A warning
I warn all readers right now that this is a long post and there is no TLDR version. A post of this nature simply cannot be condensed into a TLDR version and if I tried to it would not convey the points I wish to make.

If this is not your cup of tea please stop reading right now and go back to the forum from which you came. I only want to see constructive posts from people who have actually taken the time to read and absorb my words.

What is this about?
This is a thread to explain the problems Druids are facing in the game currently. It is a thread that gives problems but not solutions as per the request of Tigole. I am hoping it will be read by the forum moderators and ultimately the developers but I also hope that the Druid community input their feedback to help me improve the message as a whole.

The plan
I will look at the issues of each spec - feral, restoration and finally balance - in PvE and PvP. Most of my focus will be on end-game raiding and high-end arena play, it is my belief that if you get the end results right the rest will generally follow.

I am starting with feral since this is the most discussed spec and also the one with some of the most glaring issues in PvP; thus, always a subject of hot debate.

Feral - PvE
Feral has proven to be a popular PvE spec for raiding, tanking and is a very strong solo grinding and levelling spec. However, feral does have issues in PvE which should be addressed.

Scaling: In the end game
As gear progresses across the field the feral Druid is being left behind in both tanking and DPS roles. A feral Druid will start to see fewer and fewer upgrades as they progress through the tier sets, however other classes are increasing at a linear rate or even exponentially faster.

With the current armour caps, the main portion of damage reduction for a feral Druid stop scaling after getting tier 5 equivalent gear since the armour cap will have been reached. After this a tanking Druid can only scale in one direction; dodge. The two other tanks in the game never cap out on armour, dodge, parry, block or block value; all areas are capable of improvement as their gear improves.

In a DPS setting, feral Druids are not scaling as well as their other melee counterparts. This can be attributed to a few things such as no benefit from Windfury and little benefit from haste rating since we get a lot less damage from auto-attacks. In addition there are some itemisation issues, these are covered next.

Itemisation (part one): Feral specific items
After Terestrian’s Stranglestaff, there are no pure DPS weapon upgrades for a feral Druid within raiding in existing content. Whilst the staff from Hyjal is of significantly higher item level, it is only a slight upgrade over the Stranglestaff and not as good tanking weapon as the Wildfury Greatstaff. Since Wildfury is a better tanking weapon, and weapons can be switched in combat, the armour and stamina on the Hyjal staff are somewhat wasted; any DPS feral who must quickly tank something can just switch to the Greatstaff. In addition, despite the Hyjal staff being item level 141, the season 2 PvP mace is better for DPS than it.

There are also no feral Druid specific items for:
• Neck (after Kara)
• Back (after SSC)
• Wrist (after PvP rewards, after heroics for PvE)
• Belt (after SSC)
• Rings (after SSC)
• Trinkets (after SSC, but even that one is poor)

The only exception to these non-tier slots is boots in Treads of the Den Mother from BT. Other than that, a feral Druid will not get any DPS upgrades after SSC (in general) unless they take Rogue gear. Items such as the Money Belt are an upgrade over Belt of Natural Power; but if there was a Druid specific belt with item level 141 (the same as the Money Belt) it would be streets ahead for a Druid. The example of this is the Treads of the Den Mother; it is 26% better [according to Emmerald’s rating] than the item level 141 Rogue specific boots - Black Featherlike Boots.

Part of the reason we’re seeing reduced scaling in the end-game for feral Druid DPS is that they are starved for items after SSC. If a Rogue had to wear only strength gear (akin to Druids wearing only AP gear) after SSC they would have exactly the same problem. If a Rogue had to use the same main-hand and off-hand from Karazhan throughout all their raiding they would have exactly the same problem.

Feral Druid tanks have exactly the same problems; there are few feral Druid specific items after leaving the early instances. These are the best items for the following slots as rated again by Emmerald:

• Neck: The Darkener’s Grasp (SSC) - Has shield block rating on it
• Back: Gilded Thorium Cloak (Kara)
• Wrist: Insidious Bands (BT) - Rogue DPS bracers
• Belt: Belt of Natural Power (SSC)
• Rings: Violet Signet of the Great Protector (Kara)
• Trinkets: Badge of Tenacity (Blue BoE)
• Weapon: Wildfury Greatstaff (SSC)

So again after SSC we see no upgrades to non-set pieces for feral Druid tanking except for a pair of BT Rogue wrists which just happen to be good for tanking. Again, if Warriors only had access to DPS plate after SSC they would have similar scaling problems in end-game.

If ferals are to be competitive in end-game raiding, either in DPS or tanking, they need the itemisation to support them. Balance Druids can somewhat make up for bad itemisation by using cloth pieces which are just as potent as leather pieces would be, but feral Druids do not have this luxury since their stat bias is so different to other leather/cloth wearing classes.

Feral - PvP
Feral PvP is classically strong in the battlegrounds and weak in the arena. Druids of all specs are doing badly in 3v3 and especially 5v5 but the feral Druid is not doing well in any bracket. In 2v2 where Druids are supposedly improving and currently placed 3rd (07/08/07 numbers from Caster), there are only 6 feral Druids out of 58.

Itemisation (part two): Resilience rings and cloaks
Similar to the PvE issues, feral Druids must make do with obviously Rogue/Warrior bias non-tier slot items. The rings and cloaks available all have an AP bias with no strength or agility to be seen, nor intellect to help with shifting. Things are slightly better in the PvP zone since there are custom bracers/belt/boots available for feral Druids; however, the itemisation still isn’t complete.

Itemisation (part three): Armour bonuses
Whilst this can be said about a lot of classes, the glove bonus for Druids as a whole - but especially ferals - is somewhat useless. 0.1s reduction in casting time on Cyclone doesn’t even make up for the 100ms+ latency that nearly all players experience. Also, it is a glove bonus which a feral is much less likely to use than a restoration or balance Druid.

Bugs: The infamous feral range bug
There really isn’t a lot to say about the feral range bug because it’s all been said before thousands of times. I am hoping that after the current PTR changes and the comments at Blizzcon, this bug will finally go away.

Mixed roles: Feral and Restoration cf. BlizzCon '07
Carrying on from Blizzcon, it was shown that Blizzards vision for the class was for Balance/Restoration and Feral/Restoration builds to dominate non-healing specs since Balance and Feral didn’t really mix. The problem in the arena is that a Druid’s greatest asset (regardless of spec) is Cyclone and yet Cyclone plays to none of the strengths of the feral Druid.

Both restoration and balance builds use Cyclone in all the arena settings from 2v2 through to 5v5, cycling Cyclone is a powerful strategy for breaking a team’s offensive and can be used to lock down healers or prevent healing on a main target. When a feral steps into the arena they have conflicting options; either do DPS, run interrupts, cycle Cyclone, or a combination of the three.

Do DPS
A lot of the talent points in feral increase the damage capacity of the feral Druid, 10 out of 21 are purely dedicated to improving damage in the feral tree alone with a further three (if you count Furor) from restoration. However, being a hybrid, a Druid is essentially a Rogue or Warrior without the utility of MS/poisons, snares, stuns and all the other things that make those classes unique in the arena. In short, a Druid focusing only on their feral abilities is little more than a watered down version of their “parent” class, and bringing their “parent class” would be a better option for 95% of the teams out there.

Run interrupts
With Pounce, Charge, Maim, Cyclone and Bash it is possible for a feral Druid to take a player (usually a healer) out of play for a long period of time. To do so requires perfect timing and for the Druid to be uninterrupted; a few stuns from a Warrior/Rogue or a fear will allow the controlled target some breathing room and the “lock down” is diminished in potency.

Cycle Cyclone
A feral Druid could perform the job a balance or restoration Druid performs by cycling Cyclone until an advantage is seized when the feral can then join the offensive. The problem with this is that a typical feral will not have CoN, will have a smaller mana pool, and when that advantage is seized they must get into melee range of the primary target to do some damage. A balance Druid would be able to perform this function much more efficiently and fluently whilst also being protected by plate-like armour.

A combination of all three
Since the Druid is a hybrid/role-shifter class, it is a fair assumption to make that the Druid cannot concentrate on one of these roles but must instead use a combination of all three. The problem with this tactic is that if the Druid is constantly switching in and out of forms to Charge/Bash (Bear), DPS (Cat), Cyclone (Caster), they will quickly drain their limited mana.

Your job: A lack of a role
To me the direction a feral Druid should go in does not seem clear. I think the most potent combo would probably be to use the feral Druid as a 0.5 CC/interrupter and use them for Cyclone duty at the start and then as an interrupter as the game goes on. However, this play style effectively wastes all the feral points after 11 (to get Charge) and the job could be performed as well by a restoration Druid who has 3/3 CoN and a bigger mana pool, and they could also heal in between Cyclones/interrupts.

Alternatively the feral could play as a 0.5 CC/DPS, again spamming Cyclone at the start before moving to DPS; however as shown, a balance Druid could perform this function as well and in fact do it better thanks to CoN and Moonkin Form whilst Cycloning, and ranged attacks when DPSing.

Ultimately there is no clear role for a feral to perform in the arena. The only strength a feral has is that it can adapt well to situations with Bear Form for survivability, Cat for DPS, caster for some (weak) heals and Cyclone; the problem is that these roles are too spread and better performed by other Druid specs without even considering other classes.

A balance Druid has Cyclone and survivability and good DPS at the same time, a restoration has Cyclone and good heals at the same time, a feral has survivability or good DPS or Cyclone and every time they switch between roles it costs 580mp. Couple this in with the inherent weakness of melee needing to be on target to attack and a feral Druid just becomes ineffective no matter what they do.

Restoration - PvE
Restoration has always been a strong tree compared to balance and feral since release and it remains strong today, however there are some issues to address.

Talents (part one): A bloated tree
The restoration tree is fat, fatter than any the other Druid trees by a long way. A Druid can put 61 points in restoration and still not get everything; there are 68 points to choose from. This affects feral and balance Druids since a lot of the bloat in the tree is at the start with five 5-point talents in the first three tiers and also greatly limits a healing Druid from putting any points to aid solo grinding due to the requirement of each talent for raiding.

This problem is not unique to Druids, but I believe it to be a problem nonetheless.

Talents (part two): Useless talents
Again this problem is not unique to Druids, nearly all trees have useless or undesirable talents, but one in particular stands out.

Any Druid putting points in restoration must choose between Improved Mark of the Wild or Furor. A restoration Druid speccing for healing will most likely go Improved Mark of the Wild however the buff itself is very weak when compared to other class buffs, and the 5 points to improve it add such an insignificant difference that many raiding guilds do not care whether their Druids have improved Mark or not.

Limitations: ToL and buffing, depoisoning, decursing
Thankfully it seems that the issues of buffing, depoisoning and decursing in ToL are going to be looked into, but for completeness sake I’m including them anyway.

It is very frustrating to not be able to buff in ToL. De-poisoning and de-cursing could (at a push) be understandable, but not being able to buff Mark is a real thorn in the side of a restoration Druid. They can Rebirth someone but then must shift out of ToL to buff them and back into ToL to continue healing thus wasting extra mana on top of the Rebirth cost.

Increasingly I’m seeing Rebirth’d targets getting Fort/Int/Blessings but never Mark because the Tree doesn’t want to shift out, the Moonkin doesn’t want to shift out and the Feral doesn’t want to shift out (or can’t if tanking!).

Restoration - PvP
Restoration is quickly looking to be the most popular and viable arena spec but for the moment it is still confined to 2v2. This may change and we have seen teams employing a restoration Druid on 5v5 however it is early days whether they will be able to challenge the might of the Paladin as a successful 5v5 healer.

Reliance on LoS: 2v2 versus 5v5
If you watch videos and read forum posts from PvP restoration Druids the common theme is that through LoS abuse a healing Druid can protect itself from being focused whilst keeping healing through HoTs on their team mate. This works especially well in 2v2 and all healers abuse LoS in this bracket to gain improved results. However, the same cannot be said for 5v5.

It is not possible to LoS effectively in 5v5 like it is in 2v2, in general most people are in LoS of everyone else and it’s not possible for a Druid to hide behind a pillar to prevent incoming damage and control. This affects the performance of the restoration Druid in 5v5 a lot more than other durable healers (such as the Paladin or Shaman) since those more durable healers do not rely on LoS so much.

With the removal of LoS in 5v5, the survivability of a restoration Druid is greatly diminished and other, more durable, healers are preferred.

Itemisation (part one): Low stamina and resilience
In light of the above problems of survivability in 5v5, it should be pointed out that Druid healers have the least stamina and resilience provided from their gladiator sets compared to the other three healing sets.

A Druid has about twice the mana regeneration and more intellect than the other sets, but the Druid’s problem doesn’t revolve around longevity but instead about survivability. PvP restoration Druids such as Heavenfall advise taking stamina, resilience and +healing over mana regeneration for gem slots and in addition, every Druid has Innervate for increased mana regeneration should they need it.

Itemisation (part two): Resilience rings and cloaks
This is more of a general concern for all healing classes; however, there is a lack of epic healing resilience rings and cloaks. There is no healing ring available from the spirit shards vendor and no healing cloak available as a PvP reward.

Itemisation (part three): Armour bonuses
Similarly to feral, the glove bonus of -0.1s on Cyclone is barely noticeable and since it doesn’t reduce the GCD of Cyclone it does not allow for quicker overall Cycloning by the Druid.

Balance - PvE
The ‘ugly step-child’ of the Druid class. A lot of stigma associated with the balance tree is unfounded especially after the improvements over the years, but some issues still persist.

Mana issues: Shadow Priest reliance
A raiding balance Druid is completely reliant on a shadow Priest unless they gimp their DPS via a more mana efficient spell rotation. Insect Swarm/Starfire x4 is sustainable with mana potions and no shadow Priest, but Insect Swarm/Moonfire/Starfire x3 is better DPS, however it requires a shadow Priest and potions.

Due to the Moonkin being a hybrid, they must constantly push for the absolute maximum DPS in order to place reasonably on the meters and thus become accepted; this is not possible, especially during early raiding, thanks to these mana issues. If Moonkins had fewer mana issues and actually were free to use anything but their most mana efficient DPS cycle, a lot of the stigma surrounding them would start to dissipate.

Talents: A greater reliance on restoration than feral
Simply put, a raiding (or PvP) feral Druid can get everything they need out of restoration without wasting a single point. Every single point goes into a feral bias talent. The same cannot be said for a balance Druid.

The raiding balance Druid must ‘waste’ 5 points on either Improved Mark or Furor, then another 5 points on something in the next tier before finally getting to the target of Subtlety and Intensity. For a PvPer the Druid might make some use of Furor; but it is not a balance focused talents, merely a small boost to the off-spec side of balance.

Itemisation: Hopefully to be addressed
Personally, I have never had too much of an issue with itemisation for a balance Druid. There are good leather pieces for every slot in PvP, and the armour class is largely ignored for PvE. I have no problems using cloth in PvE and there is ample leather itemisation support for PvP.

That said, it would be nice to have gear specifically tailored towards Moonkins and after the comments made at Blizzcon I hope we will see improved itemisation for Moonkins.

Your job: A lack of a role
In PvE a balance Druid unfortunately follows the pattern of the holy trinity: Tank/DPS/Healer. A balance Druid is nothing more than a DPSer with no added utility for groups or raids, there is no reliable CC (except in outside instances) and they bring no utility such as the mana regeneration of a shadow Priest. The crit aura only increases the groups DPS and doesn’t provide any increased utility.

A balance Druid is not sought after for grouping or raiding the way that the shadow Priest (another hybrid) is, and although there are still issues to solve with regards to Shamans and Paladins, Druids should also be sought after for a particular spell, ability or utility.

Force of Nature (part one): Control and survivability
Force of Nature in a raiding setting is practically worthless. Being melee the trees are susceptible to all the damage Rogues and other melee classes face whilst having a fraction of the HP and absolutely no control in order to pull them back or otherwise.

When used on a boss they last a few seconds before taking some AoE damage and dying, never lasting anything like their full duration; all in all a useless talent for raiding.

Force of Nature is also sketchy to use in a group setting, they are very unpredictable and sometimes will run off on their own or hit mobs out of CC. In general they are a liability thanks to no control.

Balance - PvP
Balance in PvP is a relatively unknown spec although it is becoming more popular recently as people seem to give up on feral. However, numbers are still down with only 2 out of the 58 Druids in 2v2, 4/49 in 3v3 and 8/41 in 5v5 making it into the top 20 teams across the US (07/08/07 Caster).

Force of Nature (part two): Control in PvP
Force of Nature’s control issues plague its PvP utility as well, I have already created a long post about this (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=304153023&sid=1) but I will summarise here.

The treants are a 41 point talent that is completely uncontrollable in PvP. For a 3 minute cooldown with the purpose of DPS they should be direct-able onto a target for the purpose of burst damage or similar. It is useless trying to burst down a target in PvP only to see your treants running off to the healer that is healing your target thus wasting DPS time whilst they run (since they’re melee) and taking damage away from your chosen target.

Balance Druids should have complete control over their 41 point talent.

Lack of options: Cooldowns and battle-turning abilities
The balance Druid has a distinct lack of cooldowned options for use in PvP. The treants as described above are worthless more than half the time and the only other cooldowns are feral oriented (eg. Bash/Maim) or restoration oriented (eg. Tranquillity). The only cooldown a balance Druid possesses is Barkskin which is defensive; a balance Druid has no usable offensive cooldowned abilities.

I will not list the other casters of WoW but every single one has at least one offensive cooldown and all of them are controllable. This lack of cooldowns makes the Druid play style very repetitive and things like “burst damage” are little more than chain casting Wrath twice with a Moonfire at the end hoping that something crits.

Itemisation (part one): MP/5
I have already covered this point in another post (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=304151605&sid=1) but after my own experience, I believe the MP/5 on the balance arena sets should be removed and replaced with other stats, either crit or increased stamina and resilience; this leads onto part two.

Itemisation (part two): Low stamina and resilience
Again the balance Druid has the lowest stamina and resilience out of all the offensive caster sets and this is in part due to the budget being spent on (in my opinion) useless MP/5. Whilst survivability is not so much of an issue versus melee thanks to the armour bonuses, it is an issue versus casters thanks to no spell interrupts and reliance on Cyclone for control, which can itself be interrupted/silenced.

Itemisation (part three): Armour bonuses
The 4 piece set bonus for balance Druids on the PvP set is all but useless with nearly all balance Druids opting to take 2xS1 and 3xS2 for double resilience bonuses, mana is not an issue in the arena.

Finally, the glove bonus appears again. I am a balance Druid and I would loose no sleep if I lost the current glove bonus, the same cannot be said for a Rogue. Whilst a lot of the glove bonuses are poor for many classes, the Druid’s is not only useless but also weak.

Pre-emption on arguments
I would just like to pre-empt some arguments that I know will surface.

Feral is your PvE tree, it just sucks for PvP like a Warrior’s protection tree
I ask you to consider why there is a feral (and balance) arena set. If these specs were not supposed to be viable in the arena, would there be gear for them? The reason all Warriors (for example) must spec arms for PvP is because protection is not supported as displayed by the lack of a protection arena set.

Consider also that for a feral Druid to arena they must collect a completely different set of gear and effectively start from scratch. They will have no PvE gear to fill the gaps unlike Mages, Rogues, Warriors and so on.

Finally, whilst it is true enhancement Shamans, retribution Paladins and so on have the same problems in the arena; you don’t see me saying that those specs shouldn’t be viable, they should! All specs with gear from the arena should work in the arena.

Learn to play, L2P, and all variants in between
I refuse to believe that the only reason Druids are poor in the arena is due to a lack of skill. If there was a way for Druids to be competitive where they currently aren’t we would be seeing greater numbers than we currently are.

It is perfectly possible that since the Druid class is probably more technical and difficult to play than others then there will be fewer numbers in the high teams; but this fact alone cannot explain away the massive differences in numbers, for example: 243 holy Paladins versus 26 restoration Druids in 5v5.

Your arena rating sucks
My arena rating is definitely not the best (1657, 1716, 1651) in the world however I don’t believe that any of my observations have been made without evidence from the various movies floating around and thanks to my discussions with higher rated Druids. The other fact to consider is that the very nature of this thread is saying we don’t do well in arenas, if I posted all this whilst sitting on a 2500+ rating it would all be a bit hypocritical.

But Cyclone is over-powered
No it isn’t, if it was we would have Druid’s as #1 across the arena. I’m guessing you have 7000hp/10 resilience/sub-1500 arena rating; please get a clue, get some gear and watch some arena videos.

Summary
I hope I have covered all the major issues of the Druid class in an un-bias and clear fashion but if I have missed anything please let me know. I hope these words find their way onto the desk of whoever is in charge of Druid development and that he or she finds something useful in all this.

Thank you for reading, no flaming please.

I did only read the Feral pve tanking bit properly since i am not in the least bit interested in moonkin. But he has very good points. The item upgrades from MH and BT are next to none existant. There are many more none tier items for other classes. I know the feral druids are minority in most raid groups mostly accounting for only 1 slot in a 25 man raid we do need items to compete for that one slot.

Wall of text crits you for <3

Nice summary.

As for PvE cat dps problems, they are inherent in the mechanics to an extent, as we scale worse from attack power than rogues, roughly at 60% to 70% of the rogues scaling. That is compensated by the fact we gain more from strength and agility than any other class in attack power and crit, but given the unwillingness of Blizzard to fix itemisation to give us alternatives to pure rogue gear, it would be much better to change HotW to increase attack power instead of strength. It should be enough to keep scaling good enough.

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Q u o t e:
Bravo.

This should be stickied, read and re-read by anyone complaining about druids. Furthermore, developers should sit up and take note of all the very valid points raised in your post.

I would also like to commend you on the comprehensive way you've set out your excellently researched, and well expressed points. Despite its impressive length, it is a very easy read.

Very well done.

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/agree and lets hope someone will read this post. Bump it till they do!

I am undergerd and on gud ratings, when I got bettar geers will my scalings go wors than atm?? Tenks for rply bai.

Teh Rogues are laughing at this >.<

I was expecting another QQ thread, but this was actually accurate. Well written.

Very nice post concerning the current situation of the druid class and its possition in the major segments of the game. I must say that this hits it right on the head. Now if we can convince that n00b tigole about how his own game works would be wonderful.

i didn't read it all, stopped at the bugs and i would like to add one thing.

furor takes a while to give you the rage/energy(like 0.5s), this feels like a huge deal for me as a resto druid specced for pvp, that's 0.5s omre for melees to beat on you, and makes you unable to interrupt 1.5s castings without being in bearform already :> making furor instant acn't be considered as a huge buff neither, small buff, and we had it back in teh days.

furor history as far as i remember:

worked fine.
random patch made it not work for energy in catform
random patch "fixed" the no energy while shifting to catform, without fixing anything
random patch actually fixed the problem, catform got the energy it was meant to get with furor. furor delay got introduced :>

Very impressive and detailed post covering the majority of problems affecting our beloved class.

The ToL arguments I agree with wholeheartedly. I would of though tree of life form would benefit from a Barkskin-esk passive defense but I dare say that would cause some grief.

Regarding the Balance mana problem I feel is the most important issue here (Being a Moonkin myself). My only niggle is the increased attack power in Mookin form, I've always though this was somewhat redundant, perhaps a percentage of spirit adding to spell damage would be better? It would at least make a Balance/Resto spec far more favourable.

The feral arguments I can't honestly comment on not having played that spec, nor intend to in the foreseeable future so I'll keep my mouth shut on this and leave the more experienced to voice their suggestions.

Wow, what a lovely post, a 90% of this I couldn't agree more on!

For the nelf bragging about being undergeared and having good rating, first of all, your not undergeared compared to the rating you have, lol....You may be undergeared to a few other druids but not for your rating. Seriously friend, think before you write again.

i myself am a pvp balance druid (given up on pve), can come top dps in battlegrounds but can't take out players by myslef most of the time, useless against almost every class. i have some issues that i would like to highlight

2.5 sec cast starfire (balance) 15% stun chance, how often are you going to let off one of those? i am lucky to fit a few in a BG and stun is so low

cyclone, its a great spell but because the object is immune to attacks its pretty pointless for a 6 second spell duration, only good to stop somone casting a spell

treants, there is an issue with these that when a player or npc becomes immune to attacks and trees stop attacking, they do not attack after immunity is over and you are being attacked, instead just stand there (pala bubble xD)

fearie fire, this is only usefull against rogues for balance druids then again with a rogue that burns all there cds its useless as you just get stunned again after they use cloak of shadows (i think) and vanish, its almost impossible to defeat a rogue unless they miss there stuns (tried everything a druid has to offer even starting in bear form against rogues)

there are possibly many more issues that i have forgotten about but these are the ones i most remember

also a druid is a hybrid of 3 types of classes in wow, but you can only be 1 of the 3 classes which is weaker than the original class, so what is the point of a druid unless they can do all 3 at the same time.
point is that druid should be able to do all 3 well enough in any talent tree and have gear with all stats combined

A great read. It sums up what I've been thinking myself.

Perhaps making shifting forms mana-free would help? As would unbuckling it from the global cooldown?
It seems a lot of our problems stem from having to pay (both in terms of mana and global CD) to fully get the benefit of our unique playstyle.

Start in catform - shift to caster and target add - cast cyclone - shift to catform - attack - costs over 5-6 seconds in global CD alone.
Not viable, and not even remotely efficient for PvE add control. (not least of which is the possibility of losing all your combo points on your main target too)

Wow, now thats a lot of text.

I read the parts for the Moonkin 1st, it was really well written and quite informative; so I decided to read it all. It sums up most peoples thoughts and puts them down very clearly and easy to read (I thank you for that).


I would seem to agree with a poster above me, un-coupeling form change from the GCD and removing the mana cost would go an extremley long way to solving our true hybrid class & apeal.


P.S. It must have taken you several hours/days to compile all this info and put pen to paper so that it is readable. (We do appreciate it) - Now lets hope a dev notices it and cares enough to show as much commitment to 'balance' as you do.

Kudos!