Shifting Perspectives: The druid of 2010
by Allison Robert 
Feb 1st 2011 at 6:00PM
It has long -- or, okay, over two years -- been a tradition at WoW Insider for me to exploit the germs conveyed by my relatives to the domicile in the interests of writing a yearly druid post. How does this work? I get sick, go out and buy cough syrup, get trolleyed on the devil's own brew, and then stagger to a computer with no one on the editorial staff able to stop me from publishing in time.
This year, I didn't get sick around Christmas, nor immediately after it. In the interests of not disappointing our readership, which seems to enjoy articles written while under the heady influence of dextromethorphan, I secured lodgings on the floor of a bus station bathroom overnight and came back trying to restrain myself from barfing up a lung. Holding my head above the toilet was a certain semi-but-not-entirely-fictional person by the name of Letitia, whom you will have met earlier in Shifting Perspectives: Fun with race choice. Keep in mind that no small portion of this article was written from that position.
Letitia: Out of intense curiosity, why are you so coherent?
Allie: That was written two bottles and three hours ago.
Letitia: (checks the bottle) Ah, vintage 2009.
Allie: The pharmacy hired a sommelier for the cough syrup aisle. I'm told this was aged in oak.
Letitia: Now they're just screwing with you.
Allie: I suspected as much. Why are you here, anyway?
Letitia: I'm your Snark Passenger.
Allie: (declines to comment)
Letitia: So. Anyway. The bear.
Allie: Da bears. According to the always brilliantly informed forum posters --
Letitia: Oh, it's going to be one of those days.
Allie: As I was saying, according to the always brilliantly informed forum posters, bears were the most overpowered tank of all time, but no one was actually playing one. That's a troublesome issue in a game where a not-inconsiderable portion of the player population tends to migrate to the most effective classes for each role.
Letitia: The number of times that druids are overlooked in the discussions concerning which tank a new player or reroller should pick up is a bit disheartening, I'll grant.
Allie: I never got it. During Wrath of the Lich King, I wrote two very lengthy articles about not getting it. I'm starting to suspect that the bear's popularity during The Burning Crusade was mostly about the niche the spec occupied in those days -- the dedicated off tank -- that no other tanking class was really designed to do. Once that was gone -- and it was a consequence of changes to raid dynamics, plus dual specs and more division between the cat and bear -- maybe there just wasn't a whole lot to attract players. With the introduction and subsequent popularity of the death knight and plate classes more generally, tanks in WoW became "three plate classes with unique and interesting mechanics ... and the bear, Warrior Lite."
Letitia: That sort of changed on the beta.
Allie: Well, they tried. And then bleeds lost the ability to proc Savage Defense, and it felt like a lot of that work went out the window. I can understand why it happened, but it felt like such a /facepalm moment, given all the effort to get bear players to have to think about the rotation and watch their bleeds. Swipe's pretty much garbage now (ask anyone leveling from 36 to 81), Maul's a cooldown, and you can condense the bear rotation to "hit Mangle as much as possible, spam Lacerate, and Pulverize at three stacks." Seriously, you can tank through current raid content with that one sentence. Even Thrash, the big new skill, is sort of pointless for single-target tanking these days. You can hit it and it does nice damage and threat, but there's no mechanical advantage to it. It's just there if you want. Hit it, don't hit it -- who cares?
Letitia: See, that's good! Just let that anger out! Preferably in the toilet this time, because holding your hair above the hallway carpet was less fun.
Allie: I'm gonna kill whoever gave this to me.
Letitia: If your coughing last night was any indication, someone else might have done you that favor just to get a little sleep.
Allie: Oh, I'm so sorry if my descent into the mouth of plague-ridden hell was inconvenient for you.
Letitia: The column, darling. By the way, you got it wrong earlier.
Allie: You'll have to be more specific. I have a long and illustrious history of getting things wrong.
Letitia: The bear isn't the warrior's idiot stepchild, it's the warrior's idiot child. You can see the family resemblance, and the kid has a savant-like ability to do one thing really well --
Allie: Complain.
Letitia: Well, I was going to say scale with offensive stats, but okay, Miss Negativity -- but deep down, you know the kid's never going to be more than a tragic version of the parent. You still running that little experiment?
Allie: The tank count? Low-level tank classes in the dungeon finder?
Letitia: Yeah. What do the numbers look like now for bears?
Allie: I think 8% representation last time I looked, although I definitely don't have enough data right now to publish an article on it. Maybe later this month or next. Also, everything I've seen so far as been on my goblin priest, so I gotta roll an Alliance equivalent to see if worgen druids have had more of an impact. I suspect they have, but you'd have to be a masochist to play a low-level bear for any length of time.
Letitia: Oh well. Cats had it somewhat better this past year.
Allie: As long as you didn't have to gear one. Gearing a feral druid sucked with every physical DPS in the raid slobbering over armor penetration leather.
Letitia: I remember your complaining about that ... at great length, might I add.
Allie: Well, I raided as resto past Ulduar, so I was in line behind the raid's fury warrior, two retribution paladins, two hunters, two rogues, and a cat for melee leather. Given my guild's fairly rapid progression from normal to heroic Icecrown raid content and my usual luck with raid drops, I estimated that it would take me until approximately 2019 to get the boots, bracers, and belt.
Letitia: Paladins?
Allie: Yes.
Letitia: Paladins?
Allie: Apparently, there were two gear lists for retadins in Icecrown -- the plate best-in-slot list and the real best-in-slot list. Because Icecrown plate had so much frigging +hit on it, the theory went that it was actually a DPS increase to use ArP leather. Not that ArP was a great stat for retribution, but at least it was a damage increase over the millionth point of completely useless +hit.
Letitia: Well, that issue's mostly fixed now, but I still miss dedicated feral gear.
Allie: God, yes.
Letitia: It was pretty.
Allie: None of this "LOL rogue" malarkey.
Letitia: And feral staves were always really pretty. Gear consolidation might be a noble cause, but it's a huge visual disconnect to see a druid in a life- and nature-affirming tier set rocking a polearm that's been dipped in skulls.
Allie: (tears up) I miss feral weapons so much. I mean, I remember tier 5. There I was, a young feral player, and it was my fourth Serpentshrine Cavern raid, and --
Letitia: Sweetheart?
Allie: Yes?
Letitia: Are you a shirtless Christian Bale?
Allie: At present, I am neither.
Letitia: Then I don't give a rat's ass about your origin story.
Allie: (chugs cough syrup) More!
Letitia: That's the last bottle, so you're gonna have to speed up here. Trees.
Allie (is sad)
Letitia: Sorry.
Allie: A lot of people are still mad about missing tree form. Armory Data Mining hasn't updated yet, so I dunno if there's any fallout from that population-wise, but we'll see.
Letitia: Well, they're not exactly burning up the progression raiding charts these days.
Allie: Why am I cursed with the Shifting edition covering the two specs with the most issues?
Letitia: Because you play a bear/resto druid and actually like playing both when you're not otherwise tasked with analyzing the ugly parts or freaking out over patch notes.
Allie: Mmph. To be honest, I don't worry a lot about class representation in the first heroic boss kills, but I do think there's something to the notion that the druid's not hugely competitive with paladins and priests right now. But the patch 4.0.6 changes just make me wonder if we're returning to the era of Wild Growth and Rejuvenation spam. Once Efflorescence (which is to say Swiftmend) is on cooldown, what else do we have as a raid-healing tool? And what do we have anyway if the raid has to spread out?
Letitia: You worried about throughput earlier.
Allie: Well, yeah. We don't have anything else, especially with neutered battle resurrections. The new Tree of Life cooldown is more useful than expected -- I think because of the relatively late addition of unlimited Lifeblooms and the cool new graphic -- so some of us have fun with that.
Letitia: Some of us, and I am not naming names here, also macroed BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM CAPTAIN DISCO TREE to its use.
Allie: Any port. I still it's weird that moonkin and cats are arguably doing best right now --
Letitia: Moonkin more so than cats, because tier 11 suuuuuuuuucks for melee.
Allie: Every raid tier seems to be either universally good or universally horrible for melee. I wonder why that is.
Letitia: Guilt cycles on Blizzard's end.
Allie: I guess ... But I'm glad I'm not raiding seriously right now. I'm more interested in what's going on with the revamped leveling experience.
Letitia: And the death or dearth of bears in the dungeon finder.
Allie: I am presently bound to the worship of the porcelain god but will totally return to this subject while not contemplating the dust accumulating on the bathroom heater.
What race should you choose for your druid? What happened to Tree of Life? How can you get started as a bear or cat in Cataclysm? Shifting Perspectives has the answers!
Filed under: Druid, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tai Feb 1st 2011 6:15PM
Ugh, been there, done that, in a sleazy donut shop washroom no less. I hope you feel better!
Emil Feb 1st 2011 6:16PM
Very weird, very entertaining and so very true.
P.S, "BY YOUR POWERS COMBINED, I AM CAPTAIN DISCO TREE" is now a part of my ToL macro.
Varissia Feb 1st 2011 6:24PM
Haven't tried the bear in Cata, but I deeply miss the tree form. Yeah, so you can heal in it, but can you dance in it? Not for long. Sigh. And when they first talked about new treeforms, didn't you envision something more along the line of maple or pine? Not broccoli. Being a tree was special, recognizable. And running around with a little tree/sproutling pet...
Necromann Feb 1st 2011 6:29PM
There is a glyph...
Rob Feb 1st 2011 7:38PM
Its kinda like driving a BMW then having the repo guy come and take it away and giving you a 69 beattle instead. That's the glyph. Thanks blizz.
Scunosi Feb 1st 2011 8:03PM
Actually you CAN'T dance in the new Tree form. At all...well I guess you can with the mentioned glyph sure, but it seems weird they'd relegate a unique dance to one spec using a specific glyph. At least give them the male Orc dance from the model they're based upon!
And I've only tanked one reg and one Heroic as a Bear so far, and it just seems like we're having the same issues as ever. Tanking multiple ranged is still a pain, and now with nerfed AoE keeping aggro on large groups is simply harder than it was before. I'm so jealous of Paladins where almost all of their moves have some sort of range, I feel so helpless when things go crazy.
Harvoc Feb 1st 2011 8:20PM
@ Scunosi
I agree with you that it's extremely hard to tank large groups of mobs, especially at low level, because you don't have Thrash yet. And as for ranged, if there's one of them with some melee, I get aggro on the melee first, then I Feral Charge (Bear) to the ranged, taking the melee with me. If there's more that are grouped up, I do the same thing. But sometimes there's one ranged that aggros after I pull a group, and since it's attacking me only, I leave it alone to deal with after. But quite frequently, some dps spots the add, goes Leeroy Jenkins, and tries to solo the add. I'm like it's attacking me, leave it alone, gosh! Yea I get like serious headaches whenever I tank an instance on my bear.
MrJackSauce Feb 1st 2011 6:30PM
Every point you make, in your hazy state, was very interesting. I don't believe bears are as bad as you seem to be saying, certainly our "rotation" is about ungainly as a one foot goose.
The cries that our AoE is bad are completely unfounded though. Thrash is awesome for AoE threat, and with CONSTANT VIGILANCE you can easily control a peck... er... pack of mobs with ease. It's nothing like RENDTHUNDERCLAPOMGBBQWOOTCLEAVE but it's still perfectly viable.
And gear. Oh god. Gear. *cries* I'm so tired of fighting with rogues and hunters for TANK loot. It's understandably difficult to roll out different types of gear for so many diffe...wait a minute... They MADE these classes, if they can't handle the work load then there needs to be something else done. Having to suffer through 2 hunters getting an Agi staff upgrade then both of them dropping the staff a few bosses later in favor of a polearm makes me wither and die inside as I wait "patiently" for my Agi staff to drop a third time.
*endrant*
Great article, made me think about the next few steps I want to take with my bear.
Savio Feb 1st 2011 6:50PM
Just do a bit of arena for 3 weeks. Good weapons are easy to get now a days. 1 hour a day once a week = epic pvp weapon with more weapon dps, stam and agil than anything else you can get.
But your point about loot in general is valid.
Savio Feb 1st 2011 6:52PM
"1 hour of arena, once a week for 3 weeks"
is what I meant to say.
Seriously 3 hours of playtime = sweetest weapon ever.
Aanye Feb 2nd 2011 12:53AM
Sure, Thrash + Swipe combined do sufficient AoE damage. But what about the poor would-be tanks who are anywhere between level 15 and 80?
There's a major disconnect between when other tank classes receive AoEs and when bears do.
Warrior: TC (9), B&T 2/2 (11), Cleave (24), IR 2/2 (41), SW (69), Blitz 2/2 (73), Leap (85)
Paladin: Avenger's Shield (10), Consecration (24), Holy Wrath, HotR (29)
Druid: Glyph of Maul (25), Swipe (36), Berserk (69), Thrash (81)
Warriors have three legitimate AoEs (including B&T's AoE Rend) before bears can even get Glyph of Maul. Paladins have ALL of their AoE tanking abilities before druids even get Swipe.
Harvoc Feb 2nd 2011 1:01AM
I'm a poor would-be tank at level 68, and man do I feel the pain. Your comparison of spells just serves to confirm my suspicion that druids are horribly outmatched in terms of AoE tanking.
Jorges Feb 2nd 2011 8:52AM
@Aanye:
"Warriors have three legitimate AoEs (including B&T's AoE Rend) before bears can even get Glyph of Maul. Paladins have ALL of their AoE tanking abilities before druids even get Swipe."
And funny enough, they are hybrid classes too. There's no dedicated tanking class in wow, like DPS classes. So the whole "you get watered down versions because you can do various roles" rethoric doesn't apply here.
What are you doing Blizzard?
MrJackSauce Feb 2nd 2011 9:13PM
Yeah I should have noted I was primarily focused on 85 bears in my post.
Arena is like the rotten tomato in my can of tomato soup.
I tried to level a bear again for tanking. I gave up and shuddered crying in the corner after my first RFD.
Varissia Feb 1st 2011 6:37PM
Yes, there's a glyph, because so many folks disliked the new form. But I was referring to the past ability to actually stay in form throughout a dungeon or raid, as opposed to the form being a temporary spell. You could tell who the trees were. Now, you go to a dungeon and figure out that the druid's a healer when he just stays in night elf form.
LG Feb 1st 2011 6:42PM
For what it's worth, I've just levelled a healer up to the late 70s almost exclusively using the dungeon finder. I saw a fair few druids, and they seemed universally worse off than warriors or paladins.
Not skill-wise, or anything. Just, not as well equiped. They'd be getting smooshed far quicker than mail/plate counterparts, or scrambling to recover on bad pulls, or switching to cat form in the middle of boss fights they were meant to tank.
Okay, so maybe that third one is skill related.
Savio Feb 1st 2011 6:47PM
Problems with feral:
1. lvl 1-80 tanking. Try it and weep. Blizz thought about the tanking classes and made sure they could tank at low levels but got tired by the time they got to the druid so they just stopped
2. Right now bears have: a. OP single target threat, and b. underpowered AOE threat. Blizz's response: Nerf single target damage and.... and.... and....meh lets leave them with the weakest AOE threat.
3. Feral cat is awesome right now, but our bleeds are a bit too strong. Blizz response: Nerf bleed damage. Ok, we can handle that. Oh...and remove ALL of druids usefullness in PvP as well. No more breaking roots with shapeshift, no more berserk breaking or making immune to fear. Feral has ALWAYS been slightly weak in arena even though we have ALWAYS been able to use a fear-free berserk and break roots. But Blizz has decided resto is the only PvP spec they will allow. Sad for feral. Blizz: "If those ferals wanted to do arena they should've rolled a rogue. This will teach them."
4. It kind of sux as a bear to only have 1 good ability (mangle). Its fun to hit and do real good but maul is so much weaker than it used to be and everything else is just fluff. Only 1 good abilitity? We don't love mangle THAT much Blizzard.
Harvoc Feb 1st 2011 8:25PM
Yea I agree with all your points. Before Cataclysm, I tanked groups of mobs perfectly fine, spamming Swipe and tab targeting around glyphed Maul. But now it's impossible for my level 68 druid to even try to tank an instance. I mean bosses and pairs of mobs I do perfect on, never losing aggro. But 3+ is much harder. As for your third point, PvP will suck now. Running in my bear spec as flag carrier will be much more difficult.
Aanye Feb 2nd 2011 12:55AM
Yeah, you pretty much summed up everything wrong about bears right now.
FoxOfWar Feb 4th 2011 8:27AM
I have to echo those sentiments. Tanking heroics is a royal pain the furry rear right now, what with the aoe-non-threat we have. Thank Earthmother for a RL friend pally tank and a reliable heal spec(except, you know, the lack of proper AoE heals in raids).
If it's up to me, I will probably not tank Maloriak's adds. EVER.