Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by Dan O'Halloran and David Bowers.

Last week, we talked about the hope that druids could someday get to use the full spectrum of their abilities, rather than being narrowly confined to the small subset related to whatever role they perform in a group. Today, I'd like to share with you some practical examples of the sorts of things druids should be able to do, and I would welcome you to share your feedback based on your own experiences playing a druid, as well as your hopes for the future.

To be clear I must reiterate that I'm not at all talking about the power of druids in relation to other classes here. As many others have shown countless times over, druids are fully capable of performing any of the major roles in the game, tanking, damage and healing, as well as or even better than other classes in some cases. The topic at hand right now is only a matter of playstyle: if druids are to perform their role well by integrating the entire spectrum of their abilities rather than by mashing the same few buttons over and over, what would this synergy mean? How would it feel to play the druid in this new way? How could we remain just as effective as we are now, while at the same time being less limited.

To begin, I'm going to assume that you think this synergy is a good idea. I'll assume, for example, that when you're tanking in bear form, you'd like to be able to make use of your healing and damage spells effectively as well -- certainly not to the same degree that a Balance or Restoration druid would, but possibly in some way that not only healed your friends and did more damage, but also helped you tank better overall. Likewise, I'll assume that many Restoration and Balance druids out there would like to be able to use Bear and Cat forms more often as well. We druids have some of the widest variety of abilities of any class in the game, after all, and without true synergy, there's no room for the finesse other classes can use when bringing their full set of skills to their one task.

So here are some ways that I think we could be using all of our abilities no matter which role we've chosen. These are just my own personal ideas, which are certainly not perfect in themselves, but I hope they give a clearer picture of what I have in mind. I'll begin with a feral druid mixup we might try in patch 2.3 (though I fear it would be problematic).

Suppose I'm tanking in bear form and I see my healers running low on mana, so I cast Barkskin and automatically go into caster form taking 20% less damage. This is hopefully enough to let me use Tranquility to prevent my group from dying. Tranquility then finishes with me having a moment left in Barkskin to Innervate the main healer before I switch back to Bear form to resume tanking. This same technique should ideally work for offensive spells like Hurricane too, and perhaps allow me to Moonfire several targets before going back to Bear form. This ought to be a relatively safe procedure that any good druid could pull off without sending the group into a panic. Alternately, if we needed a lot of damage during the final portion of a fight (as in many boss fights), I think Barkskin ought to be strong enough to let me shift out of bear, toss a HoT on myself, and tank in cat form for a short while in order to do as much damage as possible, much like warriors using their Recklessness ability.

I'm neither a Restoration druid nor a Balance druid, so I'll have to leave detailed explanations of what exactly their synergy should feel like to others. Nonetheless, I can venture to make some guesses: What if, as a Restoration druid, you had a talent that let you cast Bear form's "Frenzied Regeneration" on others? That way, you wouldn't have to completely stop healing if you happen to pull aggro and need to shift to bear form. What if your +healing gear also gave an attack power buff when in cat form, so that you could do a bit of helpful damage when healing isn't needed, or when you are soloing on your own?

What if, as a Balance druid, your +spell damage gear also gave your Cat form some attack power for when you run out of mana? What if your Moonkin mana-on-melee procs worked while in Bear form or Cat form as well, only moreso, so that the best way for you to regain mana would be to shift to feral form and keep fighting? Would Balance druids want any reason to be in other forms while they still had a good amount of mana left, and if so, how might that work out?

Some may argue that sort of topic is that is mere speculation, but in fact it is helpful for the players of any class to try to get a clear idea of how they hope their class will develop in the future based on their experience of the class as it is now. Of course many classes say, "Buff me plz," but druids could be unique in telling Blizzard, "We're just powerful enough, thank you. Now please help us use all of our abilities more, instead of just a few."

After all, isn't versatility what being a druid is really about? It's a big job for designers, for sure, but ultimately the druid talents should promote both specialization as well as versatile use of all the class' abilities in one way or another. Nothing should force you to shift around, of course, but you should feel that shifting around makes you more useful than just staying in one shape, doing just one thing. Perhaps one day this sort of creative use of the complete spectrum of druid abilities will be expected of all competent druids.

Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives, Analysis / Opinion