War(craft)...War(craft) never changes.
As you may or may not know, I have decided to test WotLK in spite of my previous experience with the WoW franchise. After playing for a couple of days - I noticed that the game hasn't changed much.
Druids are still the weakest class, and people are still blindly stating that this is not true - because the game is supposed to be balanced. Well, its not. My druid does 450DPS at LvL 73 - whilst my mage friend does 1200DPS at lvl 73. This is why he is now lvl 79 and I am lvl 74.
Druids aren't accepted in groups (still) because ferals will want to roll on "rogue leather" and moonkins will roll on mages cloth. Itemization is still crappy, all rewards thus far have been CLOTH spelldamage - and all leather was for ferals (no spelldamage leather to be found). Bear druids got their armor nerfed A LOT, my friend lost 10.000 armor over night, along with 4000 health. This is a huge nerf for a class that was already a sub-par tank both to warriors and to paladins.
In addition to ruining feral hybridity (mangle is placed too high up the feral talent tree) they have also ruined feral dps and tanking by adding another superior tank/dps hybrid to the game - DEATH KNIGHT.
Druids have been voted by healers as being the worst tanks in WoW, if this is apparent at this point in the game, when noone has epic top tier equipment, you can imagine what will happen in a couple of months when DKs, Paladins and Warriors get their epics.
Now, even thought DKs can get themselves good tanking gear and spec into tanking (frost?) - they usually tank whilst being DPS specced and while wearing DPS items. Simply put, they cannot be bothered to lose grinding speed (thus leveling speed) by taking the less optimal build. At the same time, they require druids and priests to be specced deep into healing. Of course, they do in fact need extreme amounts of healing because in DPS gear - they simply cannot tank. But why am I supposed to grind with 450dps whilst they are grinding with 1100+ dps?
Healing DKs is hell - and I have been kicked out from many a group for DYING as a healer. If you understand the mechanics of the game, then you know that it wasn't MY fault I died, I mean, where was the tank? (threat holding) and how comes I had to heal the "tank" for so much hps that I got aggro? Sucky tanks always blame it on the healer. Since DKs CAN tank well, blatantly refusing to gear up and spec for your role whilst at the same time asking me to bend over and work doubletime to overcome for their weaknesses ... is kinda the core thing that hasn't changed in WoW over these last 4 years.
Druid healing mechanics are now even more whack-a-mole irritating than ever, you have counters to mind, durations to mind and so you end up working your ass off keeping the party comprised almost entirely of DKs alive. It simply isn't worth it.
In the end, you will get shafted over gear anyhow. What I am forced to do - in order to acquire new gear, is state openly that I fully intend to roll on both spelldamage cloth and damage leather before we start an instance. Then when the rogues and mages/locks begin their whining, I just begin hearthstoning out. Since all healers have re-rolled DKs (because Blizzard have made healing oh so joyful an activity) - I usually get things my way after all. Such an irony that I have to blackmail them to allow me to ROLL on the gear I can wear and that does improve my abilities. I am simply asking for equal rights, I must deserve to roll on gear since I am the only one sacrificing his leveling speed by being specced resto so I can heal.
So lets see, the loot greeding is still here, you still have to fight everyone to get to roll on loot. You are still being pigeon holed into healing, which noone wants to do (due to a reason, healing is the worst element of WoW) and when you heal you only get to roll on +spelldamage and only after all other DPS classes.
Talent trees are still bloated, druids are still "balanced" with other classes by giving them huge bonuses via talents, usually placed at the top of a talent tree, this kills all synergy between the talent trees, for an example, without mange, you still crit for 400 (with claw) and mangle is too high up the feral tree for feral druids to become any kind of hybrids. At the same time as you are critting for 400 with your main DPS power - warriors "defend" themselves with 4000damage shield bashes - quite balanced isn't it.
Mangle should not be a talent, it should replace claw altogether, claw is like having a lvl 40 green weapon and playing lvl 70.
Blizzard keeps fixing druids through bloating their talent trees, after 4yrs. of this not working as intended, perhaps its time to finally allow druids to scale better in their core mechanics, if druids lag today by 30%, once everyone gets their top tier they will lag by 70%, this is why a 25% boost through talents will only break things even more for druids.
Feral charge should also become an ability and not a talent, its too crucial to be a talent in feral talent tree.
Resto druids CANT solo the game, and are the only class in WoW today that CANT DPS in PvE/Solo, their top talent changes them into a tree yet the tree doesn't have a bonus on barkskin (not long ago the tree couldn't USE barkskin ability at all lol) - and the tree doesn't have a bonus on thorns, whats even more funny, you have to switch to caster form in order to cast thorns and then go back to tree form. Resto druids should get a huge bonus on thorns (after all they are a tree) - so their PvE dps matches Paladin/DK grinding speed.
Balance druids dont have enough leather spelldamage/haste items at their disposal, and their talent trees are crit based (if you crit you get a bonus that makes you semi-balanced with other spellcasters) which means they are very much crit dependent, and we all know what resilience does (annulates crits).
Druids also have a freebie flying form, yet they have to learn to ride themselves so they have to pay 5000 gold to the riding instructor, funny isn't it? Druids also cant use their old flying form in the new lands until they reach lvl 77, so what use is this class special? I want to trade my class special for more survivability and more dps, kk?
Therefore the only acceptable type of druids - are of course restoration druids and healing as a resto druid is the hardest most demanding and most boring job in WoW today. Therefore blizzard need to rethink hot/counter healing altogether (its too intensive compared to simple DPSing) and in addition boost survivability of the tree along with its damage dealing powers (for PvE purposes, resto druids CANT solo PvE). Knowing from past experience that it takes them a year (on average) to admit they made an error and another year to fix it half ways....well you get the picture....
The effect of keeping up with bad design philosophies over the last 4 years is evident once you take into consideration how many healers have simply rerolled DKs, lower lever areas are SWARMING with endless hordes of DKs LF a healer. I guess Blizzard is going to deal with this sudden influx of DKs by doing what they always do - cattleprod people into rerolling - they will nerf DKs to oblivion.
The good things about Wrath are:
1) no reputation grind (what a grand error it was to introduce reputation keys into TBC, Blizzard had lost millions of subscribers in TBC over this)
2) shorter instances, no "equipment check" in the form of boss enrage timers, no pots
And that's it. PvP is still barely playable, arenas and resilience have ruined it, and it still hasn't been fixed.
On a positive side, I play WoW once a week, for 2-3 hrs, because of this I have no illusions about endgame raiding nor belonging to any guild for that matter. And I simply don't care about this. The game is still made to attract hard core people and it still makes casuals run away in disgust.
Yesterday GamePolitics reported on concerns by University of Minnesota Duluth officials that compulsive World of Warcraft play was causing some students to flunk out.
Its the simple truth, if you don't play for 40+ hrs per week, you suck. In time you will lag behind enough for others to notice and to ban you from the harder instances. As more time goes by (without you having access to the top of the line instances) - you lag behind more and eventually find yourself without anything to do. You can either quit the game, or quit your job. I know what I will do when the time comes.
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