetish like frost and arcane mages do.
In a raid situation, you should be critting over half the time, at least.
Fireball optimization: this is hardest part. Squeezing out as many long cast fireballs as you can is what will send your DPS higher. Obviously Living Bomb needs to always, always, always be up. Refresh it as soon as possible.
Slam your Pyroblasts out as soon as you get the buff. (Get an addon to notify you of these if you lack the awareness to slam them out immediately). Keep the scorch debuff up, try for as close to 100% uptime as you can, but NEVER refresh more than a second early.
And absolutely never ever ever interrupt a fireball to do any of the following.
If you’re going to have to move, try to plan it out so that you can get off a living bomb refresh/instant pyros/fireblasts while moving so you don’t waste any time.
Another Feral Druid from the battlegrounds checking in. Although our damage isn’t great, our utility is amazing. We have both charge and shadow step in our Feral Charge ability. Predatory Strike when preceded with Maim can be a fun surprise. With Frenzied Regeneration, Barkskin, Survival Instincts, lots of defensive stats like dodge, armor, and stamina we can take a serious beating, and when the fight is over a quick Tranquility and Gift of the Wild does wonders for the next fight. Against under geared opponents, Improved Leader of the Pack and high crit rating almost guarantees a win, and Berserk with Infected Wounds is great for pulling attention to yourself.
One thing to keep in mind for Moonkins is they still have stealth. So they can position their knockback from stealth for surprises, and make a flag/node look less guarded until they pop out and nuke. Druids can take advantage of the element of surprise better than any other class. The key is to get the drop on the enemy, and wait for the perfect moment to step in. Whether it’s just before teammates arrive to grab the flag/node, delaying the enemy while a flag goes by or the timer on a node runs out, or any other variety of stealth suicide mission. With good timing and the help from just one other stealthy, I have taken the Frostwolf graveyard out from under an Alliance zerg. I have knocked a Shaman off the Lumber Mill cliff in Arathi Basin, and contested the flag while team mates cleared the hills. I have diverted a whole flag room while my team mates grabbed the flag and got away. I have had a lot of fun in battlegrounds.
I couldn’t disagree more with this write up. I personally play a moonkin/tree and consider them to be very OP. On my deathknight I remember dueling my tree friend in an unholy pvp build. I would get my rp maxed out then innitiate the duel pop army and gargoyle and strangulate and just blow him up with diseases and obliterate and such. His health never dropped below 90%. We were both trying to make the tree die but they can not die not to mention that if your geared your mana actually increases exponentially. As for moonkins insect swarm And treants are effective at pushback on casters and typhoon interrupts casting. And with offensive spells like moonfire (30 yds instant cast) and wrath (1 sec cast 30 yds) they can cause shittons of damage on the move aswell as just rooting and spamming starfire. We’ve gone over how shapeshifting keeps them out of CCs and I prefer either sneaking around in cat till there’s a good time to cyclone as I come out or just plain cycloning them when they aren’t focused on me. You said hots save your life later but this is incorrect unless your waiting to take damage before you strt putting them up the idea is to have all your hots already stacked so that your healing as you take damage and there’s not really a time you will find yourself taking damage faster than you can heal it if you fuck up you can just nourish. You also said they couldn’t raid heal when infact trees are notorious aswell as resto shammys for amazing raid heals followed by disc priests. This is a rather disorganzied post because I was pretty angry to see so many putting down Druids. I have never really gotten into feral so I won’t attempt to defend it. Please feel free to challenge anything I have said
80 Mage
80 Druid
80 deathknight
80 priest
crushridge
no chicks allowed
“Please feel free to challenge anything I have said”
Ok.
“On my deathknight”
Problem one. You are taking a DK, one of the very few melee classes that cannot create pressure on a healer solo, against a healer, and calling the healer OP?
“your mana actually increases exponentially”
No it doesn’t.
What does mana have to do with anything anyway? Unless you are actively trying to burn their mana, in which case, things like mana burn and viper sting scale directly with the target’s mana pool.
The only other viable strategy to OOM a druid is to constantly switch your kill target so their hots are ineffective and they waste time and mana trying to move hots around. Which is completely impossible in a duel.
It is also possible for inattentive healers to disregard their mana pool, and thus run themselves OOM, but that isn’t the point of discussion here.
“insect swarm And treants are effective at pushback on casters and typhoon interrupts casting.”
Insect Swarm does not knockback anything.
Correct on the trees part, though to consider that an anti-caster strategy is laughable at best.
Typhoon is unreliable and ineffective as a spell interrupt. Considering it is also the moonkin’s primary gap opening ability, it is placed squarely in the same category as a fire mage’s Blast Wave: not nearly good enough.
“cause shittons of damage on the move”
Moonkins have big, sick burst. This is something we agree on. This does not make balance a good PvP tree, it makes it a poorly designed PvP.
I pretty much said exactly that in the original post.
Big burst does not make a good PvP class or spec. It is the hallmark of a very bad one.
“the idea is to have all your hots already stacked”
Nobody, and I do mean absolutely nobody, would ever switch damage to a target that is hotted up. You switch to the target that does NOT have hots. Basic anti-druid strategy.
“amazing raid heals”
This is a post about PvP. Why are you mentioning raids?
Are you referring to where I said resto druids cannot hope to heal a 5s arena team? Cause that is completely true. See aforementioned necessity to rely on hots, which are rendered pointless in 5s.
“putting down Druids.”
Cause trying to intelligently discuss and criticize the problems and advantages of various classes and specs in PvP is insulting them.
“no chicks allowed”
lol