I've read a lot of discussion about the druid class, how it should be played, what we are, and most of all what we are not. I keep getting fellow druids telling me that I'm foolish to specialise into healing as much as I am doing at the moment, while at the same time I disagree with all the naysayers who still do not accept the power of bear tanks or moonkin nukers.

I think almost everyone has an oversimplified view of the class. Here is my view on the druid class.

Healer druids vs Priests

Priests are either complaining that druids outheal them with the Tree of Life buff, or complaining about that we don’t heal enough. Both lines of argumentation are pointless. We are not priests, nor are we ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than priests.

Disc/Holy Priests:

- Extremely versatile healers. Fast heals, slow & big heals, shields, and HoTs, all from one character.
- The ability to resurrect the dead, but only out of combat.
- Fade, which allows you to lose threat caused by your heals. Potentially allowing you to heal more hp for less threat.

Full Resto Druids:

- The most powerful ingame HoT’s. Slow & big heals as well, but only in normal form.
- The ability to resurrect one person in combat.
- No agro losing abilities. Skilled druids know how to work around that.

Feral tanks vs Warriors

Warriors hate ferals, because many of them have rolled their character specifically to be a tank. Instead of getting an extra healer they get a pesky furball wanting to do their job. Again, the fact of the matter is that bears are not worse tankers or better tankers than warriors. They’re different in a few significant ways.

Prot warriors:

- Damage mitigation from block, parry, dodge and armor.
- The ability to stance dance.
- The ability to quickly build up threat.
- Many gear options to increase resistance to non-physical damage types.

Bear tanks:

- No mitigation from blocks.
- More mitigation from armor and dodge.
- Impossible to be polymorphed.
- Feral charge without stance dance.
- Potentially more HP.
- The ability to build up more threat over a long period of time.
- Weak versus spell damage.

Kitty druids vs Rogues

Rogues have a habit of telling druids to heal and forget about damage dealing too. I don’t believe the naysayers who think that cats cannot deal similar damage to rogues, and that is mainly because I’ve yet to witness a raid where a feral druid in was allowed to be in catform for the whole time the damage meter was running, and was wearing cat gear of the same “tier” as the rogues he was competing against. But rogues have unique abilities that mean they will always keep an edge over cats in their specialisation.

Rogues:

- High damage generation from specials and criticals
- Feint and vanish, allowing them to do more damage for less threat.
- Parry and stunlock abilities, allowing them to offtank adds in large battles.

Cat druids:

- More Attack Power generation than any other class (save perhaps fury warriors) from gear.
- Higher threat generation than rogues. Steady threat generation because of fewer crits.
- Extremely high white damage due to the AP.
- Weak special damage (although this gets buffed with Mangle).

Balance Druids vs Mages

Kiddingly called ‘Oomkins,’ the huge improvements to this talent tree and the itemisation for it in the new addon will see Moonkins no longer run out of mana, and do what they are best at: high single target sustained damage.

Mages:

- Extreme dps on AOE targets
- Kiters, can keep large groups off them forever
- Frost block, allowing them to wipe threat

Balance druids:

- Full contribution of +spell damage gear on starfire
- Extremely high single-target dps
- Few options to kite or crowd-control

Hybrid specced druids vs other Hybrids

Within the druid class itself a lot of discussion seems to be about whether you are even a real druid when you are specialised into 1 role alone. In my opinion you should follow your heart and specilialise as much as you like to. On the other hands, the class has perfect potential to be played as a hybrid, performing each of its roles well enough, and thus being a great versatile tool to the raid group. Hybrid spec is as much of a valid way of building your druid as any deep specialisation imo. As an example of what hybrid specced druids can do I’ll compare one to a paladin.

Feral/Resto vs Paladin offtank

Feral/Resto:

- Powerful healer who can shapeshift out of bearform whenever the add he was tanking is dead / picked up by a warrior.
- High armor in bear form.
- Loses mana on shapeshifting.
- Loses healer stat points on strength, armor, sta.

Paladin

- Healer & dispeller who can tank adds for a short time.
- Gains mitigation from block.
- Does not benefit from bearform armor buff, but wears plate armor instead.
- Loses healer stat points on defense, strenght, armor, sta.

Conclusions

Druids are not hybrids per se. We have the ability to play our class as a hybrid or as a specialist, depending on what we want and on what our guild wants. In each of our specilisations we can excel just as much as the mother class, yet that class will always have more allround ability in that field. We bring new things to each field however.

We’re not healbots. Damage specced druids who don’t do serious damage should be allowed to gear up properly, or forced to respec. Tanking druids should not be asessed on how well they tank bosses that have magic effects as their main source of damage output. Tanking druids can tank any physical damage target as well as a warrior.

Deep-specialised druids are not fools. They know what they want with their character and go for it. Forcing a person who was born to heal to tank is silly, just like forcing a tank in fur to heal is silly. If it’s for one specific boss encounter, fine. But not for a whole raid.

Hybrid druids waste stats points, but compensate for that in their amazing utility for the raid group. A well played hybrid specced & geared druid will not be high on damage or healing lists, but can make a vital difference to the raid.

Ranahewen
60 restoration druid

Cant we get this stickied in the other classes forums.

So they finally can learn something about us druids!

Wow, Well put, BNp for Sticky.

So how do I request a sticky? This is my first post on this forum.

Ranahewen

"Report" it by clicking the Biohazard symbol next to "quote" and "reply".

Really great post and it deserves a sticky.

And few words from me... The power of druid is now fully available and this power is to make druid usefull in so many ways. The only problem is people who think we can do everything. I loved balance from the start... respeced resto for raiding... I can't say I didn't like healing just... it wasn't what I wanted to do I just had to do that. Now I'm a happy boomkin so in love in my main that I even don't relog on my alts (I'm totally bored with a lock - it's just to easy class :P ). But I never ever will be a good feral. Ofc, if it was needed to hop into bear cause I cought agro I was doing it but it was like emergency. I just never agree to go on runs where people ask me to tank - only because our class can do that doesn't mean I have to since I can do better other things that my class offers me. It is just irritaiting that some ignorants want us to do everything and think of us as noobs if we don't want to do something but they prolly never played a druid.

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Q u o t e:
So how do I request a sticky? This is my first post on this forum.

Ranahewen

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the red thing on the left side of the "quote" option

and you diserve a bump followed by an sticky plx!11

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Q u o t e:
So how do I request a sticky? This is my first post on this forum.

Ranahewen

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You click the "report" button (you can't do it for your own posts but only for others), choose the "Sticky request" option and hit "ok". (Done ;-)).

Nice post. I agree with what you are saying but i have a different view on it.

A druid or a paladin or a shaman do whatever they spec for.

A feral druid and a prot spec paladin can tank equally with a warrior but in different ways.
A feral druid speced for dmg can do simiral rogueish/warrior dmg in similar ways.
A balance druid does arcane dps like the mage and warlock.
A Resto druid effectively heals as good as a priest in different ways.

Similarly paladins and shamans depending on spec.

What priests fail to realize is that they are ommiting one thing. The heal meters do not register PW:S. That is a preventive heal. For each PW:S a priest gives to a warrior is like healing him for 1k hp. So resto druids or paladins do not out heal priests. They just don't register all their heals.

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Q u o t e:
- The ability to stance dance.

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Say not "ability" but rather "necessity", a weakness that they can't do everything in the one stance. Choosing your stance and knowing when to shift is as much part of playing a warrior as choosing your form and knowing when to shift is part of playing a druid.

this is all stating the obvious... why did people want this stickied?

gratz Ranahewen!!!

your first post and it got sticked :D


great work ;)

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Q u o t e:
this is all stating the obvious... why did people want this stickied?

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becouse, belive or not, there is still people that don't realize this and come in here posting crap about druids becouse he don't know what is a druid.


edit: typo *blush*

Nice gathering of knowledge every druid / raidleader should have. I have some doubts about the 'high white kitty damage', can anyone explain me why im wrong on that?

Nice to invest time to learn your class, but really no excuse for not doing it properly.

First of all, there is a BIG difference between raiding druid and non-raiding druid. Furthermore, even bigger difference raiding "old" stuff (MC, ZG and BWL) and "new" stuff (AQ40 and Nax).

We agree that that priests are not better nor worse healers then resto druids, but that is well known fact.

For feral forms - it is not true that bear generates more aggro than warrior overtime. I am not talking this by heart, these are things i tested with MT (prot specced war) in my guild. Not only that, war have more ability to faster turn agro back on himself and, what is also important, more ways to survive - shield wall, last stand, block. Also, raiding fights where there is need for tank not to be polymorhed is really insignificant to be mentioned separately.

That said, I must emphasise that Im not saying that druid is bad tank, only that warrior is better. And if you've seen druid generating more agro than warrior, sorry to say, but that warrior doesnt know to play his class well.

As for DPS - cat can DPS, np. Altho, strange to say that it generates more aggro than rogue. Granted, rogue has vanish on 5 mins, wich is great for bosses, but catform itself reduces agro, and cower is great (and i mean GREAT) agro reducer. Being that vanish (wich completely reset agro) is on 5 min cd, and that faint reduces agro slightly, I'd say that cat is really no problem for agroing.

But, let me say again, it is realy refreshing to see someone who loves druids nowadays.

All the best and cheers

That was me.

And one more thing - we can also heal, and I think we should do what is necessary for guild to do well. And since, say, rogues and warlocks can't heal, I'll be glad to do it.

And, just to mention, I am cl of my guild and I allow any build, but we mostly (90% of the time) heal in raids. Simply because we can and other dont. Then again, we dont raid Nax, so...

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Q u o t e:


Hybrid druids waste stats points, but compensate for that in their amazing utility for the raid group. A well played hybrid specced & geared druid will not be high on damage or healing lists, but can make a vital difference to the raid.

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Yep this is true, and also if the druid isn't hybrid specced, people still expect him to do other thing than just heal/dps.

First of all ...great post !
In second .. i like to talk about role-switcher not hybrid. i think that paladin and shamma are hybrids.. not us. Our major problem .. imho.. is the right choice in the right moment.. after we made a choice we cant turn back.

role-switcher is the way ^_-

anyway thx for great post. simply and correct. ^^

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Q u o t e:
Nice post. I agree with what you are saying but i have a different view on it.

A druid or a paladin or a shaman do whatever they spec for.

A feral druid and a prot spec paladin can tank equally with a warrior but in different ways.
A feral druid speced for dmg can do simiral rogueish/warrior dmg in similar ways.
A balance druid does arcane dps like the mage and warlock.
A Resto druid effectively heals as good as a priest in different ways.

Similarly paladins and shamans depending on spec.

What priests fail to realize is that they are ommiting one thing. The heal meters do not register PW:S. That is a preventive heal. For each PW:S a priest gives to a warrior is like healing him for 1k hp. So resto druids or paladins do not out heal priests. They just don't register all their heals.

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although i realy disagree you can ensurly not compare druids with paladins in tanking ...
you realy can not druids have one tank 2 abilities to do roar to taunt all nearby you have aoe but the
aoe doesn't give as much aggro then druid's do druids haver more hp druids have faerie fire to lower
armor such like sunder armor but only 1 time and in tbc druids get stacking bleed attacks
you don't see a paladin get those things or have better tank ways then druid even if you are prot